kareina

The inpatient epilepsy monitoring is boring and uncomfortable. I had realized I'd be stuck in a hospital room, but underestimated the extent of being stuck in bed. I need to ask for help to get out of bed for the bathroom, and use those excursions to charge my phone or get a different book from my suitcase. After the first couple of days, they moved the pulse oximiter from my fingertip to my toe, making it easier to crochet as well as to wash my hands. I'm 5 days in, currently trying to see what fatigue will trigger.

[Insert image: A couple of blanket-covered feet sticking up in a hospital bed with padded side bumpers. Nearby clutter includes The Bride of the Rat God,, a tangle of very bright blue yarn, a juice box of soymilk, A red light glows through sock and blanket at the apex of one foot.]

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote of a time before videogames:

When I was sick and lay a-bed,
I had two pillows at my head,
And all my toys beside me lay
To keep me happy all the day.

And sometimes for an hour or so
I'd watch my leaden soldiers go,
With different uniforms and drills,
Among the bed-clothes, through the hills.

And sometimes sent my ships in fleets
All up and down among the sheets
Or brought my trees and houses out
And planted cities all about.

I was the giant, great and still
That sits upon the pillow-hill
And sees before him, dale and plain,
The pleasant land of Counterpane.

conuly

Watch on YouTube

As you may guess, this was inspired by the folksong of the same name. You can find more information about that song here.

conuly

To the man on the bus talking to his daughter about what color she was going to paint his nails when they got home: Good job! You get a gold star and a cookie, which you will probably share with your kid! Cookies all around, no sarcasm!

To the man in CVS playing on his phone while his wife corralled their two year old and talked to the pharmacist: Dude, if you're not gonna help, just stay home.

This tangentially connects to one of my favorite poems, which I was recently reminded of.

******************

( Read more... )

carrot_khan

I dreamed taht I got notice that there was someone dangerous in the neighborhood. I went down the side stairs to see someoen outside the door with a big gun. I don't know if I was getting my phone or closing the door or locking it, but I was too late. I turned and ran back upstaris hoping the guy didn't see me and woudl leave the house alone, thinking it was empty.

No luck. He follws me in and up and is in my living room when I'm with the smalls, sheltering them like I'm going to stop bulleting from an automatic at close range with my body.

The nutball with the gun says he has to kill us because we are part of the Bethlehem Lutheran church and I'm arguing with him becasue we're not, we only go there for Scouts and he insists that we need to be killed and not listen to me and my reasoning and my Dream Brain is spinning on "When did Lutheran Churches become extremist targets?"

I woke up and none of us got shot.

Current Mood: uneasy
Current Location: dining room table
Current Music: suspicious silence

madbaker

This week's Resolution Recipe: Upside-Down Blood Orange-Rosemary Tea Cake.
"This gorgeous ombré* cake features in-season blood oranges, rosemary for a subtle savory note, and cardamom** for a delicate floral touch. And don't skip the whipped cream - some things in life are simply better with it."***
( Read more... )
* "shaded", presumably referring to the oranges fading into the cake?
** or not.
*** True!

unicornduke

Hey all, if you'd like to join the crafting hangout, it is tonight from 6-8pm ET!

Video encouraged but not required!

Topic: Crafting Hangout

Time: Mondays 6:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

Link

Meeting ID: 973 2674 2763

conuly

It's three shifts this week in addition to my usual - I don't actually want to work six shifts, but I urgently need the cash, so we'll see what we see.

I took the bus there, but when I got there I saw the train tracks and decided to take the train back. And since I was hungry, I stopped into the corner store by the train for a snack, and immediately my chest felt tight and the tears welled up. I feel really absurd about this, but I didn't realize until right then that this is the train stop closest to the hospital. I can only have stopped in this particular store half a dozen times, max, but... yeah. (Actually, thinking carefully, I think I stopped in there the day Mommy was intubated, and that was the last time before today, so no wonder I freaked out and sobbed for 15, 20 minutes straight. If I had started sobbing in the store, maybe they would've comped me my drink.)

conuly

It is 1992. This kid is twelve. He doesn’t know the word “gaslighting”, he doesn’t know the phrase “trauma response”, and if he knew the latter, he wouldn’t apply it to himself.

Also, there’s no such thing as a landline. It’s just a phone, so called because it transmits sound, phone, a long way, tele. It doesn’t do anything else, not even voicemail, and you need to pay extra for caller ID.

conuly

Colorful image that says 3weeks4dreamwidth friending meme

conuly

From Dutch snoepen (“to pry, eat in secret, sneak”)

How often were the Dutch eating in secret that they decided they needed a verb for it!?

**********

( Read more... )

madbaker

This week's Resolution Recipe: Arugula Salad with Soft-Boiled Eggses.
"This is one of those salads that's much better than the sum of its ingredients."
( Read more... )

Current Mood: working

unicornduke

Monday was supposed to be my day off work this week, I spent it setting out row covers and row cover supplies and getting the tractors/sprayers setup for dad. I was supposed to take today off with the INCH OF RAIN, but my dad convinced me that we needed to put the row covers back out for tonight and tomorrow's potential cold so we did that this morning. he wanted to wait until 4 or 6pm tonight when we got another half inch of rain. I said this morning or it isn't happening today because the row covers will just rip if you try to unfold them while wet. I wanted to do it tomorrow night because I don't think it'll freeze tonight with how wet it is and they'd dry out tomorrow. I'm getting real sick of my dad's absolute ridiculous optimism, today's example was: it'll take less than an hour to spread the row covers, it's easy. it took 2 hours and it wasn't easy. I want him away from day to day grunt work and doing special project stuff with no timeline because that's what he's best at. or a deadline but not urgent.

I did get my grocery shopping done first thing and hit an estate sale where I picked up some fleece fabric and a bunch of linens and blankets new in the bags of various sizes. I always feel bad at estate sales because a lot of times it's clear the person who lived there wasn't having a good time. This person was a crafter clearly but also someone who spent a lot of money on stuff and never used it. The linens were all new in bags, there was fabric ordered online sealed in bags. The house was absolutely packed with stuff and this was the second sale they had put on already and they'll have more in the coming weeks. I also picked up a set of bowls since I own so few sets of dishes. I'm going to store everything I got in the shed for now.

hormones are giving me hell this week so I have been fighting the pit of despair by eating chocolate chips because I ran out of food to snack on except for those. I got granola bars and snyders of hanover now makes thicc pretzel rods gluten free and they're perfect and wonderful. expensive tho. I guess gluten free oreos aren't wildly expensive relatively so there's that for scaled up production

When am I supposed to make food??? how do people do this??? how did I do this??? my first job out of college I worked 60+ hours a week and it didn't feel like this??? and that was right in the middle of figuring out I had to eat gluten free??

this feeling is exacerbated by my parents. my mom makes all of my dad's food and does all of his laundry and all of the cleaning. literally. every bit of it. and sometimes I get the feeling that he expects me to work the same hours he used to despite the fact that I don't have a wife who does all the housework. I have to fucking eat and make my own fucking food all the time because I can't/won't eat a lot of premade food which is also expensive! My dad is the "how much could bananas cost" meme except old person style because he hasn't gone to a grocery store in 30 years. I suspect this is also the pit of despair talking. thank goodness for my past self making triple batches of pita breads and freezing them. and my rice cooker. all hail my rice cooker. would love to get my instant pot back into the house to use as a slow cooker someday. I managed to cook the hot italian sausage I bought for calzones and have been eating that over rice with marinara sauce, the cheese for ricotta and canned chickpeas. a little odd, very edible. I have supplies for more food, no clue when I'm going to make it .

I don't understand why this is fucking me up so bad. people move back in with their parents all the time. I cohabitate with people. writing out my feelings hasn't helped. not writing out my feelings hasn't helped. I kinda just want someone to pat me gently on the head and tell me I'm doing my best but no one I want to do that is within a three hour drive. actually that list of people is maybe like, two people total, I don't want people touching me.

anyway, the local drag bingo that was supposed to be next weekend got canceled, which I was looking forward to. I bought tickets for a concert in western MA for august to hang out with B. maybe my sister and her friends are coming to visit in July. but holy shit I need some social time in the next two months. oh wait, that would require days off l o l

the pit of despair is having a lot of feelings right now. I also ran out of fruit a couple days ago so that's not helping. and I ran out of yogurt and couldn't get to the store or had time to make more so my breakfasts weren't normal and I've been out of hazelnuts for breakfast for ages. okay, the pit of despair is very valid for all those feelings, this is too much away from normal routines. I also just ate lunch so hopefully the pit of despair will go away for a little bit.

Farming work has been going well other than the frost risk so that's been nice, just my personal life is a disaster. We did lose some strawberries to the 21F we had the other day despite the row covers, so there basically was nothing else we could do there. We figured out there was a missing bolt on the plow that would keep the cylinders going sideways and breaking in a specific way. Most of the raspberries are done being pruned. One of the workers and I cranked on the wood mulch pile and reduced it by 2/3 over the last few days and I got a lot of it spread on the blueberries. The strawberry fields have been plowed and disked once. They need fertilizer and a second disking but closer to planting next weekend. I got three sidejob plans done.

I don't know! I've told my parents both to their faces that I want them to move out and I will help them with whatever needs to happen to make it happen. But I can't force them to.

A smart person would go make food right now but the kitchen isn't clean enough to bake so I can't make more stuff for this week. I should try and make food tomorrow night but I still have leftovers and we'll have our evening farm meeting tomorrow and then crafting monday and gaming tuesday. arg. I might be able to bake tuesday? if it rains more. maybe. anyway, last PWHL hockey games before playoffs so I'm just crocheting and watching them because that's what I've got. I might see if I can get another sidejob task done today.

conuly

Don't get me wrong, I love doing them - five hours of reading, three hours of work, what's not to love? - but talking about them? Don't get me started. Every single time it's a back and forth to confirm the actual day the shift starts.

I got a shift through the staffing agency, and I say "So, to confirm, I go to work at midnight Monday?" and he goes "No, Sunday". "So, I leave my house at 11:30 today...?"

No, he meant midnight Monday to 8am Monday.

Every time I look at the schedule at the usual place I find myself momentarily baffled by the fact that the overnight shift is at the top, as the first shift of the day.

Also, literally as I typed that last sentence a spam text came in with the word "lpuuuu", which seems low effort even for a spam text. I get that their business model depends on weeding out everybody smart enough to say "Seems fake!", but seriously?

ursula

Porting a pair of book reviews over from Bluesky:

Fonda Lee's Last Contract of Isako is terraforming cyberpunk. It's also a samurai movie in book form--directly, rather than in the secondhand way you'd get by riffing on cyberpunk without knowing the sources. Last Contract of Isako is thinking through what it means to have a moral code--an unrelenting and in some ways horrifying code--in service to someone who has no ethics at all. It comes down more or less on the side that some ethics are better than none, which is refreshing when you're used to grimdark, or real-world nihilism. It's also tremendously tightly plotted, in that way where as a reader you know one thing will happen but aren't ready for the sudden unfurling of ramifications!

Last Contract pairs well with Ann Leckie's Radiant Star, in the sense that both are portraits of people who are fucking things up for deeply embedded cultural reasons. Though the book I think you should read Radiant Star against is Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Leckie loves point of view experiments, and Radiant Star is experimenting with an opinionated nineteenth-century style narrator who can dip in and out of other points of view.

Like Jonathan Strange, Radiant Star is particularly interested in the ways that social stratification of various kinds leads people to ignore the knowledge of those they think are inferior, at great peril. When the narrator of Radiant Star comments that a decision is really very understandable, it is about to become a giant clusterfuck, and this becomes funnier and funnier (and scarier and scarier) as the book goes on. You can read most of Radiant Star with general awareness of Ancillary Justice, but the end will be most satisfying if you remember the events of Ancillary Mercy (it's close in time to that book, though places & characters don't repeat).

I requested both of these books from Netgalley, and I'm very glad I did.

conuly

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

************************************

Link

redbird

I had an appointment with my neurologist this afternoon. The weather was nice enough that I got onion soup at the Panera in the clinic lobby and ate it outdoors before seeing Dr. Sloane.

The doctor did some low-tech neurology, including watching me walk quickly down the hall, having me walk tightrope-style to check my balance, and testing my grip strength by having me squeeze his fingers. The doctor said there was no change in those, but I think my balance was better today than at the last visit. He then sent me downstairs for blood tests: my vitamin D is where we want it (at the top of the "normal" range), and the abnormally low antibody count is what we expect from the Kesimpta.

I asked about reducing the gabapentin dose to 900 mg, since when I went from 1500 mg to 1200 the medication continued to be effective at stopping my legs from twitching at night. (For a while, it was 1500 mg, with the option of taking another 300 mg capsule if necessary. I went to 1200 after a few months of never needing the extra capsule.) The doctor said I could try it, but he would prescribe 1200 mg/day (I think the last refill was for 1500 mg/day.)

I then walked up the hill to Brigham and Women's Hospital to keep

adrian_turtle company in the epilepsy monitoring unit. We talked some, I made some phone calls on her behalf, and I sat quietly reading next to her bed for a bit.

All in all, I did a lot of walking today, despite taking a Lyft to the neurologist; some of that was because I got turned around a couple of times, including inside the hospital. (I stayed home yesterday because my knee was bothering me, and wasn't sure how much walking I had in me today.)

Addendum: After posting this, I got an automated message giving me what was labeled as a fasting blood glucose number--but I hadn't been fasting, the blood was drawn about an hour after lunch. I sent my PCP a MyChart message telling her about the mis-labeling, and she has written back to thank me for the information, and said that the number was in the normal range for a non-fasting test as well. I also messaged the neurologist to say that the test was mislabeled and I didn't want incorrect/misleading information on my medical record. He has just replied to say he will see what he can do.

anais_pf posting in

thefridayfive

These questions were written by

nondenomifan.

1. What decade did you attend/are you attending high school or college?

2. What clothing fashion from that time are you glad/do you wish went out of style?

3. Do you still listen to the music from your high school/college years on a regular basis?

4. What hairstyle/hair color did/do you wear during high school/college?

5. What was/is "the cool thing to do" while in high school/college?

Copy and paste to your own journal, then reply to this post with a link to your answers. If your journal is private or friends-only, you can post your full answers in the comments below.

If you'd like to suggest questions for a future Friday Five, then do so on DreamWidth or LiveJournal. Old sets that were used have been deleted, so we encourage you to suggest some more!

madbaker

I woke up at 4 AM, and could not get back to sleep. I am not dragging right now, but I expect that will kick in later.

In other news, I get to have a call tonight with a friendly senior exchequer to try fixing my malfunctioning report... but the blank form she sent me earlier to try was both unlocked (i.e. editable where it shouldn't be) and had broken formulas (see previous). So my hopes are appropriately set.

Miss Bea snubbed her current food this morning. The freeze-dried rabbit we have been giving her is in short supply, so we have been using less-healthy kibble (dubbed "cheeseburgers"). She has yummed it up every time before this. She was willing to chase and eat a different set of treats, so it doesn't seem to be a health issue. Cats, man.

Current Mood: blah

unicornduke

Sunday was a bit rainy but I spent that time working on the pumpkin order and some sidejob work. I snuck out for a few hours for spinning guild which was lovely and I got to show off my sweater (post coming when I have a chance to type it up) but that was it. I was supposed to take monday off work but we had 21F predicted monday night and the early strawberries had buds that are vulnerable in the 21-23F range. So I spent most of monday hauling frost covers out of the barn and getting them set up in the field. I couldn't spread them out because it was too windy but I could drag them into the field so they were ready. Plus some other things that needed doing. Then monday night after crafting when the wind died down, dad and I went out and spread them over the field. They look fine so far which is good. But we might not see the damage until they bloom. This weather is so bad, I suspect all the stone fruit is gone this year.

I've run out of dinner food, I have the supplies but not the time. I come in from work around 6:30pm and my mom has already taken over the kitchen and there's no room to make my food. This is part of the problem we're having cohabiting. None of us eat the same food, my mom cooks for herself and my dad basically every night. So I can't use the kitchen at my optimal eating time pretty much every night. I think I need to do some kind of offset schedule some days. Wish they'd just freaking move out. But my dad did work on the floor the other day so there's that. Not a lot because the wood wasn't dry or something but he did do some of it. I have a desperate need for another adult presence in my life that is not my parents. this is why people get married or some nonsense I guess.

I was planning to do some baking this morning so I could have some snacks for the week and pastry cream but my dad was going to show me how to use the sprayer but he's not ready to do that yet. I can't take a full day because I have an employee coming this afternoon and I was going to work alongside him on mulching. I have employees working every afternoon this week. So I'm not baking this morning. New plan is to make rice in the rice cooker and dump beans on it plus something I can scrounge out of the fridge.

I might be able to take part of saturday off since it looks like it's going to rain. I'm definitely struggling with a lack of consistent routine, I feel like I had one last year but I can't seem to find it this year. Maybe I didn't. Maybe April sucked ass last year too. The neighbor who helps us with some tractor work snapped two cylinders on the plow yesterday and I know he feels bad but also holy crap. There are some contributing factors like the plowing tire being flat but in the end, it was probably that he was backing up with too much pressure on the back hydraulics. Two! That was all of the cylinders we had on hand, so I need to figure out where to get more or if we can repair these. I think the tractor supply store has the correct size and I can get at least one to get the plow up and moving again. We have three pieces of equipment that use those cylinders: the plow, the disks and the grain drill. Two vital things, very important. Our strawberries arrive next week, planting the first weekend in may.

My bluetooth ear protection also died the other day. It was fritzing slightly, if I poked one of the wires, it would only put sound through one headphone, but then it just died. The battery still charges but it won't turn on. I took it apart and nothing appears wrong or broken but I haven't had a ton of time to figure it out either. I ordered two new pairs which should arrive today so that's good. I tried doing earbuds under hearing protection but earbuds now hurt my ears too badly to use them anymore.

anyway, my dad is finally ready, so I gotta go

conuly

and her excuse is "Your father and I both agreed that it was best to raise you away from my wealthy-but-toxic family, whom I was returning to". And having met the protagonist's half-siblings, I can't say that this was wrong - but what, she just loved him so much more than her younger two that she had with her new, richer, more socially acceptable husband? No matter how you look at it, she's not exactly winning the mother of the year award.

**********************************

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Lighthouse over Counterpane

(no subject)

A note to two dads of little girls

Recall

Oranges: Slim Shaded

crafting night

Worked a different place today

Dear fic writer:

(no subject)

One of my absolute favorite etymologies is "snoop"

Tardy This Week

I can't manage a day off work

God, I hate talking about overnight shifts

last contract, radiant star

Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost

(no subject)

The Friday Five for 24 April 2026

Three Things Make a Post

tired

Protagonist has just met up with his estranged mother, who left him as a baby

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April 2026

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