queerbychoice | Reading

I had another bad night last night. When I lay down to try to go to sleep I found myself unaccountably wide awake. After about 45 minutes of not sleeping I got up and read for quite a while. I think I ended up going to sleep sometime after midnight, and I was awake again just before 5 am, so not much sleep was had. Hoping for a better night tonight.

I'm still catching up with cleaning and laundry after having the family here, mainly because I like to spread cleaning out over more than one day, and because I can't do more than one load of laundry in one day because of the limits of drying space without a dryer. This is a limit I'm perfectly willing to work within, by the way. We are in one of the seasons when washing gets dry quite fast outside, but it still takes a few hours.

Before the family arrived I stocked up on a few things including some fresh fruit and vegetables, not all of which got eaten. Therefore I'm working my way through what's left, trying not to let too much go to waste. There's also some stuff in the freezer, but I can get through that more slowly.

maju

13. Are you happy with yourself? Sometimes, but sometimes I'm mentally beating myself up for all the ways I've failed to be a good human being throughout my life.

14. What is the meaning of ‘peace’ to you? It's not necessarily a lack of trouble or problems; I think it's more having an inner confidence that whatever is going on, I will be able to handle it.

15. What are three moral rules you will never break? Don't read someone else's diary or letters; don't interfere with someone else's possessions; apologise when you know you're in the wrong (and sometimes when you think you're right).

16. What does it mean to allow another person to truly love you? It means having to be completely honest and vulnerable to them.

17. Who or what do you think of when you think of love? S.

18. If your life was a novel, what would be the title and how would your story end? Title: You Don't Know Where You're Going Until You Get There. Ending: Dying peacefully in my sleep at the age of at least 99.

19. What would you not give up for $1,000,000 in cash?

20. When do you feel most like yourself? When I'm doing something I wasn't sure I would be capable of, or when I've just done something that scared me and I did it anyway.

21. When you help someone do you ever think, “What’s in it for me?” No.

22. What is your greatest challenge? Right now, learning how to live by myself again.

heron61

I’m looking at the various options for what my partner and I can do and what is likely to happen with the US, and I find this seriously depressing, so I’d love if anyone reading this could provide alternatives or reasons that they think some of the unlikely possible options are actually pretty likely (and why).

Option 1 Fleeing Fascism: My best guess is the US slides into full on fascism, somewhere between Hungary and Nazi Germany, and after my mother dies (likely in the next year or so, she’s 90) my partner and I flee the US, likely not to Canada unless it looks likely that 47 won’t invade, so our options are Portugal (you can buy your way in with money we’ll have from my mom), or New Zealand (same). The problem is I utterly hate the idea of having to leave Portland and our friends, but I’m not too keen on living under fascism either.

Other options (I’m saying how likely I think they are, if you disagree, please let me know, and also why):

Option 2 Social and economic collapse: 47 and Musk are idiots who aren’t remotely careful, so this seems like a real option that seems somewhat likely, but I’m uncertain , I also find this far superior to option 1, in large part because while it will suck, people won’t be disappeared to Central American torture prisons, and it likely won’t last that long. I’d expect the states to pick up the pieces and we might even end up with the US balkanizing.

Option 3 Military coup/civil war: If 47 (as he seems very likely to do) invades Canada or Greenland, or both, some portion of the US military will likely refuse to attack NATO allies. If it’s enough, we get a military coupe, which is terrible, but also a serious improvement, since I’d expect them to push for free elections soon. OTOH, if only some of them refuse we could easily end up in full on civil war. I think the overall option is moderately likely, but have no idea which way things would go, and in the case of a full-on civil war, I would want to be on another continent.

Option 4 Low Violence Popular Uprising: This has happened in numerous nations; enough people take to the streets and the leaders flee. I’d love for this to happen here, but I also firmly believe it won’t. The US lacks that sort of hard-core protest culture. It could easily happen in France, I don’t believe it will happen here.

Option 5 Free elections: I think this is only slightly more likely than a successful popular uprising. It’s been 3 months, 47 will have been in power for almost 22 months for the mid-term elections, and the Republinazis have shown themselves to be absolutely fine with eliminating democracy. Blue states may or may not keep far elections, but red and many purple states won’t.

Option 6 Secession: This is my strong preference – either for the West Coast to join Canada or to become its own nation, and in either case, I’d never need to worry about sharing a nation with the powerful wealthy elites in hard core red states like Alabama, Idaho, or Iowa. The problem is that attempting this either results in an ugly civil war that our side loses, or someone needs to seize nukes and a way to deliver them. I expect that in CA at least there is at least some discussions about this, but I have absolutely no idea how likely I think this is.

I don’t see any other remotely likely options, and I really don’t like the likely ones other than 1-3. What do you think?

maju

My daughter made it home yesterday in just a tad over 5 hours. She didn't say, but she must have driven non-stop. She did say there was very little traffic. Google maps, which is always very optimistic, says the trip takes 5 hours and 9 minutes if there are no delays. (My experience has always been that any trip takes an hour or two longer than Google maps predicts.)

I don't think I had one good night's sleep while they were here, but I mostly felt ok. On their final morning (yesterday) I woke up at 3 am and couldn't get back to sleep but I was feeling reasonably energetic in spite of lack of sleep. This morning, however, although I slept very well I woke up with a bad headache, but it went away after some Tylenol and breakfast, and I feel all right now. I'm expecting to sleep fairly well for the next few nights with any luck.

After my run yesterday I ended up with an incipient blister on the tip of my right big toe. I don't think I've ever had a blister in that particular spot before, and I think it was because I ran further than I have for a long time. I should have increased my distances more gradually I guess. Anyway, this morning I went for a shorter brisk walk instead of trying to run again, and the blister seems not to have developed.

My front yard has been looking quite overgrown and unkempt for a couple of weeks since the weather got warmer, so this morning after my walk I attacked it with my push mower. I didn't do a very thorough job but it looks better than it did, which is all I was really aiming for. While I was out there working I found an undiscovered egg from the girls' egg hunt on Saturday. All the eggs were plastic eggs with jelly beans and sour lollies inside, so I scored three jelly beans and one sour lolly. It would have been better if there was chocolate inside but I enjoyed the unexpected treat anyway.

annapeace

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maju

Yesterday started out with excited girls waiting impatiently for their mother to get up so they could have their Easter baskets. They had come into my room quite early, so when my daughter got up they dived into the baskets on my bed. The baskets were not full of chocolate; instead they had things like some stuff called "thinking putty" which is moldable like silly putty but is much firmer and doesn't stick to things. Also it's full of glitter. Eden spent a lot of the day making cobras with hers. They also had small paint by numbers kits, which Eden completed fairly quickly. Aria started hers but it turned out to be a bit too advanced and she abandoned it after doing the easier parts. Violet meanwhile was mostly reading I think. She didn't seem very interested in her thinking putty or her paint by numbers even though she is usually the artistic one.

In the afternoon S's son (Uncle J) came over and the girls had an egg hunt, mostly in the front yard. A couple of days before when Uncle J was here they were all out in the backyard and they made the unfortunately discovery of a dead raccoon, so we were avoiding the backyard for a while.

Uncle J stayed for several hours, mostly hanging out with the girls. He is like the Pied Piper. He took the girls for two or three walks to local parks or around the neighbourhood, and they also spent some time constructing fairy houses from bamboo fronts just outside the front door in an empty garden bed.

Yesterday evening my daughter organised all the luggage and travel food so that they could leave early this morning, and this morning they were on the road just after 7 am. She was hoping very much to avoid any heavy traffic such as she had encountered on the trip down, but she was worried that the roads would be busy because of it being Easter Sunday.

After they left I got some washing out on the line and then went for a run. The weather has changed quite suddenly from warm clothes to shorts weather, so I was quite sweaty after the run. The nights are still comfortably cool so I've been enjoying sleeping with the window open.

My daughter submitted her application for a green card about three years ago and has finally been notified that she has an appointment for an interview on 1st May at 8 am. She is very nervous even though in normal times there would be no reason why the green card shouldn't be granted (because she has been married for 12 years to her American citizen husband and her three children are American citizens), because nothing is normal any more. She is very worried that it won't be granted for some arbitrary reason.

maju

The miniature train ride and the carousel ride yesterday afternoon were both big hits. After the rides we spent a fair amount of time at the very big playground in the same park, then when the girls seemed to have become a bit overwhelmed by everything we came back to my town and went to a much smaller playground near the post office for an hour or so. For most of the time the girls had it all to themselves, which I think they enjoyed.

After we got home, there was a lull for a while and then S's son came over around 5 pm and stayed until after 7 pm, mostly hanging out with the girls. They love him, and he seems to enjoy their company.

Today we left just after 9:30 am to catch the Metro to downtown DC. We got off the Metro a few blocks north of the mall and walked down to the National Museum of Art Sculpture Garden. Unfortunately my phone misled us and we ended up walking a fairly long way around so that by the time we got to the sculpture garden the girls were already tired (it was almost 11 am by then) so we saw about three of the sculptures and had a snack and drink break in the cafe before leaving to walk to the National Children's Museum, a bit more than half a mile away. This was almost half a mile too much for Aria, who doesn't much like walking, and it was quite warm by then to make matters worse. However, as soon as we were inside the Children's Museum she regained all her energy and enthusiasm, as did the others. (The Children's Museum is not part of the Smithsonian and is therefore not free, but for the ages of my granddaughters it was better than going to any of the free museums I think because it's not really a museum, it's a sort of science interactive centre.)

From there (after another drink break in the on-site cafe) we caught an Uber to a cafe my daughter likes called Sweetgreen, which sells a limited range of hot and cold salad bowls and a few other things, and from there, we walked to Dupont Circle (about another half hour walk) to get on the Metro to come home. We arrived home a bit after 4 pm and everybody was wiped out so now the girls are vegging out in front of various shows (Bluey for Aria, Coyote Peterson/Brave Wilderness on YouTube for the other two) and I think their mother is sleeping.

Tomorrow will be a more low key day, mostly at home I think.

maju

My finger seems to be recovering very quickly. I think it was wise to see the doctor yesterday before the infection got really bad.

The ant baits I'd ordered finally arrived yesterday evening. I immediately put one in the kitchen (hidden behind the toaster) and this morning I have not seen any ants. This could be partly because it was quite a cold night; the next couple of nights and days will be warmer so that will be a better test.

maju

My daughter took more than 7 hours to get here yesterday because she encountered heavy traffic at both the beginning and the end of the trip. Everybody was very glad to get out of the car at my place! And I think everybody slept well last night. (Except me - I did fall asleep quickly but I woke up more than half an hour before the alarm and couldn't get back to sleep again.)

As usual, the girls had to spend time using our landline phone to ring me on my mobile. Then Violet got the idea to pretend to be some kind of Santa's Workshop help person. She wrote out a longish screed with possible problems I might have (e.g. wrong gift, Santa in my living room, reindeer still on the roof, and more) then rang my phone and when I answered, read the whole screed to me so I could choose which problem I have. Then she pretended to transfer me to one of Santa's elves who would help me with my problem. And then she pretended to be an elf come to help me, by kneeling on the floor with her crocs under her knees and shuffling along like that as if her knees were her feet. All very amusing.

This morning my daughter produced a pair of Aria's tights which were hand-me-downs from Eden, and said Aria had asked me to repair them because the waist elastic had completely failed. Apparently right after I left their place in January Aria tried to put them on and found they wouldn't stay up so she told her mother she should get me to repair them. Then when they were packing for this trip she pulled out the tights and asked her mother to bring them to me so I could fix them. So this morning I replaced the elastic and Aria is very happy with them. (They are Batman themed.)

This afternoon we're going to a big local park which has a miniature train, to ride on the train and probably also visit the playground. Meanwhile, this morning my daughter has taken the girls to Michael's to stock up on craft supplies.

Tomorrow we're going downtown to visit some of the Smithsonian museums, and on Saturday we are having an Easter egg hunt. Tomorrow sounds tiring but the other activities should be fairly relaxed.

maju

The family should be arriving around 3 pm or a little after.

Yesterday evening I decided to see if I could get an appointment at urgent care for this morning, since my finger didn't seem to be improving with regular soaking in hot salty water and I was pretty sure my daughter wouldn't be here before about 1 pm at the earliest. I was hoping to get a 9 am appointment but the earliest was 9:30 am. It didn't matter, because there was nobody waiting when I got there a few minutes early and I was seen before my actual appointment time. The doctor gave me a different antibiotic than I had last time; I hope it's a more heavy-duty one and will knock this infection out. I left here just before 9 am to walk to the urgent care office and was home again about 10:15 am, leaving plenty of time before my daughter arrives. If my daughter hadn't been coming down this week I would probably have waited a day or two longer before going to the doctor in hopes that the hot water treatment would work, because I was reluctant to take another antibiotic.

I had trouble falling asleep last night and ended up with only about 5 hours sleep. I don't feel too tired but I'm sure I will be exhausted by bedtime tonight after spending a few hours with my granddaughters.

Did I mention that I'm seeing ants in the kitchen again? I'm really disappointed that the treatment done by the pest exterminator was so short-lived. (It's still killing off those horrible black crickets though, so that's one very good result.) The exterminators are due to make another visit three months after the first, but I'm sure the ants will just get worse and worse during that time, especially because it will be the warm part of the year when ants are worst, so I ordered some ant baits which are supposed to be delivered today. My daughter had let me know that she ordered some small things for her daughters for Easter baskets and these packages would be delivered here, but I forgot all about that and got quite excited when I saw someone deliver a package while I was eating breakfast. I was disappointed though when I opened it without checking the address label closely, because it turned out to be a book for one of the girls rather than a package of ant baits. Two more packages have been delivered for the girls but I'm still waiting for my ant baits.

annapeace

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maju

I'm almost ready for the family's arrival tomorrow. I now have a good stock of fruit, vegetables, and gluten-free products on hand so at least nobody will be hungry for a day or two. (I always tend to underestimate how much those three girls can eat!) Still have to make up some beds, but apart from that I think I'm ready.

Unfortunately I seem to be getting another infected finger, right next to the one I had about a month ago. This is ridiculous. I don't remember when I've ever had an infected finger before, and now two in a row? I'm soaking it in hot salty water hoping to stave off another visit to urgent care, at least while the family is here, but it's not looking good.

Another recurring problem is ants in the kitchen. I thought the exterminator had got rid of them, but yesterday and today I've seen a few which is extremely annoying.

maju

The mornings are finally getting warm enough for me to be motivated to go out very early to exercise. I was planning to go out around 6 this morning but then it was raining slightly at that time so I waited until 8. That was still earlier than usual, and it was a good time to be out.

I've done a fair amount of food prep today, some of it for myself (like making sourdough bread as well as egg/vegetable muffins for lunches) and some for when my daughter and family are here. I still need to stock up on more groceries though.

maju

My daughter is probably driving down on Wednesday, so now I'm feeling stressed about preparing for the arrival of the family, mainly having appropriate food on hand. I'm sure everything will work out, but I can't help feeling anxious. In non-food preparations, I bought a package of 120 five inch squares of quilting fabric for the girls to divide evenly amongst themselves and use for whatever sewing or craft projects they want. It might be raining on Tuesday, but from Wednesday we're supposed to have nice weather for a few days.

This morning I was happy because I was able to cover just over 10 km/6 miles with a combination of running and walking. I had intended to just do 8 km, but I wanted to check the mail so I extended the distance to include going to the post office. I was very happy that although my legs felt slightly tired while I was running, I didn't end up with a backache or any other aches and pains. I'm also very happy that my nose hasn't been showing any signs of bleeding for a few weeks. (I hope I didn't jinx it by saying this.)

A couple of days ago I started watching a show called "Mum" on Britbox which is quite cringe-worthy. The mum character's husband has just died, and she seems to be surrounded by people (including her son, her son's new girlfriend, and her brother's girlfriend) who are always saying the wrong thing. The brother's girlfriend is purely malicious, but the son and the son's girlfriend just seem to be clueless and very tactless although they mean well.

I'm still watching "The Vicar of Dibley" but the humour is starting to grate somewhat because it's often very tasteless and sometimes slapstick, which I'm not fond of.

I'm also watching an Australian show, "Offspring", which is a bit like watching a slow-motion train-wreck at times. It's a drama, not a comedy, and sometimes gets a bit over-dramatic in my opinion, but I am enjoying it.

maju

I didn't go to parkrun this morning because we'd had about 1 ½ inches of rain in the previous 24 hours and I knew the trail would be flooded in places. I wouldn't mind the flooding if we didn't have to slog through muddy grass to get around it. Anyway, I went for a parkrun-length run (5 km/3 miles) on neighbourhood streets after breakfast to make up for missing parkrun, and although there were some places where there were puddles covering the footpath, it was easy enough to get onto the road briefly to avoid them.

After my run I also did my delayed grocery shopping. I'm getting really tired/bored with having to keep myself fed; lately it's been feeling like an unrelenting chore, so today I bought a couple of frozen dinners just to make a change from food I've made myself although I do have several single-serving size portions of dinner meals in the freezer already.

I had it in my mind that we were having large item pick-up today, so I put my discards out by the verge yesterday evening. This morning, however, I didn't see any other piles of junk anywhere in the neighbourhood while I was out, so just now I looked on the town website to check the date that it's supposed to happen and it turns out it's next Saturday. I should probably move my stuff off the side of the road because you're not really supposed to put anything earlier than a day or so before. However, there is no HOA here so probably nobody will really care if I leave it where it is. My house is right at the bottom of a cul de sac so my little pile of stuff isn't very conspicuous.

maju

6. Is it ever right to do the wrong thing? Is it ever wrong to do the right thing? I'm not sure that it is either ever right to do the wrong thing or ever wrong to do the right thing, although perhaps it depends on who is deciding what the definition of "the wrong thing" or "the right thing" is, because there are obviously many things that some people consider wrong that are actually not wrong according to other opinions.

7. How would you describe ‘freedom’ in your own words? The ability to live your life the way you choose, as long as you don't impinge on other people's rights to do the same thing.

8. What is the most important thing you could do right now in your personal life? Be kind to people I encounter, and be as good a grandmother as I can possibly be.

9. If you could ask one person, alive or dead, only one question, who would you ask and what would you ask? I can't think of any answer to this question. There might be groups of people I would like to ask questions of, but not just one person or just one question.

10. If happiness was the national currency, what kind of work would make you rich? Something to do with computers, probably.

11. What is your number one goal for the next six months? Get myself and my house ready so I can sell the house and move to another state.

12. Would you ever give up your life to save someone else? I don't know. This would be an incredibly difficult decision to have to make.

maju

I keep trying to make yeast bread with yeast that's been in the freezer, and I keep thinking I'm doing something wrong because the bread doesn't rise very much, but I've finally reached the conclusion that the yeast is probably not good, even though I made some yeast bread not too long ago (perhaps late last year?) which turned out just fine. I've had this yeast for maybe two years or maybe even longer; what happened was that S was doing our grocery shopping, back when we were taking turns, and I put 6 packets of yeast on the list, meaning two strips of three individual sachets, but S bought 6 strips, so 18 individual sachets, and because I normally make sourdough bread, the 18 sachets have been in the freezer for a long time. I thought they'd last forever in the freezer, but some research online today tells me that I should have better thought in terms of months rather than years, and made more of an effort to use them up. Anyway, I have reluctantly decided, after yet another flat loaf of yeast bread today, to throw out all the strips of yeast remaining in the freezer and start again with a much smaller number.

I was planning to do some grocery shopping early this afternoon, but I was waiting for the yeast bread I started yesterday to rise so that I could bake it before I went out. It took so long to even reach the top of the loaf pan that I decided to stay home today and do the shopping another day when I'm not babysitting a pan of bread dough. Plus it was raining and I didn't fancy going to MOM's in the rain since they have no undercover parking.

Besides the bread, another thing that didn't go quite right today was the load of washing I did. I washed a few sheets so as to make sure to have clean sheets if my daughter comes down with the girls, but the "clean" sheets ended up with black flakes of something scattered all over. I have no idea what it was, perhaps cardboard, but how did it get into the washing machine? And why would cardboard be in my washing machine anyway? And cardboard isn't usually black. Luckily the flakes could be shaken off fairly easily, but who wants to spend time doing that when the washing is supposed to have been cleaned in the washing machine?

So today did not exactly meet my expectations for how a day should unfold, but maybe tomorrow will be better.

annapeace

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maju

A couple of nights ago I had a dream in which things kept breaking and not working out as expected, including a mattress tearing in half. It seemed kind of relevant to the world right now.

I've had a chronic cough for years now. It seems to come and go in intensity, but it never disappears altogether. Reading back on my posts here, I found that I saw a pulmonologist early in 2022. He said my lungs were perfectly clear and he could see no reason for the cough, but that it wasn't life threatening. (Well, I'm still alive so I guess that's true.) The cough has been particularly annoying during the early months of this year, but about two weeks ago I noticed that I wasn't coughing any more! That has continued to be the case and I can't tell you how much of a relief it is not to feel almost constant irritation in my throat making me cough. I had also been finding that about half an hour to an hour after I woke up in the mornings I would go through a series of coughing spasms accompanied by irritated eyes, and that isn't happening any more either.

This rather sudden disappearance of the cough coincided with me being on antibiotics for my infected finger, as well as with the pest control person treating the house for pests, so I can't help wondering if there was some underlying infection causing the cough, or else whether some household pest was causing irritation to my throat and upper airway. (We had never had the house treated for pests for as long as I've been here, because of S being so sensitive to chemicals. We just put up with ants in the summer.)

It was a lovely sunny day yesterday and I went for a good walk in the afternoon, but today it's grey and gloomy again and might (or might not) rain, so I decided to stay home. We're having a large item pickup on Saturday (verge rubbish collection as it's called in Australia) so I've organised a few things to be put out tomorrow after the rubbish truck has been and gone. I am very gradually clearing out the house, but there are many things I can't quite make myself get rid of yet. I'm hoping that when I eventually make the move to Connecticut, my daughter will come to help. If she does, I'll tell her to throw out things without letting me see. (After I've put aside things I do actually want or need to keep.)

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