Status Updates

same. my parents who are both retired are barely making ends meet at the moment. we found out in February my mom has non Hodgkin lymphoma (stage 4) and they want her to pay thousands of dollars they don’t have for my moms chemo and the other injuries she accumulated all last year. plus me not getting full use of my physical therapy to go back to work. I was only allowed 20 sessions and then i have to pay out of pocket and due to NO WORK, i cant afford it. this just sucks! hope everything turns around for you and they finally get the stick out of their asses and FIX THIS SHIT

I’m sorry you’re all going through or have gone through that bullshit. That really does majorly suck. I’m so glad Australia has free health care, otherwise I wouldn’t be here now.

Unfortunately, the current regime considers any “right to life” to cease the moment the kid’s evicted from the womb, as society’s only embrace of the metric system is “9mm on the playground”.

I feel you, Hon. My hubby has been out going on two months over his spinal surgery, and now they’re pushing it into August. It’s infuriating. Try to rest that wrist, okay?

TY Ghost! I am in the process of going back to work now because walmart/sedwick wants to dick around with my money (take 60%) and nitpik when my doctor says restrictions. so im hoping to go back on saturday cuz I was a big contributor to helping my parents out. now they have to pay the BIG cable bill ($330) cuz my last two checks were $65 dollars! 

Five months of procrastination, here we come!

Hands in a sticky mess… definitely can turn hot & raunchy fast

Its defintely a reference to when I asked Jaydee how to write pron and they said I think something along the lines of make sure you keep track of the hands? or something. close.

Might’ve been @JayDee  But yeah, I remember the advice, and I do try to remember that every time I’ve got a similar scene.  Smells might be important, or weather, or the general atmosphere to the “situation”.

Aww thanks. I celebrated by getting a flu jab! Just try and hold me back!

And you deserve extra chocolate for that!  

Happy birthday, Melrick!  And while I’m at it, Feliz aniversário, Melrick!

What fresh hell is this? (with thanks to the marvelously acerbic Dorothy Parker, whose wit will never be matched by AI...)

Figured it’d be a great feature for April first.  After you’ve finished the first two chapters of a story, hit the “auto-complete” along with X number of chapters, and have AI do the rest!  I mean, with as GREAT of a product as AI is marketed to be, should let you clear those projects off your to-do list FAST.  (FYI, all sarcasm/parody here, enjoy a laugh or two.)

Or, perhaps you’re joining the Chinese Pepsi Generation?

Mother nature is bipolar in March...😁

Lol

We’ve been having 2 seasons down here in Australia: hot and slightly less hot. I miss having seasons. They were fun!

::Laughs in Missourian:: We don’t have seasons down here. We have “what fresh hell does Mother Nature have in store for us today? Over the last two weeks, we’ve alternated between pouring rain, no rain/drought, sub-zero temperatures, record-breaking heatwaves, sleet, hail, severe thunderstorms, flash flooding, wildfires and prescribed burns in the same week, spitty drizzle, increased smog due to wildfires due west, a several day tree pollen explosion, and a snow-nado. Apparently those are a thing. Yep. A snow squall is a sudden blizzard with zero visibility and tornado-speed winds…and this one happened on a day that had been around 80°…with no warning. 

Not joking. Not exaggerating. This all happened over the course of a couple of weeks, this month. Somebody, please, get Mama Nature some chocolate, Midol, and Thorazine or something because this is straight up PMS psychosis behavior. I’m just waiting to see frogs raining from the sky. (Considering we live near a crick full of the little croakers, frog-rain is totally possible.)

You’re not doing anything wrong; that’s actually an option suggested by the program. It just doesn’t work for me. If it works for you, more power to you. 🙂 If what I wrote came across judgy, I’m sorry about that; it wasn’t intentional.

My focus in college was creative writing and literature, but it was long enough ago that some of what we were taught is now obscure if not obsolete. Think following the origin language’s rules for words adopted into English, shorthand as a subject, tab-starting instead of adding an extra line between paragraphs and two spaces after a sentence, etc. It’s left me with some tough habits to break—or cling to like life rafts—and some newer practices make my brain short circuit. (“Anti-Capital-ism,” apparently, is a thing, and it has nothing to do with money or capitalism. It makes my brain hurt.)

Frankly, my college and university didn’t even have programming or computer science degrees until a few years after I left “because these computer things are just a fad” and “nobody is going to spend money on a degree that won’t make them money.” I’m impressed anytime someone can make computers work because my school district, in their stubbornness, raised a whole generation of technologically illiterate students. The other day, I took my (wired, optical) mouse apart to clean out the cat hair and almost couldn’t put the damned thing back together. It had four removable parts. 🫠

what the hell am I supposed to do? Just let your tantrum drag down my writing score because you can’t find any actual errors that need to be fixed?!

I had a boss like that once.  It prompted me to find a new job.

I’m definitely in that “two spaces after a sentence” crowd, and somebody trying to use correct grammar/syntax – which, apparently, is also an indicator of being AI written.  (Think my biggest beef with AI is what the hype is doing to computer part prices!)  My background...yeah, my SAT written was pretty abysmal, it was the math portion that did the heavy lifting.  (At that time, only two components, not the current three.)  And in school, pretty much believed what my mother had latched onto, that “I hated writing”; took Harry Potter fanfiction for me to realize it was directed writing that I hated, thus creative what I want to write on just for fun – got a 2.6M fanfic that’s proof there.

Geriatric cats can be mighty cranky 🤣

And once they stop being cranky… you know something’s wrong.  Been there with the last one.

There are things I monitor with Nina as it is.  I already lost her sister to kidney failure.  Honestly, with thyroid issues and whatnot, the kidney problems were just a matter of time.  Fortunately, Nina does not have the same issues as her sister did.

She is a smart old girl.  She has figured out that the happy hoodie will not cover her ears as long as she doesn’t scratch.  So it and the steroids the vet has her on have her on the road to recovery.  The gash is scabbing over.

Lost power a few times yesterday🙃

My favourite ides of march joke; Caesar takes the warning seriously and comes to the senate armed. But as he’s sitting down he looks around himself and thinks “Oh, what was I getting so worried for- the whole squad’s here, and they’re all strapped too!”

But that was the beauty of those ‘60s pseudo-psychedelic songs.  The artist sang like they had a mouth full of peanut butter, and you picked your own damned lyrics!

In-a-gadda-da-vida, honey
Don't you know that I'm loving you?
In-a-gadda-da-vida, baby
Don't you know that I'll always be true?

Seaman, that’s exactly the song that came to mind when Wilde_Guess mentioned singing like they had a mouth full of peanut butter! 

Hon, I’m so sorry. I won’t ask if you’re okay because there is such a thing as a stupid question; the odds of you being okay are low, and being asked might just hurt worse. If there’s anything any of us can do or say, just say the word. We’ve got you.

Pets are family, and losing them is like losing a piece of yourself, whether fast or slow. It’s okay to be upset. Hell, I started the year swearing a blue streak on here after losing my little Woozle without warning, and there are still days where I feel like crying, punching something, or both. Nobody is going to judge you for feeling what you feel…but if they did, they’d have to go through me, first. 

Take care of yourself, okay?

Bittersweet part of having pets, the goodbye as they cross that rainbow bridge.  I’ve had both, the fast “WTF?” moment, and the slower (4-year warning), and it’s still hard.  (Yes, slow did give me time to process & brace for the inevitable, so maybe that’s “better”, but tough call.)

This is never easy to deal with.  Your pets are your family.

Was the dictionary bound in skin and held in one of the deepest, darkest corners of an Ikea? Just past the meatballs? 

Swedish meatballs, made from 100% genuine Sweds.

Well yes, long pig.  But I didn’t say where from, did I?

Poor kitty, trying to get warm. 

The snow is wet and heavy here too, which they refer to as “heart attack snow” because it’s brutal to clear. But we’re expecting warmer temps in the nest few days, so let’s hope we see a quick melt this time around.

Only snow I cleared… on the vehicle so it can move (if needed).  Judging by the weather forecast, figure it’ll melt fast enough, though still be a nightmare to my wrecked driveway.

Yikes!

A very happy birthday!!!    🎂

Happy birthday!

Break’s over, now get back to work!

😁

Belated happy Birthday!

Thank you, everyone! 

She’s definitely feeling the effects of the pain meds, because she’s groggy and wobbling like an Arsenal fan post-game, but she stills wants those treats, dammit, so we’re still full corgi mode. But between the pain meds and the seizure meds, she’s no longer just tasting the colors. She’s made friends with them and has invited them to tea.  

Glad she’s okay!

glad shes ok