All Hail Air Conditioning!

 It is hot and humid outside. We just closed the windows and turned on the AC unit. It's buzzing loudly but it is making a distinct difference in the comfort level of the room immediately. The AC is drying out the air and that makes it feel cooler in here. The temperature before we turned on the thing was 77 deg F in here. The AC is set to 75 deg F, as to avoid making it work too hard. It is an older unit, but still functional.

I figure if I want to listen to my music, I have headphones I can use. It is buzzing loud enough that listening to music off the television is not really an option unless I turn the television up obscenely high. I'm not going to do that because I don't want to blow the speakers. Maybe this weekend, Beloved will help me set up my new(ish) radio that's been sitting in the box for the last year and a half.

Took Cuddle Bear out for a driving lesson and to take care of our recycling run. He did pretty good. I completely empathized with him when he started swearing at the other drivers for cutting him off as he was turning. There's a corner in the next town over that has to be one of the worst in the whole town. It is another 5 point intersection, just like at the end of our street. To make matters worse, it's at the apex of a hill, so in one direction, you really can't see people coming up the hill until they're right on top of you. And everybody wants to speed through the intersection. I'm surprised the town hasn't put a light there yet.

In that next town over, they have gathered at one of the busiest intersections to protest the current administration. Each protest is more organized and bigger than the one before. This impresses me given how Republican dominated our county is. More people are getting ticked off with the government's bullshit and making themselves known. My son and I briefly talked about stopping to hang out with them and lend support. But we have a lot to do today so that didn't happen. One of these days, however, we're going to make a point of participating in one of these No Kings protests.

Too many cookies

 I have been having trouble over the last couple days getting my web browser to work properly. After a bit of poking around at it, I discovered that I had several thousand cookies. So, I deleted the cookies and ta-dah, it started working right again. I am annoyed with the fact that I had to do that but that is the state of the internet right now. It's like the 1990s returned to gift us with popup ads and bullshit. Unfortunately, the funny memes haven't come back into fashion.

Life around here has been challenging since I last posted. Hence the long silence. My mother-in-law was in treatment for cancer. She's successfully completed that and is working on getting back to what passes for normal. Now we wait a year and see if it comes back. If it doesn't she'll be declared cured. 

Work continues to drive Beloved batty. His boss has a bad case of undiagnosed ADHD, we're absolutely convinced of it. The man is in squirrel mode 95% of the time. His dog just about runs the office, when Dan doesn't put his foot down and get the dog to back down. She's a beautiful rescue dog that is very mouthy and anxious. And seems to have a bladder the size of a walnut. Between these two facts of his boss's lack of ability to stay on task and the dog has needs, Beloved is frustrated and trying to keep work grinding forward. It's been an on going problem for a while that is just slowly getting worse and more insane.

Cuddle Bear had oral surgery yesterday to extract a baby tooth and make room for the adult tooth erupting behind it. He's still feeling the effects of the anesthesia and is kinda grumpy and tired. He is doing ok with his driving lessons. Cuddle Bear is real cautious about four way stops now because he witnessed an accident a few days ago where someone tried to get through the stop before another person. There was a t-bone collision. Cuddle Bear was pretty rattled by the whole business. Apparently one of the vehicles involved was a police cruiser. Police showed up in enough numbers they were directing their own traffic. The drivers of both vehicles were taken to the hospital by ambulance, but fortunately alive and relatively whole. The fire department had their rescue truck out. It was a whole thing.

Snuggle Bug is very irritated with school. For anyone who has been keeping score, he started the year in the BOCES program for computer programming. This went sideways in a big way. He was failing all of his classes at BOCES, suffering from severe depression, and getting bullied a lot. We intervened at that point. He was pulled from BOCES and returned to his home school district. They gave us a line about how they didn't have room in any classes for him aside from his three morning classes before he went to BOCES. After some friction and frustration, he now is at school for a half day and comes home after his lunch period. Snuggle Bug isn't pleased but he is doing his best to stay positive. Bullying is still a problem, but less of a severe one. Now, however, he is getting super anxious over final exams later this month. I'm going to bring up his concerns with his guidance counselor to see if there's something we can do to help him be more successful.

Both the kids are not pleased about the talk around town about making changes to the park around the corner from us. From what they have heard, the playground is going to be ripped out and completely replaced. Snuggle Bug has been making noises about protesting the changes. Cuddle Bear has been making noises about never going back to the park after the changes are made because they are "ruining my childhood". To say the least, they have Opinions on what's happening. Nobody knows what is being built on the formerly empty lot between the old real estate office and the office park where our doctor's office is located. Whatever is being built, they're moving quick to get it done. It's been about 3 weeks since they started and they've got cement slabs poured and walls starting to go up on the exterior.

That's pretty much everything that's been going on in our neck of the woods. I am going to try to write more soon. Life has been challenging on top of daily irritations and the adventure of perimenopause. Hormone therapy helps even out the mood swings and make the hot flashes less frequent, but I still am off kilter. My doctor says that I'm about 2/3 of the way through it. I'm being optimistic and taking that number as a solid benchmark. But I'll go on about that on another post.

NaBloPoMo: Some whining.

I have stacks and stacks of old mail that I can't file and I can't throw out in the trash. My filing cabinets are full more old receipts, paid bills, and random official paperwork. Ninety nine percent of it is just junk. I feel like I need a paper shredder.

I get twitchy when the apartment is like this. It brings up bad memories and anxiety. Fortunately, I have that magic give zero fucks pill that my psychiatrist prescribed me. I took it a few minutes ago but it'll take a little bit to kick in. The time I spend being anxious and twitchy is not as long as it was before I started taking something for the anxiety.  But the anxiety is a persistent problem, even with medication.

All pervasive dread that something awful is going to happen to myself or my family is nothing fun to live with. Fear that leaving the apartment means someone is going to arbitrarily decide that I'm a danger to myself and others because I have mental illness and I'll be locked away in a dark hole with out any opportunity to see my family again keeps bubbling up. It doesn't help how this administration is running things.

So much of their bluster echoes what I was raised with and the threats that went with it. It makes minor panic attacks pop up like clouds on a sunny day, at a frequent rate and randomly. I have essentially stopped reading the news but it's all inescapable.  It's all over social media. It's the thing that all the neighbors talk about. I try to focus on what I can do and what I can change. But the anxiety and my personal history hit me like a freight train and I just sit and numb out for long periods of time.

NaBloPoMo: First Snow Fall (and a little ice)

 Yesterday, we went to visit my Mother-In-Law. The weather all day was gloomy and cold. Somewhere between sundown and when we went to the car, it started to ice. It didn't make the drive home problematic but we did have to be careful on the steps into the building. I figured it was going to continue to ice through the night. I was partially correct in my assessment. Some time in the night, it started to snow. 

When Snuggle Bug was heading out the door for school, I told him to be very careful because underneath that puffy, quarter inch of snow was a glaze of ice over everything. A little later, I went out and threw some salt down on the ice and warned neighbors on their way to their car about how slick it was out there. A light dusting of snow and a very thin glaze of ice made things look kinda pretty. I was glad we didn't get more of either because lots of trees still have leaves on them right now.

We're just to the east of one of the snow belts off of Lake Erie and just south of one of the snow belts off of Lake Ontario. The hills do a pretty good job of sheltering us from the worst of the winter storms that blow through the area. I suspect, however, that the hills are not going to be as successful as they were in past years when the next big storm comes through. It's cold enough that my joints ache and I've been wearing a shawl over my sweater.

My body does not approve of this weather. Fortunately, however, I didn't have a migraine this weekend as the system was moving in to the area. We'll see what happens when it moves out. I can say this for certain that the growing season is done now.

NaBloPoMo: Is it too late to winterize?

Beloved and I were talking about preparing for winter earlier this week. I think it was Tuesday. He was talking about getting the car's tires replaced and possibly the windshield wipers. I was talking about putting up plastic over the windows to block the drafts that blow in around them when the wind comes hard out of the west. Come to this morning and I smelled snow on the wind as I was getting to the car to go run errands. It's currently too warm to drop snow on us right now. But if you look at the clouds, they're snow clouds up there.

I now find myself wondering if we're going to get walloped by a big storm in the immediate future and temps will just stay bitter cold. I'm probably worrying over nothing. But, if we can get the apartment a bit more sealed up, it'll lower our heating bill and keep us more comfortable. Of course, the landlord will bitch about the tape holding the plastic on the windows but he doesn't live here. The only evidence he'll have of us putting up plastic will be less dust in those spots.

Anyways, our security deposit went missing sometime between when our first landlord died and the property got inherited by his wife. We suspect she used it to cover burial funds.

Fear, no. Rage, yes.

 Hey y'all. I've been pretty quiet. I give my standard apology for that. (And feel kinda bad that I've got a standard apology for it, but hey, it is what it is.) Part of my problem has been a lot of stuff going on in my life and my anxiety being through the roof. More of my problem is fear that I am going to have my blogs shut down because I am not  peddling the christ-facist crap that is flying through the airwaves right now. Once I realized my problem was fear, I got spitting mad. So angry that I was ready to throw things and then I instantly calmed down realizing that there was something I could do about that.

I can write and actively resist the bullshit going on through my blogs. I can point out the facist bullshit for what it is. I am no longer a kid stuck in a household where my parents espouse crap that sounds like this while calling themselves atheists and good americans. The memories of that part of my life have been roaring back but I am doing my best to function and using my anger to push forward.

I am the same person who was ready to punch out my little brother for espousing Nazi ideology in high school. I just have a better way of expressing myself than my right fist. Though the urge to punch people is rising.

Monday Menu

We've been going as low cost as we can with our meal budget in the light of the egg and beef shortage happening right now. That said, I really want to have that $15 brisket to make corned beef and then rubens with the leftovers. It's something I've been craving for a while. It is going to have to wait for the price to drop down, though. The small local grocery store in the next town over has been having some pretty good deals on meat. I may stop over there to pick up our beef for the week. Who knows, maybe I'll get lucky and there'll be brisket for less than $15. (I'm not counting on it, but I live in hope.)

I have started restocking our storm supplies. Last week, I cleaned out canned goods that were from 2013. I know that they're not good. Risking botulism is a bad idea. It can kill you in hours. If I had the energy for it and the means, I'd probably keep chickens. As far as live stock goes, they're fairly low maintenance. I know the landlord would flip his lid over that. He grouses about the wild birds that we feed out front. I think the guy is a curmudgeon underneath his affable affect. This is the same person who mowed down a patch of daylilies because he thought it made the lawn look messy. A square, tidy and well contained patch of daylilies. 

Ah well, enough rambling about that. Here's the menu for this week. 

Day	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner
Sun	yogurt with granola coffee	pb&j tea	Beloved's pick
Mon	yogurt coffee granola	quesadillas flavored water	hamburgers quick salad water
Tues	yogurt coffee granola	leftovers flavored water	chicken patties & salad w/ water
Wed	yogurt coffee granola	salmon salad sandwiches water	spaghetti & meatballs water
Thurs	yogurt granola coffee	leftovers water	split pea soup & sandwiches water
Fri	yogurt coffee granola	pb&j tea	tacos water
Sat	yogurt granola coffee	ham sand. water	take out water

No Menu this week.

 I have been going in circles trying to get things clean. It's not working that great. I have been feeling a sense of pressure to get my home tidy as the snow melts outside. A part of me says I should be scrubbing things and putting warm clothes away for the season. It is distracting, to put it lightly. I wish that my anxiety would calm down a bit, but that is why I take medication for it.

The geese have been loud and flying overhead a good deal. Living in spitting distance of a lake makes this a regular thing every year. At the same time, it was confusing a few days ago to see a large flock of geese flying east to west. Beloved and I were impressed by the number of birds there were. It was easily a hundred of them up there. Not enough to be like the murmations that were recorded by the colonists, but it was far larger a flock than either of us had seen in a long time.

The constant noise of the geese is annoying. That said, I prefer it over the noise of the neighbors fighting. With the weather warming up, however, I know that is coming. I honestly don't know what the deal is with that. It seems like whenever the weather is above freezing, the neighbors come out into the parking lot to have their screaming matches. I rather dislike this feature of living here but there's literally nothing I can do about it.

I have been having a hard time getting myself organized over the last few days. I believe it is directly related to the fact that I am having some difficulty sleeping. The business of these night sweats wakes me up several times a night. I tried looking up some home remedies but that led to an anxiety attack. Never ever look up your symptoms because Dr. Google will tell you that you have cancer or something else equally awful. But being disorganized has lead to my winging it on how food is going to go this week. 

We had burgers for dinner tonight. I'm thinking about soup and sandwiches tomorrow. I'm not sure what I'll make later this week. I know I'll figure something out. If anything, I have cookies to bake and potatoes to make.

Monday Menu

 I haven't been doing the shopping since I developed this hernia. I had an abstract grasp on the price of eggs going up. But I didn't really feel the full force of it until I walked into the local grocery store (not Walmart) and discovered that a dozen eggs was almost $10. I know the bird flu has wrecked havoc on farms across the nation. At the same time, it was a shock to hold a dozen eggs in my hands and see that the price had tripled. The cost of chicken has gone sky high too. 

I think Beloved is right when he says that it is going to take farmers some time to recover their flocks from the bird flu and for prices to come back down (if they do). I suspect that we're on track for the price of chicken to jump higher than the price of beef, where it used to be less expensive because beef is more popular here in the USA. Looking at the economic things happening on the world front, I am seriously thinking about doing a kitchen garden at my mother-in-law's property. There is three raised beds that I am considering taking over this year to grow produce. 

She's amenable to the idea. I am also seriously thinking about going back to my roots (ha! pun!) and doing food preservation. My mother and my late grandmother were certified by the Cornell Cooperative Extension as Master Food Preservers. They taught myself and a number of other people how to preserve food in years gone by. I have forgotten quite a bit, but I know that the Ball Blue Book will kick start my memory and I have grandma's recipes. If anything, it'll be nice to make a batch of watermelon pickles. (The watermelon will be sourced from a farmer's market because they produce like zucchini and take over the yard.)

Day	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner
Sun	yogurt with granola coffee	pb&j tea	meatloaf mashed potatoes water
Mon	yogurt coffee granola	quesadillas flavored water	hamburgers quick salad water
Tues	yogurt coffee granola	leftovers flavored water	spaghetti & meatballs water
Wed	yogurt coffee granola	taco salad tea	tacos water
Thurs	yogurt granola coffee	leftovers water	chicken patties water
Fri	yogurt coffee granola	pb&j tea	corned beef cheesy potatoes water
Sat	yogurt granola coffee	roast beef sand. tea	take out water

I hate insomnia. And the damn CPAP machine broke.

I've been struggling with insomnia for the last three years, correction five years. It didn't start with anxiety over Covid-19 or anything like that. It was a combination of my waking up randomly in the small hours of the morning and having neighbors that had screaming fights in the small hours of the morning. Did I forget to mention that the bedroom faces a wall that is particularly thin and I can hear everything in that apartment at a given time? Yeah, that's a thing and it sucks.

Last three neighbors in that apartment all had a native language of CAPSLOCK and it was not cruise control for awesome. If they were screaming things like 'I love you.' or 'This dinner is awesome.' that'd be one thing. I could kinda tolerate it and chalk it up to they're just loudly spoken. This, however, was not the case. So the current neighbor screams at her kids like a harpy on a bender. I haven't heard such vicious language towards children since my own childhood. 

Needless to say, this makes my insomnia problem even worse. Because now I am waking up with flashbacks, having trauma memories show up in my nightmares, and I get afraid to go to sleep because of the trauma memories showing up in my sleep. 

This week was particularly bad. I have nights now, this is new, where I sleep all night and wake up so exhausted I will sleep through most of the day. I missed two appointments and one important phone call because I was unconscious on the couch. My sleep wasn't helped by the fact that first my CPAP machine broke and then the loaner from the place I bought it broke. 

Monday, I'm bringing in the loaner for them to send off to get fixed and they're giving me another loaner. Gods willing, this one won't break. It is exceedingly frustrating to uses these machines and when they stop working properly, you just want to chuck it out a window. They're worse than computers misbehaving. Because it messes with your breathing. Speaking of having it mess with my breathing, the first week I had it, I woke up with an asthma attack while it was still running. Good gods, that was terrifying. Thankfully, I had the presence of mind to turn off the CPAP and get my inhaler.

One of the downstairs neighbors was smoking enough weed that it made our apartment smell like we were smoking it. Which triggered the asthma attack. Same thing with cigarette smoke. Which they indulge in as well and smoke like chimneys. Technically both are against the lease, but the landlord doesn't really do anything more than collect money and bully people who are late on payment by a few days to get money. I don't like the guy.

But that's been my week, oh and I'm almost over the flu.

I will have to walk into the maelstrom to get things, oiy.

 My last week has been spent on knitting feverishly on this sweater. (40 rows before the final edging.) I haven't even started the bear that's been requested of me. I'm starting to think I might not get it done at all. I'm crocheting just as feverishly on a mobius cowl. I think I made a mistake thinking it was going to be easy to get done quick. Large yarn and large hook is faster than small yarn with a small hook. But 200 stitches per round is still alot. And I worry it won't be large enough or wide enough with the yarn that I have. 

I was planning on baking cookies from scratch but now I think the best decision is to buy packaged dough and go that way because I'm running out of time. I think the school pictures (that initially I thought weren't going to happen) showed up. That means picture frames and such. Aside from going into Shopmageddon to buy picture frames, I need to acquire things for the 12 boxes of Yule. I also need to locate books for the holiday eve book giving that I've started doing. And there are people that I can't  make things for because the pattern I was testing had the gauge all messed up. I don't have time to fix that and then make three versions of that pattern. So, I will have to brave the crowds to get stuff for them.

As a person with social phobia, Shopmageddon is not my favorite time of year. As a matter of fact, it is my least favorite time of year between the crowds and all of the canned holiday music that hasn't changed since 1950. I loathe Bing Crosby's voice because I've been over exposed to it. And they start playing it earlier and earlier with each year. I heard holiday music in one store back in August and they were setting up some of their holiday displays. Ugh.

NaBloPoMo post no. 28: Snowmageddon missed us by 10 miles.

As many of you are aware, I and my family live in the Finger Lakes region. We're at the westernmost part of that area. Not quite Western New York, not quite Central New York, and a scooch too far north to be part of the Southerntier. We are in an awkward position geographically for people to define, unless you are talking football. Then it is everything from Buffalo east to Syracuse is "Bills Country" and even if you don't like football, you're socially expected to be part of the Bill's Mafia. Because Bills.

The Weather Channel made the usual Lake Effect that makes driving through Western New York hazardous this time of year sound like the worst ever. The snow bands from the Great Lakes can reach pretty far inland. We are in this pocket where the snow bands off Lake Erie misses us by about ten miles and the snow band off Lake Ontario miss us by, roughly, another ten miles. And then because of the weird microclimates due to all the hills, we happen to sit in a spot where we don't get nailed too badly when the big storms roll in, usually.

When we hit the latter part of the week where we are suppose to warm up to around forty degrees Fahrenheit, the couple of inches of snow that we got will probably all melt. The real problem for us is this bitter cold and the wind. It has been blowing pretty hard most of the day so far. I suspect the wind chill is about the same as it was in the morning, around 19 deg F. My sons were not happy to wait for the bus in this weather. Only enough snow for one young man to shovel and their hands were very cold despite their good quality gloves. As my eldest said when I told him he could not wait in the apartment for the bus, "I hope you'll be happy when I get frostbite in my hands." He usually doesn't fire off quips like that, but I don't blame him. It was pretty bitter out there.

I told him to wait in the entryway out of the wind. That seemed to mollify him. As someone who gets cold easily and literally hurts like it is burning their flesh, I could empathize with him. Still, I chuckle at what he snapped off. Because about ten seconds later the bus arrived and he left the entryway grumbling. 

Nablopomo Post No. 4 - The Weekend Sucked.

 Both Saturday and Sunday, I woke up stupid early (i.e. 0230) and couldn't fall back to sleep. I wound up knitting for an hour Saturday in the small hours of the morning, hoping it would bore me to sleep. On Sunday, I was doing crochet for an hour. Neither settled my mind and relaxed me enough so I could go to sleep. I resigned myself to being awake for the day at 0330, approximately. Well, Sunday it was again 0230. Either way I was highly annoyed.

The kids behaved well. I felt physically weird and couldn't figure out why. The bursitis in my right shoulder had cleared up, thankfully. But I just didn't feel right and was extra hungry for no apparent reason. Sunday morning that reason became clear - I had a wicked migraine. This shot down Beloved's plans to hang out with his mom and learn how to make a pie crust. He had been looking forward to this for about two weeks.

I spent half of Sunday curled up in a dark room with a blindfold on just to make sure no light was going to stab me in the face. This was one of the rare moments that I was glad the bedroom has no windows. I guess it was around 1600 when I woke up and the Imitrex had worked it's magic. I was so brain fried, however, I just wandered around the apartment.

There was a bright side to the weekend. Beloved took me out to dinner and gave me two presents for my birthday. One was a book about fairytales, folktales, and myths. The other was the accompanying deck of tarot cards. The spot where the old Greek restaurant was is the new location for the Mexican restaurant that we really enjoy.

We happened to sit by chance in our old booth. Things were a little slow because they were busy, but we managed to make it a bit of a romantic moment reminiscing about the early years of our romance. And, for bonus points, the kids did well hanging out at home with a pizza. So, maybe we'll do this again. As long as I don't have a migraine kick my feet out from under me.

No menu, just malarky.

 Hey folks!

I'd have made a menu yesterday and posted it today but ... well, the kids happened. They've been extra silly over the last several days and I'm having a hard time keeping up with it. Blanket fort shenanigans, jump scares around corners, making monster noises at each other, and the occasional bickering has my head spinning. I thought that this kinda stuff was stuff they grew out of. Apparently if they get sufficiently bored, my boys will start up with this. I must admit, it was funny to see Cuddle Bear in the blanket fort with most of his body sticking out because he didn't fit. I snapped a picture of it and sent it to Beloved. He cracked up.

When they started to get bored with surprising each other by randomly poking their hands out, Cuddle Bear grabbed his big bag of clean blankets to make his own blanket fort in his bed. If only I could get them to pick up the laundry. Maybe later, after they get some of this goofiness out of their system.

I don't have a menu, but summer feels like it's turning into a Nine Inch Nails song: Everyday is the Same. I've been tutoring Cuddle Bear in Algebra for the last several weeks. We've hit a point where my scrambled brain is trying to do calculus and linear algebra on his work. It made today very frustrating for both of us. Add into this mix the fact that his new scientific calculator is not operating on the decimal system, it's been rather vexing. We tried to find the instruction booklet but it is missing in action. We'll probably find it in September.

Snuggle Bug is doing pretty well with summer school. I don't know if his class is going to be making something for the "Anything that Floats" regatta happening at the end of the month. Last year they won Family Favorite. We've talked about going to it again. Both boys are hoping to see their friends at it. And, to be honest, I hope they get to. They've been a bit miserable and grumpy because they haven't seen any of their friends since the end of school. Snuggle Bug has made a few new friends but mostly he is pretty lonely even at school.

Some ramblings about life and potholes.

 Hey y'all. 

My street got 'fixed' by the WSA (Water and Sewer Authority) and has so many potholes that I feel like I'm playing Frogger when I'm driving and trying to avoid them. The last time they fixed something, stuff broke and we didn't have water for the day. I'm pretty sure these guys are a menace to society, not because they're bad people but because they put gravel into potholes instead of actually repairing them. I'm half tempted to get some driveway sealant from the hardware store up the road and fill in the gap around the pothole and the sewer lid.

Now, this fuckery is not entirely the WSA's fault. The highway department paved over all the manholes two years ago and screwed up the road so that it has issues on top of issues. And yet, for all of this work, the railroad tracks are a nightmare. The tracks are ok, but the crossing is just about nothing but gravel and two car eating potholes. The railroad is working on that this week. Here's hoping they're better than WSA or the highway department.

I have seen people loose mufflers off of their cars because of these potholes at the tracks. Fools and people who are not from around here will go over those tracks at full speed and damage their vehicle. It's been a hazard for a while and I'm glad it is getting worked on, I just hope that it improves the drivability of the street. Our speed limit is 35 mph but sometimes you have to go 15 because the road is just that bad. Oh, one more detail I forgot to mention. This part is sheer stupidity and someone is probably going to get hurt because of it. There's a small rise and at the top of the rise it says lane closed. You pop over it and the eastbound lane is closed for the space of about a car length. But it's a double solid and a blind rise. Murder on the eyes in the morning and you hope that nobody's derping in the road on that rise because of the sun burning your corneas to a crisp. Yeah, that's been interesting. Nothing like playing chicken because the WSA couldn't fix something properly.

I've been struggling to stay on top of everything, but I am slowing getting back into my groove. Tutoring Cuddle Bear has been eye opening. This young man is going into be a high school junior this fall. He's bright, he's charming (when he feels like it), and is really focused on learning as much as he can. Things we already know. It was realizing that through middle school they short changed him on mathematics. He and I have been working through a Spectrum Math workbook focused on algebra. We finished the pre-algebra chapter this week and it became clear that they were having him working on elementary school material, not grade appropriate work.

I understand a special education classroom is a juggling act when you have students at multiple grade levels in there and it gets even more difficult when you are dealing with  learning disorders and stuff like people who need communication aids. I did this work before I had kids. It's hard and at the end of the day you are exhausted. It doesn't change the fact that you have to meet the kids at their level. My boys are smart enough to pick up algebra and geometry. How do I know that? By how they whip through some damn complicated concepts (who here remembers the identity property of zero?). 

Now I am investigating things like how was he taught English, what Science classes did he get skipped over on, what are they refusing to teach my sons because they have autism. I'm mad as hell. In his IEP reports, his teachers were saying that he was struggling with algebra because he came into the class unprepared for it. He should have been prepared. That's why we're working on it now. Because I think he's going to get shuffled into a remedial geometry class or some similar grand bullshit.

He wasn't given a choice last year about going into BOCES exploration program. And it wasn't a thing that his entire class had to do. They were trying to pidgeon hole him into a shop class, because it was easier for them to throw him at the BOCES environment than to take the damn time to educate him. Cuddle Bear hated BOCES because it was a chaotic learning environment and he had no interest in what they were teaching him. We're watching the school like a hawk to see if they're going to try to put him back into BOCES or if they're going to honor what he said in the IEP meeting.

Right now, I know that one son is approximately 4 grades behind in mathematics and possibly in other subjects as well. I have suspicions that the other son is in a similar boat. As I get this figured out, I'm trying to decide what action to take. I can't do the chain flail thing, they're unreliable as hell. But a proverbial baseball bat of information dropped on the desk of the department chair and a demand for an explanation may start moving things in the right direction.

I'm sick of people telling me what a good mom I am. I'm a fucking educator by way of my education. I get that everyone has a different learning style and I adapt my teaching styles to be responsive to them. This is not a mere 'mom' thing. I'm dragging out material from college to teach them informally about the history of the country, math skills, and language arts. Language arts is challenging because they have difficulty with inferencing. I think, however, as we work in the mathematics area, they will find that they can apply some of the skills for breaking down problems into workable bits useful for interpreting inferred content.

I'm mad. I shouldn't be doing the school's job for them. I  have my good days and I can focus to get them through their work. I have my bad days where I struggle to figure out words. All of this is weaponized bullshit of the highest order. When my kids say they want to be home schooled instead of dealing with the uncertainty of what the next school year brings, I get angry. They shouldn't be anxious that they're going to get screwed academically because of their autism.

My week sucks, how about yours?

 Dear Reader,

Sunday was actually a decent day. Monday happened with Memorial Day parade and ceremony at the fire department up the road. The jingoism and the knee jerk cheer for the kid who stood up and gave a 'special statement' made me disgusted. It read like something from the Hitler Youth, literally ending with an exhortation for us to be good Americans.

I wept openly as they played the national anthem for what this country has become. I also wept when they played taps. The others aren't necromancers, they couldn't see the rank and file of the military dead of the town standing at attention, having been summoned by the ceremony. I acted as the designated mourner for them. Meanwhile the people in front of me were babbling about the fire trucks looking like they had a new paint job and what they were going to have at their cook out. It made me sick.

Monday also sucked because in the evening was when the migraine hit. It lasted until this morning. I was useless for anything, doing my best to keep down food, and remembering not to cry out when light randomly hit me directly in the eyes with out my sunglasses on in the apartment.

Today I am post migraine which is almost as bad. I didn't get anything done today either because I spent most of my day sleeping off the migraine 'hangover'. I absolutely hate these things. So, that's where I'm at. How are you? Doing better I hope.

Things I hate No. 652: Cleaning up after the neighbors.

 The entryway of the building is a mess. We have our stuff tucked tidily away to one side, practically stacked all on top of each other. Then there's the neighbor who moved in about two months ago (I think, my sleep deprived ass can't tell time quite properly right now despite my first full night of sleep in months.) who has crap all over the place in the entryway. The steps are a covered in dirt and some of it is ground into the paint from way back when the landlord we currently have acquired the building and decided that the entryway needed painting. (Little over a year. Looks like crap because there's the equivalent of muddy prints everywhere.)

The landlord wants the entryway to be tidy. I attempted but gave up because I couldn't keep up with the mess of the last group of people who were living in the other apartments. Just a ton of foot traffic and it was exhausting to try to stay on top of. Miss Thing (because she thinks she's the shit) volunteered to do it. She cleaned half the entryway, the bottom half. Once. Now, Miss Thing is an older woman who talks out both sides of her mouth and is worse at executive function than I am on my really bad days.

I try to be patient with her but I kinda want to punch her in the face when she talks because that's just how great her personality meshes with mine. And who it is that has nicknacks all over the place but Miss Thing. She doesn't dust shit. She doesn't really do anything but bitch and moan or try to con you into doing things for her. But when the landlord is around, she makes a display of herself being 'useful'. I think the landlord is catching on that Miss Thang is as useful as a box of hair and listens like a bag of hammers.

So, where does this put me? Well, I am back at trying to keep the entryway tidy. I'm going to make a point of talking to the landlord when I next see him as to this and explain that I am disabled. The entryway, if I am going to maintain it, is going to cost me spoons that I could have been using on other things. I will work out a cleaning schedule. I will come to some kind of conclusion with him on compensation for the work. Because I am not going to do drudge work for free. I have a hard enough time keeping up my own apartment with two teenagers.

Why am I doing this? About a week ago, the landlord softball pitched a rent hike to me. If other people can lie about doing stuff around this place for a theoretical decrease in rent, I can actually do shit and our rent can stay relatively stable. I may not be able to work a full time job anymore, but basically cleaning one more room once a week is not beyond my reach. Hell, on a good week, I could to it three times. But, I'm going to explain to him that you can't mop ground dirt out of paint and the fix is to sand it all and repaint. Beloved's of the mind he can work on that to help move this entire thing forward and between him and I it'll be done properly.

I can see it now, the crime scene tape that I bought him as a gag gets used to warn people to keep off of the wet painted side of the steps. Come to think of it, it would be kinda funny to be honest. But, I am not going to enjoy this process. Other renters have just thrown trash on the floor and into the garden. They've flicked cigarette butts into the garden or ground them out on the outside steps and left them there. It's been a mess. If we have to clean up after these motherfuckers, it's going to get done right and we're probably going to have some creative solutions to problems like the cigarette butts and trash.

Angry again, over Pandemic shit.

 So, we get a note home from school that someone in my son's class has tested positive for Covid-19. No idea when this happened, maybe the school found out from the parents today or maybe it was Friday and it took a little time to organize the response. But, we got a test kit from the school with a note saying if we needed more test kits we should contact them. (The school has been very supportive of the community through this whole business.)

We did the test. Snuggle Bug tested negative. In a few days, we get to do this again. It's a pain in the ass but if he is healthy, I suppose that's the price of doing business. But that's not what I'm ticked off about. I'm annoyed with it but I'm not ticked off.

It's the fact that majority of people at the school and in our community are not wearing masks. These kids were not getting sick, not even the common cold, when wearing masks. But my neighbors wanted the masks off their kids because they felt that their babies were having their rights oppressed. My neighbors wanted to ditch their masks because they felt that they were being oppressed.

Now people are getting sick with Covid-19. They're seeing something of a surge of cases in the local hospitals and people are acting mystified. It's like they honestly don't understand that masking and social distancing does a big thing to prevent transmission of disease. It makes me real angry.

I get dirty looks at the store for wearing my mask. I'm seriously tempted to locate masks with vulgar things on them like 'fuck off plague rat' so the people who are offended by my effort to preserve my health have a legitimate reason to be offended. If it weren't for the fact that there's so many Islamophobic assholes around, I'd wear a scarf across my face to cover up the mask. Less about an extra layer of protection (because it doesn't really add that much) and more about they can't fucking tell if I am wearing one or not. I also find myself wanting to hit people with my cane when they are saying that the pandemic is over. It's not over because some politicians say it is.

[keyboard mash] IT IS STILL A PANDEMIC!

 Here's a pretty picture to distract you for a moment from the horribleness of the world. If you can not read the text on the image, it says 'Chasing Hope' and the image is a series of blue butterfly stickers arranged around the text. The sparkly stickers are pop-up stickers, though the pic doesn't do a good job of demonstrating it.

Rant in-coming, if you're faint of heart or can not handle coarse language, focus on the butterflies.

I get why he did it. Dr. Fauci is under incredible pressure to declare everything is fine and that we're done with the pandemic. He said it because if he didn't he was probably going to lose his job and someone more malleable would have replaced him. Still, it's a dirty fucking lie that's going to get people killed.

There's 23 counties where people should be masking in my state. My county isn't one but is surrounded on all sides by them. It's only a matter of time until the CDC says we should bring back masking. My family didn't stop masking when the mandate got dropped. This goddamn disease mutates like nobody's business. It's killing people. It's just not killing them quite as fast. This is why we're still wearing masks and maintaining social distance despite the strain it puts on relationships.

I now understand that the Influenza Pandemic didn't truly go away. People just cast off their masks and accepted that people were going to die as a cost of being comfortable and living life as 'normal'. There is no fucking 'normal'. Until they come up with a damn vaccine that this cursed virus can not evade, I will be wearing a mask because this disease can fucking kill me. My children understand that I am in the high risk group for lethal complications and they're wearing masks because they don't want me to die.

I want you to think about that for a minute, Reader, a 12 and 14 year old have to consider their parent's mortality every morning they go to school. They're part of a very small population at the school still wearing masks. Everyone is real good about not giving them shit. But I'm waiting because at some point there's going to be an issue. My sons shouldn't have to worry about my dying because they brought home a 'common cold' that turned out to be Covid. They've been more anxious about my diabetes since Covid has come into the picture. Every morning when I check my blood sugar, they ask me if it is a good number. I always tell them it is a good number, even if it is running high, because I am not going to have them worried over if I'm ok when they have typical teenager shit to worry about.

I want my kids to be ok. I am working my damn ass off to keep my anxiety about the effects of long term Covid and the fear that if my boys get it, they'll be long-haulers, or dead. I see my neighbors and relatives casting their masks away and going 'It's all over now.' When, no, it is fucking not over. This is how we wound up with surges that killed a lot of people. 

There are mass graves in NYC of people who died from Covid. Over 1 million people in the US have died from Covid. But we're supposed to ignore that and focus on things like what Susie is going to wear to Prom! And the OMG!DISNEY IS GOING TO HAVE TO LEAVE FLORIDA?! I'm sorry, but that shit doesn't matter. Coordinate the prom dress with the mask. Let the professionals hash out what's going to happen with Disney. Focus on trying to be hygienic, focus on trying to be safe, and start thinking long term with this mask business.

Because there's a lot of people who are dead or permanently disabled due to Covid because of stupid shit like people saying that it was 'just the flu' and getting their ass up in the air over the fact that they had to cover their mouth and nose. Let me tell you something, masks are a hell of a lot more comfortable than bras. You can actually breathe with them and you don't have a damn wire digging into your ribs to make your breasts look more socially acceptable (larger). If I have to wear a goddamn bra so that you're not offended by the fact that I have nipples (when every-fucking-body has  nipples, we're goddamn mammals), you should wear a fucking mask so I don't catch whatever disease you're carrying.

Fucking hell, people, we've had two and a half years of this shit. And you're crying about your freedoms? Your freedoms end at the tip of your nose. Social responsibility is part of being in a society. If you're sick, you get it taken care of and avoid people until you're better. It's common sense when something this damn contagious is running around. By the way, the biggest proponents of throwing the masks away and dismissing the vaccines are the generation who saw major national intervention for Polio and Measles. 

The death rate for Polio is the same as the death rate for Covid. But because Covid looks like a cold or the flu, they scorn it. Fuck those assholes. Polio was damn near eradicated because of intensive research and the public realizing that something was seriously fucking wrong. Why can't you morons do the same damn thing? Because you feel uncomfortable and irritated with a fucking mask? Grow a hair on your ass and put on the damn mask. You're going to kill people with this attitude and possibly even die yourself. If you don't give a damn about dying, that's fine. Eat a fucking bullet and get it over with so that you don't kill other people in the process.

See, I haven't completely forsaken colors!

 I stole Beloved's old t-shirt from college and I've been wearing it off and on for years. It's the one I've got on today. It's a black and denim day because laundry day is tomorrow and what I have left that is straight up black isn't fitting for the weather. I'm happier than I have been in a while since I've changed my clothing style to a more goth themed one. I'm still figuring out how to make it work.

I have a love of wearing collars. Partly because of kink and partly because I really like how it looks. I am still throwing in pops of color to break up the black on black look. I'm doing the goth thing on my terms. It's made for some interesting reactions from people around town.

The ladies at the post office think it's fantastic that I am going with a clothing style I've always wanted to do since I was a teen. They've given me some suggestions and have asked me about what accessories I am going to pick up next. It's been fun stopping over there.

The rando sales person who stopped at the door got uncomfortable. Part of it, I know, was the collar and the fact that I'm not some 20 year old thing bebopping around trying to impress people with how edgy I am. Part of it was the fact that I made very clear that I wasn't a push over, which some people would think because of the collar. I got a subtle 'y'all need Jesus' out of one of the guys and they haven't been back since, despite my making an appointment to discuss what they were offering. If they can't handle the fact that I'm 42 and wearing whatever the hell I want in my own home, they need to get a life.

I haven't worn the bdsm collars out to doctor appointments because the established relationship there would be a bit upended by the stylistic change. I see that they're getting used to the all black garment and the ribbon choker with the big glass heart on it. I figure give it a year and they'll be ok with it. Easing people into the concept that you're not as 'normal' as they assumed you were seems to be the process of getting them to accept that you're not going through a midlife crisis.

I've been contemplating picking up a third style of collar. I adore the two I have. I finally figured out how to clean the tarnish off of the steel on the one I'm wearing (cleaning vinegar and a soft cloth). The pink and black one is super comfy. I'm hoping to possibly locate one similar to something I saw on Etsy that had flowers on it. There was an absolutely gorgeous painted leather one with a bright pink wild briar rose design on it. It was also super expensive compared to some of the others I've been looking at. But, it has stainless steel hardware (which I need so I don't react to the metal) and it was really lovely.

I find myself thinking about using some of the money from Keen to buy it for myself. I know that is set aside for book promotion, but it's been at the back of my mind since I saw that thing a few months back when Beloved and I started looking into getting me a new collar because I was reacting to the one I'm wearing now. It was pure luck that I learned about the vinegar to clean up steel. 

I was super happy yesterday when I realized that those knee high sneakers that I had from when I was LARPing still fit. I had to adjust the lacing a bit, but I can wear them with my dresses and look nifty. I also found the fingerless gloves and with a bit of adjustment, I think I can make them work. So, the question now is what style of goth am I going for. I do kinda want a spikey collar for fun but I think my kids would put out an eye when they came running at me for a hug. That was the whole reason why we didn't get one. Because there were some really cool looking ones.

I'm also thinking about dying my hair. Well, to be more precise, I'm thinking about bleaching my hair out and then dying it some unnatural color. It's not very long yet. I haven't decided how long I want to get my hair. I already of white streaks showing up. I thought it was grey and my hair was thinning until I got a close look in the mirror and realized that it was white. Stress, it's a hell of a drug. But, if my hair is going white, I might just bleach it out to white and dye it some neon color and go with some interesting partial coverings. Or, I might go with an ombre color so that my dark roots just need a touch up as my hair gets longer. I haven't decided yet. 

The hair business is going to have to wait for when the kids are in school and I have more than a few hours free to sit and do so anyways. I last tried royal blue. It didn't take very well because of how dark my hair was a few years ago. I might try a royal blue ombre starting at the top of my head and going to the tips with a cotton candy blue. Then again, I may go with red fading down to neon pink. It's hard to decide.