Musings of a marginally sane feline-appreciating female.

And I think there may be a sporting event as well? In honor of that, I have made a batch of cheesy ranch bacon dip, because it’s the perfect excuse for it, even if I am not watching the game, LOL. And because my brother is off watching the game with his buddy – I have a big ol’ slab of salmon for dinner.

I have been an adult in this county for 30 some odd years, and somehow until yesterday, I had never needed to go to the landfill. Had quite the sticker shock* when the junk haulers came by last weekend – it definitely needed to be done, and I don’t regret it, but a quick trip over to the dump is waaaaaaaay cheaper, even when I do the “value of my time” math. I’m now a pro at it, LOL – despite looking at the website and their map, when I got there the first time yesterday, I couldn’t figure out where the hell to go and had to grab an employee for instructions. (I opened with “I promise, I did read the website!”)

But, two trips yesterday and two trips this morning and we have a ton more clear space…to fill with more trash bags, LMAO. But honestly, I am super proud of how much we’ve accomplished over the past couple weeks. So many moments of “why do I still have this?!?” but it’s all good.

I do wish my brain didn’t need a deadline to handle things like this, but it’s been the kick in the ass I needed. Granted, there is still a lot of bins and boxes and whatnot that have just been neatly stacked against a wall or whatever, but things are clearing out. Hell, even in my bedroom, I can look around and think about how I want to rearrange the furniture, which I will grudgingly admit is nice!

But when it’s done and I can relax (9 days to appraisal!) – I am still going to make a very conscious effort to visit one room, every damn day, and pick up a box or container or whatever, and leisurely go through it and figure what should go where or out the door.

And for today, I’ve got my comfy pants on, my headphones are charged, the Myths & Legends podcast is at the ready, and I’m having a quick cheese & cracker snack to fuel up a bit without giving myself a food coma.

Enjoy the game and the concert or just a quiet Sunday.

* Weird how it’s more expensive than the last time I used them in…2006.

And on the house front, things are going really well in prep for the appraisal! All that is left upstairs is the office, dining room & parlor. My brother has done a hell of a job on the basement and just asked that I go through some stuff in the laundry area, and then we’ll work together on rearranging shit in the “workshop” area.

And the fact that I’ve gotten so much done is a minor miracle, cause work has been a total shitshow this week. I am still working on the The Thing and I am this close to calling in an old priest and a young priest. My peeps in Makati were working last night and tried to call for a special build, but no sign of it this morning – because I suspect no one has even seen the request ticket, which is understandable, cause it was Friday night at 8:30PM. (And we don’t do automatic builds over the weekend anymore cause they kept crashing due to other maintenance happening.) So, my plan for checking some things this morning has pretty much gone out the window – which is fine by me, it is the weekend, we shouldn’t be doing this, and these deadlines that land on a Friday or Monday need to go out the fucking window.

And I am totally out of it this morning – woke up a bit after 7, cause, IDK, I just did. Absentmindedly gave Lily one of her special packet snacks for breakfast instead of her proper breakfast. (She loved it!) Got to Starbucks and realized that I had not actually put in the mobile order, LOL. So, it may be for the best that I’m not trying to do work things that require brainpower today.

And after my dental cleaning yesterday, I have a scratchy spot at the back of my throat. It could just be nothing more than a scratchy spot, I was cleaning a lot yesterday and this house is dusty AF, and plague symptoms don’t usually show up in less than 24 hours – but I swear to god, if those fuckers gave me Covid, I am gonna put a boot so far up someone’s ass they’re gonna taste leather. (I have an alarm set for my followup test next week, which I will move up if this scratchiness doesn’t go away.)

But in the meantime, I’ve got cough drops and we’re gonna stop this little cycle of “irritation causes cough which causes irritation which causes cough.” And I’m gonna remember to throw on my N95 as I go through the office rather than sit there and inhale dust all morning.

Welp, time to go get the comfy pants on and load up a podcast and get shit done. I can highly recommend Rachel Maddow’s “Ultra” (history doesn’t repeat, but holy shit does it rhyme) and Rabia Chaudry’s “The Hidden Djinn” (spooky but not scary) – and I’m almost done with The Hidden Djinn, so I am gonna have to find something new soon.

You have a fantastic day!

And sadly, we’re starting with some major earthquakes in Syria and Turkey in the middle of winter, and it is really bad. They’re going to need a lot of help – world governments better step up. I don’t know of any local helping orgs on the ground, but keep an eye on social media, I’m sure they’ll make themselves known. Try to vet as best you can if you’re going to send funds.

No idea what the workweek is going to bring, given the minor nightmare that is The Thing I’m Working On, but it seems my dev was working at fuckall 10PM on Friday night – WTF? But, it’s ready to test, so I’m gonna be off to the races the minute I get logged on, but I am gonna try very hard to keep maintaining my boundaries, cause I gotta whole damn house to clean.

On that note – all the most lived in rooms upstairs are done! Nothing like facing down 15 years of the manifestation of unrecognized ADHD and some bouts with depression, LOL. Had to pop out of bed last night to change the setting on the air purifier and I didn’t trip over anything and I was very, “Ugh, yeah, this is nice.”

And I am fucking tired for it all, too – last night I went to heat up a cup of coffee and opened up the cabinet next to the microwave and came *this close* to putting my cup in the cabinet… But the good news is that there are only 12 days left of this panic hell mode. But – just looking at my bedroom, now I’ve got it unfucked enough I can actually think about things like rearranging the furniture, and where I can put more bookshelves and whatnot, so that’s pretty cool.

Things I have realized: 20/10’s are very, VERY effective. (Clean 20/Rest 10) If you’re working in a particularly dusty area (aka, everywhere here) – grab that N95! Got cheap hair dye gloves on hand? Use ’em and you’re not finding yourself washing your hands and drying them out every freaking 5 minutes. Work in small sections – it’s SO much easier mentally to go “I’m gonna tackle the bookshelf next to the bedroom door” vs “I’m gonna clean the whole bedroom.”

It may be Monday, but we got this. Go get em, tiger.

Doing this top to bottom clear out…damn, I’ve gotten a TON done since starting and I can SEE progress, which is awesome – but holy shit I do not use these muscles on a regular basis, LOL.

And OMG, there is so much freakin’ crap in this house. Not filth, thank god, just…crap. So much “why do I even have this?” And dust. So. Much. Dust. My little vacuum has gotten such a workout.

And at some point yesterday, I caught the strap on my fitbit on something and it’s just gone. The model has a “find my phone” button on the fitbit itself (handy!!) – but not a “find my fitbit” button from the app… I said fuck it and replaced it and the new one arrived this morning(!!!) and I figure if I find the old one, well, I have a backup for whenever the new one dies or I manage to lose this one.

On the news front – no, China, you do not get to be all bent out of shape because we downed your “weather balloon” – we all know it wasn’t a weather balloon, and you’re just mad you got caught this time. (Fun to hear this happened at least 3 times in the last administration and they didn’t do shit about it. That dude loved his dictators waaaaaay too much.)

Welp, time to get to the house grind for the day. Headphones and Maddow’s “Ultra” podcast is at the ready, and comfy pants are on. Honestly, given the loan to value ratio on this refinance, why we can’t just go with a damn automated valuation vs in person appraisal is beyond me. I’ll be very interested to see what number they come up with – I’ve got a number I’ve figured out based on what we need to fix up and whatnot – we’ll see if I’m close at all.

Alright, time to go clear shit out, and remind myself it will be done soon and I can go back to a normal routine, cause right now, this is stressful and tiring.

And I’m a) not working and b) wouldn’t have had to work anyway, cause the last thing I looked at on Friday was broken and won’t be fixed til Monday anyway!

In other fun, I’m in the throes of applying for a refinance on the house, which means a top to bottom clear out in preparation for the appraisal, and we’d scheduled the junk haulers for later in the month to give us a “deadline but with some breathing room” and they texted this morning saying “we know you have an appointment later this month, but we’re also in the neighborhood this morning” – and we’ve made enough progress that they have a fair amount to pickup already. Go team!

I will say, while everyone I have dealt with at the mortgage brokerage has been very nice and helpful, the whole thing is vaguely humiliating?

Me: “Hi, I would like some money to fix up my house and pay off fucking dental bills, and I have a decent job, I’ve never missed any payment in 30 years, and I’ve got a whole ass house to put up as collateral!”
The system: “Hmmmmmm….”

But if nothing else, the house needed a good clear out anyway, and we’re finally getting our asses around to it.

I don’t know about you, but it has been A Week, topped off with my team lead asking if I can work this weekend. Nope, I have obligations for that time, no can do. Besides, it’s not QC’s fault that this particular thing had to go back to dev multiple times.

Plus, if I have to work the weekend, I am not rested or refreshed when Monday rolls around. (I mean, if it was “work the weekend and take Monday/Tuesday off” – that would be another thing, but it’s not, and really, it never is.)

This whole month is full of personal obligations in my off time, and I’ve gotta protect that.

You have a great weekend, and protect your time!

I slept pretty well, but did not get enough of it.

A quick look at my email tells me the client saga from Friday is still ongoing. Gonna sit this one out until my product manager weighs in, since she managed to escape all this Friday afternoon. Not getting paid enough for this nonsense this early in the morning.

I did at least get a ton done around the house yesterday, but there is still a ton to do. But, progress!

I hope you have a very nice, very calm, very non-client-complaint-centric Monday.

Go get ’em.

Or Sunday if you’re not behind on everything, LOL. The plan had been get things done Friday afternoon between getting off work and my hair appointment, and then do a ton of shit yesterday. Well, work torpedoed Friday and Lily couldn’t really be unsupervised yesterday afternoon while her meds wore off. (I didn’t mind taking care of Lily. I very much did mind work.)

So, today I have a list a mile and a half long, but I’ve got my headphones at the ready, comfy pants on, and the vacuum cleaner is charged up. (I’d love to go back and tell younger me “you’ll have to charge the vacuum cleaner.”) I still have quite the case of the “I don’t wanna’s” but I am going to shake that off.

You have a great day, and have a Lily!

Wow, that worked SO WELL for Lily’s vet visit!

I wasn’t sure if it was as “tasteless” as claimed, but she sure didn’t notice it mixed in her licky stick treat.

Within an hour, she was just happily snoozing.

She did wake up and attempt to fight getting in the crate, but she was basically moving in slow motion so it wasn’t much of a challenge to get her in.

There was some halfhearted hollering in the car, but not near the usual volume – both decibels and quantity.

We saw one of the newer vets in the practice (I think we may have seen her last year once?) and rather than making Lily come out of the crate, she just took the top off it so Lily could stay in her spot and only had to move her for weight. And because she was doing so well, the vet asked if we wanted to give a blood draw a shot since she’s of the age where it does need to be looked at annually – and I said go for it.

They took her in the back for the draw, and I didn’t hear a single noise – they said her only reaction was a brief flattening of her ears.

And when we were leaving, a family in the waiting room declared that she was so beautiful and wanted to take a picture of her.

She’s a bit wobbly and fussing a lot over her leg cause the fur got all messed up with the blood draw, but none the worse for wear to be sure.

I couldn’t be more pleased at how well it worked for her – she’s just reached the age where she just doesn’t have the patience for vet visits and I’m glad we have a good solution that is also easy to administer.

So, yesterday was a terrible half day, LOL. Despite “getting off work at 1” – the 12:30 meeting went on for an hour and a half, I had a 20 minute break for a personal call I had to make, then worked more, had another meeting at 3:30, bolted at 4:30, was answering Teams messages while in a salon chair with my head filled with tinfoil, and finally totally logged off at 8:30.

The kicker? The current version of our software was right the whole time. The string of profanities I let out when my dev posted, “Wait, this…this is correct.” Cause there was something broken that we fixed, and I guess the client never noticed it was broken – so things look “wrong” now.

And today, I am getting Lily drunk to take her to the vet for her checkup! We’re gonna see if some gabapentin doesn’t take the edge off a bit for my sweet girl – she had a rough go of it last year when I took her in when she had an excessively barfy day. I think it was just a combo of different vet at the practice (who was lovely) and not feeling good in general that made her more cranky than usual, but no harm in a happy pill to make things easier. And maybe she won’t pee on the table and/or barf mid-exam.

And my good girl HOOVERED her licky stick treat I mixed it with. Let’s all hope in two hours she’s pleasantly buzzed and not an angry drunk like her sister was, LOL.