It Shall be December Again

The month is almost over. Normally I dread December, but this year The Witcher starts, so I'm cool. Ol Boy looks really good in that white wig so I think I'll just let myself ride on that. He does a bath scene. Hee!

The cat was very cuddly today. The other one was cuddly with my roommate and that was fun to watch. We're going to be cutting some things out of our eating and I'm actually kind of excited about it. We've been slowly culling things we don't need for a while now and it's time to take the next step.

Anyway, I'm ending tonight on a good note. Really looking forward to that hot witcher dude.

Thanksgiving 2019

Yesterday we had Thanksgiving with friends. Today it was just us, the cats, and a horror movie. To my mind, this was perfect.

Keep in mind, last year I woke up on Thanksgiving morning with the nasty start to a several day stomach virus. My roommate caught it a couple of days after. Most of the week was spent eating things like string cheese because it was covered in a wrapper and we couldn't reinfect each other. It was seriously one of the worst viruses I've had in a long time.

So this year, as far as I am concerned, everything was blissful. I didn't have to go anywhere and stress out my body. I did not have to talk to a bunch of people I don't know and stress out my mind. I was around the people I want to be around and I got to feel safe and warm. That is a perfect holiday to me.

What She Did

So I have a FB friend who is a prepper. He isn't crazy so much as just concerned about the world and what might happen if things go sideways. Over the years, he's posted a lot about various skills he's taught himself so if something dire happens, he'll be able to survive.

Last night he posted someone's Tweet about how preppers need to either include people in their groups who know how to sew, weave, and do yarn crafts, or they need to learn to do it themselves. He admitted it wasn't even something he'd considered.

I'm not surprised by this. These skills tended to be mostly done by women and people tended to discount women's roles in keeping everyone alive. I tossed him some 'how to' links over this stuff and refrained from making snide comments. At least he admitted his error.

Still, it gets frustrating. A lot of men like to talk about how they constructed our society, all the while forgetting that women weren't, in most cases, even allowed to do the same kind of jobs they could do. Not only that, they forget about the women (and other men) who were doing all the rest of the work that kept those men with the free time to do all that writing and creating and building.

Hopefully that will change.

Porch Cats

In the last few months, we've acquired some porch cats again. As you know, I get really antsy about outdoor kitties. It's so dangerous for them. However, when they've been raised outside and don't trust humans, you can't just waltz them into the house. It's a process. Besides, we have a problem. We have Millie.

Millie is our most recent addition to the house. She was an abandoned kitty that my roommate got to trust him enough so that he could rescue her into the house. You would think this would give her a sense of sympathy for the outdoor cats we have now.

NOPE!

She hates them so much. She growls and hisses whenever she sees them. She's even shot out the door a couple of times to chase them off. She is really angry about the idea of other cats. I think this reflects poorly on her character, but.....cat.

Anyway, to tease her, we have made up a story that all the outdoor cats are her children. We even gave them variations of her name. The two gray ones are Milton and Millison. The two black ones are Milhouse and Millsberry.

I think she hates them even more now.

Ten Years

People keep posting these decade difference photos. I'm not going to do it. I think it's a great thing for people who had a glow up or have some peace with themselves, but that SO isn't me right now.

I think there are things about the past decade that have changed for the better. Or at least, changed in profound ways. I am now a cancer survivor. I got to experience being around a baby. I've met some cool people and some amazing animals. I've done this blog. I've grown closer to my father.

This decade has also been the first I've experienced without my mother and grandmother. That's been strange. Our relationships were complicated. I miss them, but I am so happy I did not have to deal with the emotional labor of what they would have been like while I was going through the cancer stuff.

The world is a weirder, darker place now. Everything seems more disjointed and unforgiving. Everything seems more demanding and critical. People around me seem to be growing more conservative and angry. It seems like folks are less interested in finding common ground.

There are things I have let go of and made peace with. It used to sting that I would never be in a relationship with someone, but now I find deep comfort in the simplicity and quiet of my solo life. Other people's chaos is the last thing I want. The more chaos someone brings, the less I want to deal with them. That probably sounds like an old lady statement, but I'm okay with that.

Do I have goals for the next ten years? I don't want to be in pain. I don't want to be around negativity. I realize both of these things require active work on my part so I want to be willing to remember daily that I have these goals. I want to read more books and discuss these books. I don't want to gossip about people I know and I certainly don't want to gossip about people I don't know. I want to focus on what I can actually change and accomplish and not dwell on bullshit out of my control. I want to take my meds and I want those meds to keep my brain chemicals in the right balance. I want to make things.

If I can achieve that, it could be a good ten years to live through.

Friday in Gray

Today was gray and dreary.  We went shopping and then spent the rest of the day just trying to stay warm. I'm in shorts now, but my oxygen is on and the cat has been occupying my shoulder for a while. This amplifies the heat around me.

The SAD is still really trying to get to me. I'm going to have to stay away from anything political and things of that nature. It just draws me down into a nasty place where my mind and emotions start looping. I don't need that right now. I need to keep this managed.

Tis the Season

Today we had to be up early and go into the city. Things went well. We even had fun. And yet, at the end of the day, I'm emotionally shaky and troubled. Thankfully, I know why. This is my first day of the year to really feel the Seasonal Affect Disorder (SAD).

My roommate noticed he was going through this a few years ago and did some research. It's actually quite common when the seasons get darker. We try our best to stay aware of it, especially when we know there is no actual cause for whatever whacky emotions happen to be going on.

I think SAD is especially frustrating for people who already take meds for depression. It makes you feel like your meds aren't working when really the SAD has more to do with light levels than the usual chemicals.

So if you find yourself sad for no reason you can determine right now, do some research on SAD. That might be the issue.

Today

Today was fine until it got frustrating. Frustration was caused by buildings being worked on, roads being worked on, humans being outside of their homes, and me driving around after dark.

Damn I sound like such an old lady. Sigh.

Thankful Stuff

Today was quiet and mellow. The cat sat on me as much as she possibly could. I think she even sacrificed Sun Time for me.  She's on my shoulder as I type. I think she's sleeping.

I complain about the constant cat attention, but I still feel very grateful for it. She's amazingly loving to me now and I cherish that. I'm glad I have this bond with her.

My Favorite Ship

A lot of writers rail against the fun and interests of fandom. I get that. I also get why you should never allow fandom to dictate what you do with your story.

However, I also think there is strength in analyzing what fans respond to and utilize the best aspects of it to your advantage. A good example of this is how She-Ra is able to establish an emotional investment in Hordak via his relationship with Entrapta.

When we first meet Hordak, he is a typical evil bossman. He's impatient, awful to everyone, seemingly mindless in his pursuit of evil for the sake of evil, and a total bastard. He's easy to dislike and dismiss. This is typical of cartoon villains and it's also, at this point, tropy and lazy writing.

Then Entrapta defects to the Horde (because they have better tech and she thinks the other princesses abandoned her) and wanders into Hordak's lab. At this point, the writers did something very cool. They used the principles of Fandom Shipping to build their relationship.

In a way, the show had to do this. Having already established a canon where people aren't treated differently based on gender, the typical and traditional aspects we see in romance would have been out of place. Instead, we see a relationship build that is far more like what one tends to see in the dynamic and energy usually reserved for homosexual characters in fandoms (which tend to be far more based on equality and mutual esteem). Hordak and Entrapta are nothing alike in personality. He's very serious and she is full of wonder and vivaciousness. He is fearful where she meets all challenges with enthusiasm as a problem to solve. What they do have in common is a love for science and discovery. They find ways to use their personalities to balance each other and with that balance, they are able to accomplish what neither could do on their own.

In the meantime, Hordak begins to trust her. He opens up to her about who he really is. As he builds his relationship with Entrapta, we, as the audience, build a relationship with him. He stops being this typical and meaningless cartoon villain and becomes a real character, one I found myself invested in.

In the fourth season, Hordak is alone again. Catra has sent Entrapta off to Beast Island (presumably to die a horrible death). Hordak doesn't know this. Catra lied to him and told him that Entrapta rejoined the Rebellion and was lying to him the whole time. Hordak is heartbroken. He mopes and won't leave his lab. It's beautiful. When he finally does emerge, it is with full plan to finally conquer everything. He begins to succeed with this, driven now by his hurt over what he thought Entrapta did. Again, it's just deeply romantic. I mean, you still don't want him to do it, but damn. He even tells Catra at one point that he's staying at the front of the war because he wants to face Entrapta in battle. And as the audience, we know that it isn't anger that is driving him. It's the knowledge that he thinks war is the only dance they have left.

Ohhhhh but the real payoff is when he finds out the truth. Hordak is so broken by the fact that Catra probably sent the girl he loves off to die that he begins to destroy his whole castle in an effort to kill her. It's an epic fight and you can just feel his grief as his whole kingdom is falling around him.

In the end, when his brother finds him and erases his memory, I was the one who was heartbroken. And that is important because if the memory wipe had been done to Season One Hordak, I wouldn't have cared at all. He was just a meaningless villain to me. But when it happened now, I knew Hordak as a person. An evil person, sure, but one with depth and beauty to him. Horde Prime took away one of my favorite characters and it made me ache. One of my main wishes for the next season is that Hordak is able to remember the man he has become and help the Rebels fight against his brother. I hope he and Entrapta find each other again. And for me to go from just rolling my eyes at this 'bad guy' to being this invested is some very good writing.

Gimme Shelter

The cat spent as much time on me today as she could. The only time she's not on me is during her morning sunning. It can be annoying, but today, for the most part, I tried to just roll with it. If I can give her comfort, this is a good thing.

She was abandoned when she was little. So was our other cat. It has taken a long time for her to build trust with me so even if it means I have to deal with cat claws and cat ick on occasion, that's fine. She needs me now. She loves me now. I'll be her person. I'm glad she has someone.

Oddities

Tinkerbell is being weirder than usual. Actually, I'm not sure there is a 'usual' with her anymore. It's just new kinds of weird every day. She actually sat on me in the living room for a while this evening, but then she uttered a strange little noise and ran off. I'm worried we're winding down to the end of her life and it makes me deeply sad. I don't even want to think about it, really.

Other than her oddities, today was fine. It was cold and we stayed inside. I tried to make plans with a friend but she's pretty busy so that's still up in the air. Hopefully we'll get it sorted.

So Many Directions

I know a lot of people my age and older loathe the idea of going wireless on everything. I get the motive behind it. It's a matter of not trusting all the tech and not trusting that people won't mess with you.

However, I also see the appeal. Right now I have a heating pad behind me, plugged in. My keyboard and mouse are plugged in. My headphones are wired and I have oxygen tubes in my nose. I'm trailing wires in every direction and it's annoying. I'm guessing it's also rather disquieting to see, but that's another matter. For me, the biggest issue is just all the possible slips and twists and tangling.

I get that some of this will never be wireless. I also accept that going unwired would cause other problems for me. I do tend to drop things a lot and that isn't going to change. At least with a wire attached to whatever fell, I have a reasonably good idea of where it is. All the tangling really gets on my last nerve though.

The Quick Turn

The weather is so crazy right now. Up until today, it's not really looked like Fall. Most trees haven't turned. I was even wondering if we might have to have the grass mowed again.

Then this morning I opened the back door and it was Autumn. All the trees had turned. Leaves were falling everywhere. And the thing is, it's not really a good idea for Autumn to happen so quickly because some streets were under a blanket of leaves by midmorning.

Oh but this is the kicker. It could snow tonight.

So....we get one day of Fall. Just the one day. Wow.

Best Laid Plans

So I had this idea that maybe we could just order our Thanksgiving dinner from one of the local places. NOPE! Not going to work. For one thing, it seems that you have to order enough food for at least six people. For another thing, it is way way WAY out of our price range. I mean, I was shocked. We weren't even looking at the high-end places either. Just the little ones. Whatever we end up doing, it's certainly NOT going to be this. Oh well, at least now I know.

The Misfits and the Losers

In the last few weeks, I've heard variations on the following statements several times.

Creating art is stated as the reason the person is still alive.  Or that the art of someone else is the reason someone is still alive.

The funny thing is, the art in question in almost every case, was art most people would consider frivolous. Pop music. Fashion.  Floorshow performances. That kind of thing. However, to the people talking about the art, they viewed it with a kind of awe, a sense of knowing this art form was the reason they could keep living.

I think we often dismiss how important art is as a source of comfort. We think about how it can entertain or make a statement about the world. We think about how it can help us keep food on the table or help us make sense of what is happening in our lives ... but on a very fundamental level, those elements boil down to helping us to be comforted.

One of the reasons we don't often think of this aspect of art is because we focus so much on art taking us OUT of our comfort zones. We encourage the exploration of the disconcerting areas. We want to push the limits. And that IS important.

However, there are a lot of people in the world who don't have to come out of a comfort zone because they've never had one. They don't have to be pushed to their limits because they live on that edge every day.  What people like that need from art is a place to FIND comfort to FIND community to FIND escape. They need solace and often art is the only place they find it.

I'm not done thinking about this. More later.

Duh

Oh wait. I don't think it's Blogger doing the emoji thing. I think it's Grammarly. They're doing it on my Facebook page too. Cool.

I was just told I am being 'informative.' I mean, that's the point, right?

Shoulders

Spent most of the day with the heating pad on my upper back/shoulders. My shoulders have never really completely recovered from last Christmas. I did some weird damage to them while I was using my walker at the theater. Later that night, they'd hurt so bad I couldn't sleep. I'd had to just sit up in my bed and every once in awhile, one of them would make a weird sudden clicking sound and give a weird, sudden jerky movement. It was bad.

The emoji is looking all sad at me. I guess maybe they're finetuning it. Anyway, the heat is helping. Between that and my massager, I managed to get some good pops out of my shoulder last night. Maybe we're finally improving? 

Smilies

So Blogger has this new little emoji thing that analyzes your posts and tells you how you were feeling that day. It skews on the positive side. I mean, right now it's giving me full on heart eyes. Sign.

I'm not sure what you have to post to get it to not be so Pollyanna. I guess I'll have to experiment with that. Maybe I'll do some posts of angst poetry.

Emojis don't understand my pain.

Fall Back

I love FALL BACK SO MUCH! I know other people do not and the dark gets to them, but man I love it. I mean, I get the sunlight is good for me. I do. But I also love the protective sense of darkness covering me. I also like blankets. I like my bed feeling cooshy and comfortable. I like the instant relief of sliding gloves on my cold hands.

If the power goes out during the winter, it still sucks, but at least I'm not hot. I just truly hate being hot so much. Mostly because there is only so much I can do about it.

Anyway, I'm happy at the moment. I get to sleep in an hour later. Yay.

Wicked Overseer

I added some mods to my Sims game. Normally I don't do that because it messes with things too much, but I just had to see what these did.

One of them creates random tragedies for your sims (disease, kidnapping, running over by a car) and the other creates situations of personal violence. You can kill other sims in a variety of ways or just fight with them in newer and more amusing ways. I probably won't keep these installed forever because it's making things deeply chaotic, but for a few days, it should be fun.