Updating

I should have posted last night, but I was too tired. My roommate was discharged from the hospital and once we got him home, we had to make some other arrangements for appointments and stuff. He is far better than he was. The hospital was uncomfortable, but at least they addressed the larger, scarier aspects of what was going on.

Special thanks to my best friend for bringing over groceries and generally being awesome. I looked and sounded like a crazy while she was here (she assured me she's used to that with me) but having her around brought me more comfort than she can know.

The Second Day

The roommate is still in the hospital. He sounded better today than he did yesterday. Hopefully he'll be out soon. Out and better. There's no point in him coming home unless he's healing. He doesn't like being there and he can't sleep well. He can't sleep well at home either and there is no medicine or nurses.

I managed to get the trash to the curb. After getting back into town, taking the trash to the curb was my goal. It happened, but it was slow. It was rough. When I was finished, I almost felt like crying. I did cry later. He needed to know where something was and I couldn't find it. I had to tell him I'd call him back and had a panic attack of hopelessness. Once I calmed down, I pulled my rolly chair into the living room, forced myself to focus, and found what he wanted.

The cats are upset. I'm not surprised. He's their world. They love him so much and he gives them a lot of attention. One of them likes me but the other one just sees me as the person who deals with the litter box. I'll keep them in food and water until he gets back. Maybe the other one will warm up to me a little. This is doubtful.

Smaller Spoons

For the first time in many years, my roommate will not be blogging today. He is ill and had to go into the hospital. I'm worried for him and sad that he had to miss time on his blog. It's been a personal goal for him to blog every day, even if it was just a sentence or two.

I was also very sad that I couldn't go with him into the hospital, to sit beside him and offer some level of comfort as he was processed in. The last time he was in the hospital, roughly 17 years ago, I stayed with him every night to make sure he was okay. I had much better mobility then. I weighed a lot less and my breathing was better. There was no way, even with my walker, that I could have managed to walk through something as huge as a hospital.

Instead, I'll stay home and try to manage. I know I'll do poorly at this. I've tried to divide my days into tasks that have to be accomplished. The cats have to be fed and watered. Their box has to be cleaned. Tomorrow I have to be out of town, so my bigger task today involves making sure I'm prepared for that. Tomorrow, when I get home, I'll have to find some way to manage to get the trash out of the house and to the curb.

Over the years, the limited number of spoons we have has grown smaller. Every year, there are more compromises with what we can accomplish. There are more things that have to be let go, more floors that go dirty. More dust that gathers. I'm starting to think that we're to the point where we need a home health care person because a lot of this is just getting beyond us.

I realize I've talked a lot about the physical side of this situation. I'm not doing this to be cold. Right now, we have no idea what all is wrong with him. I have no idea when he'll be coming home. It scares me because he is a light in my life and I don't want that light to go out. That's too big to think about right now. It's too big to be scared of. In the meantime, my mind is just focused on what can and cannot happen, on what needs to happen, and other things where I have a small amount of control.

Rough Week

There is a lot of stuff that HAS to happen this week and neither of us feels all that well. My roommate is as sick as I've seen him in 17 years and I'm tired and strung out. When we're both feeling okayish, we can eek out our little quiet life without too much problem. Right now even the simplest of tasks seems daunting. We're both very overwhelmed right now. I think we're both kind of scared.

I'll keep you posted.

Slow Saturday

My roommate is still ill and we kept things kind of low-key today. We've made some plans for next week and hopefully, they won't have to happen. It's been cold all day and the cats have mostly slept, except for this morning when one of them had to puke all over everything.

Anyway, this will be a short post. I'm tired and headed to bed.

Chronic Illness

It's been a long day and kind of rough. My roommate is under the weather and having to spend a lot of time in bed. While he was out, he posted this letter and I think it is an important read. I think one of the things people have to do when they get ill and know it won't ever go away is to educate themselves about it. I think we educate ourselves in self-defence. Sometimes, it's all people have.

Glorious FX

Legion is the first show in a long while where I find myself going back to rewatch scenes. Mind you, I did that with Game of Thrones, but that's a multiyear investment for me. This is a new show and I'm that fascinated by the work. People are correct. This is becoming a really monumental time in television. Between the meta nature of certain shows and the willingness to blend genre and ideas, we're seeing some really innovative work.

I don't think a show like Legion could have existed without the internet, without Youtube. There are aspects of it that come off as high-end fanvids, and I don't mean that in an insulting way. I think any showrunner would be smart to look at the things on the internet that have thousands of views and ask themselves what it is about that certain video that keeps bringing people back.

I never thought that Neil Gaiman's Sandman could really be brought to the screen, but after seeing Legion, I think it could. The same kind of blending, metaphoric, highly iconic magic realism that shapes Sandman can be seen in a lot of what happens in Legion. I have hope that the same could be done for Gaiman's work.

Spoon Rations

One aspect of Spoon Theory that needs to be understood by those who are not ill is that those who are ill need time to plan. I used to be pretty spontaneous. I loved being spontaneous. However as I've gotten older and less able, I've come to understand that doing things off the cuff is a privilege I no longer possess.

My roommate received a chance to do one of his appointments a week early. He was told two hours before the rescheduled appointment. He took it because of course, he knew he needed to, but he also understood that for both of us, there would be a cost. By the time we were back home, we were both exhausted and borderline sick. By bedtime, he was sick and I was feeling like someone ran me over. Doing something that isn't planned has just become really hard.

See, this is the thing, if you call me and tell me you want to see me, understand, I want to see you too. I do. I probably want that more than anything. It's just to be able to see you, I'm going to have to get cleaned up, put on decent clothes, deal with driving, deal with walking, deal with altering my mindset from that of 'hanging at the house' to 'going out and dealing with people.' And yes, I understand that all of these things are easy and simple and probably taken for granted when someone is well. When I was abler, I felt that way too. It just isn't the case now.

Whenever I am asked to do something, I have to consider those spoons. I have to weigh my want to be social (and I do want to be social) against the toll this will take on me. On the good days, I will always choose to go out. On the bad days, and there are a lot of bad days, I'll have to decline. When I decline, I will have that I had to do it, because I really do like being social with the people. Well, my people, not all of the people. You know what I mean.

Restraint and Updates

For once in my life, I actually showed a little restraint. Slicing Up Eyeballs has downloadable mixtapes. Instead of sitting here like some zombie and downloading and downloading until I couldn't possibly listen to all of them, I limited myself to three tapes, for now. That's about four and a half hours of music. It's enough to mess with for a while.

I just thought I should note that because we all know restraint isn't my finest characteristic as a person. The rare occasion when I can do it, well, that's always kind of remarkable.

Also, my eyebrow growing experiment continues. I think I'm seeing results. Yay.

Bushes

After three months where things felt like Spring, the season has finally arrived. With Spring came me out on the porch, clipping branches off the bushes. My sinuses are suffering for it now, but at least it's done. When I got back into the house, I sneezed and the whole tissue was wet. This season tries to kill me.

Speaking of trimming bushes, apparently, Wonder Woman won't have pit hair in the movie. I know certain ancient cultures shaved for hygienic reasons, like keeping away lice, but I'm not sure that would have been a problem with the Amazons, ya know? One of the comments pointed out that she was not only shaved, but her armpits were bleached as well. I didn't even know that was a thing.

I looked it up, and it's actually its own little industry. Seriously. See, there is just never enough for the level of perfection and conformity they expect out of people. First they want you shaved, then they want what is under the hair to look a certain way. So now we have people bleaching armpits and anuses and having their labia altered to look like how people think it should look. Mind you, none of this would even be known if the people would have just kept their hair in the first place.  Uniqueness is really a scary thing for a lot of folks.

Subject not Object

I came across the work of Sally Nixon today. She specializes in illustrations of the everyday lives of women. In some pieces, you see the women themselves, captured in the moment. In other pieces, you see from their perspective, as they look at the world around them. In many ways, they are quite ordinary, but oddly enough, that's what makes them polarizing.

Nixon's work shows women being themselves, being humans and doing human activities. There are many pictures of eating, many pictures of poor posture, pictures of lounging and finding pleasure in simple things. One picture is of a woman brushing her teeth as she showers. Another is of a woman sitting on the toilet as her dog watches her. Normal, everyday things. And yet some people hate them.

It's actually interesting to watch as something that was probably not meant to be political becomes so. Just the fact that women are depictured as the subjects of the work, busy with their lives, and not as objects to be desired or admired, freaks people out. In fact, many can't help but criticize the Nixon's work because all the women are dumpy. Many are unshaven, saggy, small breasted, fat. The fact that this is how many, many women are in real life seems to not matter.

Other people have rather angry reactions to all the pictures of eating. There is a lot of complaints about all the food shown, which is strange considering most people eat at least three times a day. It's a big part of life. And yet, the idea of showing it makes people mad.

Personally, I find Nixon's work to be amazing. I love her illustration style and find the way she captures her subjects to have a lovely energy to it. A lot of artists will do 'edgy' things to try and get reactions. They'll use sex or violence or controversial topics to try and push the boundaries. The problem is, those boundaries have been pushed and pushed. What was once taboo is kind of common now, to the point of being worthy of little more than eye rolls.

But in a world that still wishes to objectify women when it comes to art, someone showing them as people who do common things DOES push the boundaries. It evokes tons of emotion in people, causing some of them to push back against the very idea. And that, oh my brothers and sisters, is what art is supposed to do.

Late in the Season Saturday Blues

It was hot today. Not seriously hot, but warm enough to where I was in shorts and had on a fan. I have a feeling summer is going to be a beast this year. This is why I can never completely love Spring. I've been in a blah mood all day. Things just kind of felt sad and overwhelming. I know it's just chemical misfires, but that doesn't make it any easier.

Maybe things will look more level tomorrow.

2000

This is my 2001st post of this blog. I am quite happy about this. I'm grinning from ear to ear. I know that only like ten people read this blog on any given day, but I am still happy to have kept this up for 2000 posts. Wow. I'm actually shocked this has happened.

Then again, in a way, I'm not. I love this blog.  Maybe that's a strange thing to say about it, but it's true. I really love this blog. I love doing this activity. I love writing about my life and my thoughts and my adventures. I adore this blog and I'm glad I have it.

Oh and if anyone wants to get me gifts to reward me, I'm totally down for that.

A Small Experiment

I was curious about some surveys that were recently done by the Powers that Be who create The Sims. I looked on one of my old discussion boards to see what the surveys were asking, as this is usually an indication of what expansions may be in my future. This got frustrating really fast because no one could get a straight answer because of all the people who showed up just to bitch about the fact that Sims 4 exists. These people hate it and love Sims 3 and think it is still the best game blah blah.

I decided I would go back and look at Sims 3, just to see how I felt about it now. Was it really the better game? I had it installed on the current computer so I opened it up to play around for a bit. Now, see, what is interesting about this is that I have far more expansions on Sims 3 than they've put out for 4. The current version of the game has only put out three major expansions. I have like 6 or 7 of the many expansions 3 put out.

Now, I understand this is different for everyone, but after playing 3, I will say that I like 4 far FAR better. The graphics are better. I like the way the sims are set up. I like the way the game flows. I like the way you can alter how people look. Honestly, I like all of it better. Even the things I thought I missed about 3 just felt cumbersome to me when I tried to mess with them. I've adapted to the new game and I'm very happy with it.

Like I said, I realize that not everyone will view it this way. There are probably people who still love Sims 2 the best. For me, I'm thinking 4 is probably the version I've enjoyed the most. Given that I knew I wouldn't be playing it anymore, I went ahead and deleted 3 off my system. I can always get it from Origin again if I want to, but I doubt I will.

Down with the Sickness

My roommate and I have been ill for months now. It's been an odd winter in that it was kind of a mix of Spring and winter, but even aside from that, I'm really tired of coughing stuff up. My nose is damaged from all the tissues. My ears are stuffed up and one of them is cut and I have no idea why it's cut. This is just difficult.

We're not alone. I know a lot of people who are sick and have been sick, off and on, for months now. Flus, sinus issues, weird random viruses seem far more common this year than they have in the past.  No one seems to have it just for a week or so. Illness is dragging out over months.

I'm not sure if it's post-election stress or the weather or just more powerful germs in the air, but we're a sick bunch of folks. This needs to stop.

The Chain

Ever notice that it's during economic downswings when politicians start really pushing the 'family values' and traditional roles? They want people to marry. They want people to have babies. In fact, ever notice this is when they start pushing for larger families? Even now, they're doing all they can to stop birth control. They claim it's about stopping unmarried people from being promiscuous, but what about all the married people who use birth control to plan their families in a way that allows them to have children when they can afford children?

Don't ever, even for a second, think this is about anything other than controlling the populace. The more children you have, the more emotional hostages you have. This means you will be willing to compromise on so many things. People will take crappy jobs if it means feeding their families. People will go into dangerous jobs if it means feeding their families. People will put up with awful bosses and awful hours if it means they get insurance and the ability to keep their kids healthy. This is all about manipulating people into working harder for less.

It backfires, of course. A lot of people don't give a rat's ass about their kids. They have them and leave them. The kids go into foster care or get pushed onto relatives. There is a thing going around on FB where a group of five siblings, ages 11 to 2, are looking for a home who will take all of them. Five kids. Very, very few people have the means to take on five kids. People will tell me birth control is so evil, but I have to ask you to consider how much easier that oldest child's life would be if he was the only one needing adoption, if he wasn't tied down emotionally by love for these other kids. Any of them would be better off as the only child.

If you are poor, if you are of breeding age, RESIST! Don't let them manipulate you into bad jobs and bad conditions by chaining yourself to more children than you can afford. Poverty is not freedom. Poverty is not noble. Poverty is a place you are kept in order to do the bidding of the Hoarding Class. Resist them.

My Little Chaos

My roommate found a new crochet technique that we're both interested in. Well, I say interested, but right now, it's more of an intellectual interest as I still can't bring myself to do much in the way of creativity since Rhiannon died. It still hurts to even type that. I was thinking about her tonight as we talked. I got really sad about it because the loss of her is still very profound in the house.

Cats are all balls of contrasting chaos and nonactivity, but Nanny really liked to do her bit for the chaos side. She made lots of noise. She'd come into a room and just completely disrupt the vibe. And yes, sometimes, okay, often, that could be annoying, but still, it's what she did. She broke up the moment and sometimes it's needed to have someone to do that.

That's gone now. Things stay more calm and quiet. I like the peace, but I don't like what it cost me. I miss her and what she brought to my life. I miss the feel of her fur. Her sister's fur is more coarse. Rhiannon's fur was soft and had a sweet fluff to it. I miss her eyes and her loud purr. I just miss everything about her. This death continues to be really rough for me.

Disappointments

So for the first day of Daylight Saving Time, this wasn't so bad. I still staggered around and got my timing off once, but other than that, I did okay. It may have helped that I never exactly napped. Even though I didn't sleep well last night, I think napping during the day would have messed up my sleep cycle even more.

We tried to watch a baking show on Food Network but it sucked. I can't tell you how disappointed I've become with Food Network. It used to be one of my favorite stations. Everything was calming and fun and looked like it had decent production. Now it's mostly just cheap and annoying. If I'm going to watch a cooking show, I watch other channels. This used to be more common, but after PBS got rid of Chris Kimball and changed the format of America's Test Kitchen, I stopped watching it as well.

Anyway, like I said, I'm disappointed about the baking show. I was hoping I could find a nice cushy replacement for The Great British Bake Off now that it's been destroyed. Ahh, how I love that show! Talk about something calming and wonderful. It's just really glorious to watch British people bake and be judged for their baking.

Bah

And it's here. Nasty nasty Daylight Savings Time has begun. I can already feel it clawing into my brain. I really dislike it. The only good thing about today ended up being the lack of storms. We had a lot of bad weather predicted, but nothing happened. Yay.

Maybe it was the impending possible nasty weather, but I have been in a horrible headspace all day. I just felt jittery and anxious. I tried to stay away from reading articles, but I read some and they made it worse. Humans really, truly are horrible things.

Anyway, like it or not, DST is here. Humans are here. I'm just going to have to deal.

The Witness

This is my last night of Fall hours. Tomorrow night, the clocks will be set forward. I shall lose my hour and everything starts 60 minutes before it should. I hates it forever, as I have, every year on this blog since it began. Actually, I've hated it every year since I knew what it was, but I've been bitching about it every year since the blog began.

Speaking of which, sometime in the next two weeks, I will be reaching my 2000th post. I'm at 1993 right now. I would say I'll reach it in a week, but as dreaded Spring Forward is starting, I might miss a day or two. I'm reasonably sure I'll manage 7 posts within two weeks unless something horrible happens. And, you know, it might.

Unless I die, be sure I'll blog about the horrible thing. That's what I do here. This blog is my witness to my life. It's where I talk about my theories and my passions. It's where I sort through the pain and confusion of the darker stuff that happens. It's how I process my grieving. It's how I process my joy.

I don't put everything on here. Sometimes my most angry and frustrated moments end up on Anonymous Confessions. That's healthier. There are moments when you need to yell and scream into the Void. Best to do that in a way that drifts away from you, given that what one feels in the moment may not be what one feels in the light of day.

Aside from that, everything else goes here. This is where I hash out my fears. This is where I detail my happiness. This is where I make a few sentences on days when I'm just barely scraping by. Sometimes this blog gets all my spoons. Sometimes it gets the very last one I have in the day. Whatever the case, it's always who I am and what I am in that moment.

I encourage you to blog. It's a great relationship.

Paradise Lost

While there are various versions of the Gnostic ideas about Sophia, I have always loved the fact that she is presented as both creatrix and trickster. She fell from the Pleroma because she wanted to see more, BE more, experience more than being part of a godhead. By doing so, she created the Material world and the soul. All of us have part of her in us, as our souls stem from her. The story goes when Christ came to redeem the world, he was really here to show Sophia a pathway back to the Pleroma. She brought all of us along with her.

Now what makes this intriguing for me is that in the story of the Garden of Eden, it is Sophia who serves the role of the serpent. When she saw that her child, the Demiurge, had created a world where he kept souls in blissful ignorance, she saw the same pattern and felt the same frustration she had felt before her own fall. Her offer to Eve wasn't for power or just for 'knowledge' but for the wisdom and understanding of a true and unique experience.

When the goal is perfection, things like sins and suffering become undesirable and 'bad.' However, when the goal is to truly live a life that is unique to you, sin and suffering become integral parts of the whole. The idea of losing paradise isn't a punishment because paradise will only offer you the same small experiences every day. A life of pain, toil, and struggle offers, well, clearly conflict, but also the chance to rise above the conflict, the ability to learn, and ample moments to feel true peace, true, happiness, and true joy.  After all, what accentuates the good better than knowing the bad?

I used to think life was deeply Discordian. I felt Eris had her hand in everything and nothing but discord and strife ever really thrived. Eris is also a trickster, the kind that tosses a hornets' nest into a children's birthday party. Sophia, on the other hand, is more a trickster to help you to be really honest with yourself, to give you the courage to do the thing you WANT to do, even if your social conditioning is telling you otherwise.

This strikes a note of truth inside me. This is how I feel life should be lived. Life may not be fun or happy all of the time. It may not be pleasant, sometimes it may be far from safe, but it is YOUR life that you are getting to experience. Take the bad, learn from it, get out of it if you can, and find the beauty. Indulge in what there is to indulge. Taste the honey. Laugh too loud. Like your fingers.

With this in mind, never expect me to be the person who tells you not to do the thing you want to do. I mean, if you want to do the thing to ME I will tell you no, but I'm not going to tell you not to eat the cake or not to drink the drinks or not to flirt with someone. If you want to do it, do it. I'm not going to be your moral compass who holds you back. I think it's best you do what you honestly want to do. In the end, it's better to regret what you did than what you wanted to do but never tried.

And does that mean you may lose your own safe little haven of paradise? Probably. But think of what you might gain.

Placebo and Not

I've managed to keep up with the Castor Oil treatment for a few days now. I took another picture and while I think I'm seeing some difference when I look in the mirror, I'm not sure I saw it in the photo. That could either be a trick of the light or just placebo effect on my part. We'll see how things continue.

While I did avoid the general discussions on FB today, I still went to some of my groups. I'm in one where people discuss articles over human microbiome research and I didn't want to miss anything that might have been posted.

One article talked about how it seems that oligofructose supplements help to handle inflammation in fat cells and might help people to lose weight. The research suggests the oligofructose will sate certain microbial colonies and make people less interested in over-eating. Oh, and speaking of the placebo effect, one of the interesting things about that research was that people in the placebo group showed no changes.

Oligofructose supplements are also often used by dietetics because even though it is a carb, it doesn't mess with blood sugar levels at all. Between sating hunger, not raising blood sugar and helping to promote healthy bacteria, this could be promising for a lot of people.

Avoidance

Tomorrow is International Women's Day. It's also the day of the Day Without a Woman Protest. I will not be on Facebook tomorrow because I just really do not want to see all the shitty comments people are going to make. It's just going to hurt my heart and piss me off so I'm avoiding the whole mess.

What hurts me the most about it is how most of the shitty comments I see are from women. These women are usually in the workforce. They own businesses. They have often raised kids on their own. They own property and cars. They have lines of credit. They believe they have the right to be safe and make their own decisions. And yet, for some reason, they don't think women taking a stand to ensure we keep these rights is an important thing. They don't see women as valuable, even though they are women.

I just don't get that. If you have to choose a side, why would you choose the side that isn't yours? Why would you choose the side that wants to silence you? Why would you choose the side that turns a blind eye to your health and safety? Why would you choose the side that treats you like the Other? Do you really think that siding WITH them will get you better treatment? When has that ever worked?

Anyway, I'm staying out of it. Tomorrow on Facebook will be a day without me.

Experiment.

I have started an experiment.

Over the years, my eyebrows have gotten thin. This wasn't that big of a deal back when I was younger and more interested in them being thin and gothy. Now, however, they are kind of nonexistent on the outer sides. Something needed to be done.

I did some research and according to many sources, the best way to regrow eyebrows is by applying Castor oil to them. I had my roommate get me some and I will now see what happens after a month's worth of application. I'll be taking photos of my brows to chart progress, assuming there is any.

This is kind of a low-risk experiment. I'm good with an eyebrow pencil so if this doesn't work, I'll be okay. Still, it would be nice to have some big fierce brows now that they're in style again.

The Sickness Spiral

When my grandmother died, we moved into her house. The following spring, we began to tackle the vined up, chaotic mess the back yard had become. It shocked me because Grandma always took pristine care of her yard. Then it made me sad because I realized this was a sign of her illness. The worse you feel, the fewer priorities you can handle. Sickness does a level of damage to everything connected to it.

The reason I brought this up is because of Rhiannon. My roommate thought I'd already cleaned the litterbox because there was no litter on the floor. I hadn't, but the thing is, Rhiannon was the one who was always making the huge litter mess. The worse she became, the less she wanted to eat. She still felt hunger so she would drink and drink and drink the water until she was peeing several more times a day than she used to. Everything she would pee, she would kick out the litter.

So the box is easier now. Cleaning up the area is easier now. And I know she's in less pain because that cycle of hunger and drinking and using the litterbox was probably hectic for her. I still miss her. I wish things could have been less chaotic.

The Week to Come

The first week of March kind of sucked with all the outages of this nature and that nature. March is a rough month in my part of the country. We can get tons of storms, tornadoes, and the odd batch of snow. The forecast is looking like we have more of that on the way. Okay, not the snow, but more storms. This could possibly lead to more outages and that sucks.

Nevertheless, I'm looking forward to this week. The assignment I had for therapy was really good and I completed it with a great deal of excitement. I have a lot of stuff to say about what we worked on. In fact, one of the reasons I've been so annoyed with the outages and stuff is because I'm trying to really think through this idea about the nature of mental health and life experiences. I'm really excited about it.

Anyway, I have no idea how this week will turn out, but I believe the fact that I'm not approaching it with a sense of dread and fear is worth noting.

Annoying Days

So on Wednesday, the electricity was off for 17 hours. Thursday and into this morning, the internet was off for something about that long. We're not sure of the exact time because we weren't home when it went it. In both cases, we made backup plans on how to handle it. Also in both plans, as soon as we were ready to make those plans happen, the stuff came back on.

Annoying.

Also today, we paid bills and got the month responsibility stuff started. So there's that. I'm still not being all that creative after the death of Rhiannon. Part of me is still really raw about it. Rowan is sitting on me a lot and it almost makes me feel guilty because I wonder how much she's missing her sister. They were in the womb together. And now she's all alone. Okay, now I want to cry again.

While the internet was off, I did maintenance on the computer. One of the grand things about a newer system is that there is so little clutter. It's nice to just watch programs zip through. Everything is clean and organized and maintained. For now.

Actual Storms

As you can tell from the title, the possibility of storms turned into an actuality of them . . . and it sucked.  I woke up to storms around one. Half an hour later, the power went off. I called the company and thought they'd have things working within the house. That didn't happen until six pm the next day.

I'm certainly one of those people who did not need to be born during an earlier time period. I LIKE the one I live in and enjoy being spoiled to it. I like having electricity and running water and the internet and cars. I don't like hours on end spent wondering if all the stuff in my freezer is going to ruin.

What annoys me is that the place where the power messed up is the exact place where it always messes up. Why can't they get that fixed? It would be so nice not to have to deal with this every freaking storm season.

Anyway, things are back on now and I'm happy. For now.