Musings of a marginally sane feline-appreciating female.

My sweet LilyMonster has hit lucky 13! And she kicked off the day by letting me know my alarm hadn’t gone off at 6:30AM, LOL. We’ve had some excellent belly rubs, bunny kicks, and “hide behind a chair and run out and attack the feet!!!” time already this morning. She’s now sacked out on the floor purring like a little motorboat.

Since I was up earlier than planned, I was feeling all efficient and shit and got the coffee and hit up Petco as long as I was already out and about – only to find out they don’t open until 9AM and I was there bright and shiny at 8:10…

I’m going to just let Lily think this 4 day weekend is all for her, even though it’s a bit jam packed with not-Lily stuff. Very exciting times of hair appointment, oil change for the car, an attempt to find some shorts, and a fuckton of laundry and cleaning are in the works. Oh, and plant re-potting I was going to do…well, a while ago.

Honestly, I am so glad I took today off, the four days off couldn’t have come soon enough and it gives me some much needed extra time to get my shit together before we hit the beach. Or at least have clean underwear.

And in an attempt to have my shit together, I am going to pry myself off the sofa, get over to Petco and go find some shorts TODAY since I have plenty of time between now and my hair appointment.

You have a great Friday!

Negative Covid test yesterday, and I had my acupuncture appointment, which was absofuckinglutely awesome.

Company announced they’ll pay travel expenses for anyone needing to go out of state for abortion services. No idea how they do this and have it not be a privacy nightmare, but it’s something. Alternatively – they could give everyone a raise so they can afford to get out of state and not have to tell fucking HR about it. Or give everyone an annual cash grant to handle medical travel or whatever and then no one has to worry about the legal department handing names over to the cops. (Do I trust our legal department? No, no I do not.)

I also would have liked a sincere acknowledgement that over half the employees have lost or are about to lose their civil rights. And that we’re not going to have our conference in Tennessee. But we didn’t get either of those.

And we really need to talk about how some employees of child bearing age are going to have to relocate just to continue with non-reproductive medical care, because there are places where prescriptions are are no longer being written because some meds carry a risk of miscarriage. Might be time to let up on the whole “you need to get permission to relocate” policy.

So overall, it was “well, this is something but still so very disappointing” – which seems par for the course.

At least I have this goober.

I forgot I have all of Friday off. Like, forgot so hard that if I hadn’t been looking at my PTO spreadsheet today and saw I’d marked down Friday, my ass would have absolutely shown up at work Friday morning.

So, down to 4 workdays to vacation!

Another firehose of news coming. Surprise witness in the J6 hearings – supposedly moved up due to security threats – so journalists were plastering a name all over the internet last night – great move, idiots.

Then the awful news out of Texas of the migrants dying in a truck.

And seems some of us can pray wherever the fuck we want and drag kids into it. The conservative justices claim of it being a private moment of prayer are bullshit and we all know it from the photos – and if it *had* just been the coach having himself a private moment of prayer – he wouldn’t have gotten in trouble in the first place.

Oh – and there is still a pandemic, and we’ve just stopped doing anything about it, so it’s not safe for anyone out there, YAY. We’re off our Omicron2 peak, but who knows if we’ll continue to trend downward or we’re just gearing up for another spike.

Anyone else having trouble sleeping or is it just me? 5 1/2 workdays days until I’m on PTO for a week and a half – I definitely need the change of scenery and some pato tacos on the boardwalk. Lord knows focusing at work has been a challenge, to put it mildly.

Well, time to get myself a day closer to the weekend and then some real time off.

You hang in there, OK?

It’s gonna be another firehose of a day living in a country where nothing is settled law.

The Supreme Court was the one thing we had left protecting us from the Republicans hateful policies and that’s gone. And I don’t know how we get that back – if we ever do.

Democrats hold the House, Senate, and White House – and somehow we’re still at the mercy of a political party that gleefully wants to kill us all if we’re not straight, white, Christian, and preferably male.

I can’t make it make sense.

And I’m expected to just go work and get the cover sheets on the TPS reports like everything is just fucking fine. Capitalism is complete shit.

And because I don’t know what to do, and apparently punching several Supreme Court Justices is not acceptable, I’ve written to my state representatives and federal Senators, and donated to a local abortion fund and a local bail fund.

The National Network of Abortion Funds gives you the opportunity to donate to all of their member funds at once, or choose one in particular. The National Bail Fund Network has a directory of local bail funds across the country you can choose from. These small local groups need us – we don’t need to reinvent the wheel here – there are groups on the ground who have built the infrastructure and are doing the work.

I hate that access to healthcare is dependent on location, gender, and money. The US is basically 50 different damn countries.

I hate that Thomas thinks advances in civil rights were “erroneous” – I don’t even know what kind of monster you are to think making things better is an error. Get fucking therapy, dude.

I hate that the Democrats at the national level have known this was coming, and know what else is coming – and their reaction has been “give us more money and vote harder,” read a fucking poem, and fucking sing. What. The. Fuck.

I’m not as pissed at D’s trying to get *into* office, but if you’re already there – you got my vote already, now do your damn fucking jobs. And I’m not *as* mad at the House, as they have at least gotten some bills through, but Senate Democrats can get fucked.

They had a 2 month head start to make plans, and we get fucking choir practice.

I don’t think Biden is a bad person, but he’s not up to the task here. He’s…IDK, too nice? He is very stuck with his thinking that we can work with the R’s – and we just can’t. Hell, we can’t even get all D’s on board with anything (looking at you Manchin & Sinema, and everyone hiding behind them.) We need someone who will drop the gloves and fight for us.

I hate that my company has invested a lot of time & energy into building up our DEI group – and has seemingly decided that this absolves the c-suiters from the responsibility of even *acknowledging* what is happening right now. Why should I trust that any of the DEI initiatives are sincere and genuine with this silence? On Teams, we have a great Pride channel – but I won’t actively participate, because I don’t trust any of these fuckers – and that really sucks.

I’d love to go back to weirdly conservative 18 year old me and tell her that in 32 years, I’d be turning into an accidental anarchist. (18 year old me would also be very surprised that anarchy isn’t chaos and everything on fire – just helping each other and a lot of meetings.) Government has utterly failed us all, and we have to help each other, until such time our legislators get their shit together – if they ever do.

If you’re still processing all this and what may be to come – it’s OK. It is a lot, and it’s awful. Check the self-care list. Figure out what you can do – you don’t have to be out in the streets, there is a lot you can do from a support standpoint. Keep annoying the fuck out of your elected representatives.

And take care of yourself and those around you.

We knew it was coming, but Roe is dead. And Clarence Thomas said they’re coming after every other bit of progress we’ve made in the last 50 years.

And the “vote harder” brigade is out in force, and the fundraising texts started immediately.

I’m not going to *not* vote and I’m certainly not going to start voting Republican – but FFS, it would be nice if the people in office now FUCKING DID SOMETHING NOW.

And just like the NY gun law that was tossed out – what do we do even in blue states when R’s start challenging abortion access (and every other bit of civil rights) in court and just keep going until they hit SCOTUS?

I don’t even know how you fight that. I really don’t.

I hate this country.

And you should have read that in a monster truck rally announcer voice, LOL.

Been trying a few days of a 630 alarm and it’s OK, but only really works if I don’t hit the snooze button, otherwise I feel vaguely rushed, and no one likes that.

A few months ago, my dumbass impulsively got tickets to an Outdoor Thing this weekend that seemed legitimately fun, but now, it just feels like a huge chore hanging over my head now. Thanks, perpetual exhaustion!

Looks like we’ve got a gun safety bill that’s going to pass today – but what happens when someone sues, and it gets to SCOTUS and gets overturned? Let’s face it, SCOTUS is now an arm of the Republican party, and honestly, I don’t know how we get anything done – Democrats do something they don’t like, they sue, SCOTUS sides with them.

How do you even fight that? It’s either expand the court to match the number of federal districts – which isn’t happening, or sit around and wait for at least 2 justices to keel over at the right time – that’s not really a workable solution. So, do we all just become criminals?

Welp, time to go do the thing to make the money to pay the bail money I guess I’ll be needing in my golden years.

Win over the Diamondbacks in 11 innings – I had to go to bed at the top of the 9th – these 9PM and later starts are PAINFUL, especially when the next day is an FML Wednesday.

I pushed my alarm back to 6:30, which helped a bit, but today is gonna be a sloooooooog.

But at least I go into the meeting in the green capacity-wise, cause one of my things has been reassigned so I can be put on a special task for the app from hell that has been plaguing us for the past 3 months so we don’t go through the same thing with our next release.

Alright, time to go do the thing to get closer to the weekend.

Love me a three day weekend and a four day workweek, but I will admit I’m never sure what day it is. All the more reason to make the four day workweek permanent so we all get used to it!

I did manage to break out of housework paralysis yesterday and get some more things done around the house, so go me. Will we have a repeat today? Hope so! Though, I will say I am struggling to keep my eyes open already this morning, so we shall see.

I don’t feel like I slept poorly last night, but I do feel like I could easily sleep another 2 hours. Fitbit says I got 5 hours of sleep, which couldn’t possibly be the problem, right? Couldn’t be as easy as either going to bed earlier or going back to my old 7AM wakeup time, no.

I have been considering going back to my 7AM wakeup, but I also kinda like starting work early and finishing early – maybe I’ll split the difference and we’ll try 6:30 for a while?

Welp, speaking of starting early to finish early, it’s time to go do the thing to get closer to the weekend. You have a great day.