Musings of a marginally sane feline-appreciating female.

And play games on my phone and probably eat quite a lot of cheese. My friends funeral was yesterday and it was just very emotionally draining. Probably not helped by the fact that I don’t find the vast majority of rites & rituals surrounding death to be even the slightest bit helpful. (Yeah, pretty sure this makes me a psychopath.)

The eulogies were lovely, though. I know being a funeral home pastor is challenging cause you’re often leading services for folks you don’t know, but I would petition for funeral homes to get rid of pastors and replace them with professional grief counselors to lead services. They’d probably have more helpful things to say, and wouldn’t leave me thinking, “Dude, he was a gay, hispanic, extremely lapsed Catholic, I don’t think he had the relationship with God you think he did.”

And of course this week we had a presentation at work on “Resilience in Grief and Loss” and honestly, could we just not? Why do we always have to be resilient? It’s fucking exhausting.

So for today, fuck resilience.

Damn if the world doesn’t keep spinning on its axis, despite everything. Bunch of us got together last night to remember Allen and laughed a lot and said I love you a lot. It was far more cathartic than I expected, and it was good to know that I am not the only one going “JFC, this world is just too damn much.”

And while I’ll absolutely engage in some angsty days and will probably be mad at the universe forever – spiraling into full on despair isn’t a particularly good option. So, onwards it is, even if it is just out of spite.

So, seems the plan is grab joy, try to escape capitalism before it kills me, and IDK, maybe start a cult along the way – that could be fun.

Today’s joy came in the form of a banger of a farmers market salad, and cherry tomatoes.

Look, I’m not gonna put rocks in my pockets and walk into the sea, but I am seriously considering selling everything I own and becoming a bog witch, because JFC, this country, society, and world.

Still taking all your Covid precautions? 1,000 still dying every week, including one of my best friends.

Been thoughtfully working on reducing your carbon footprint? Undone in minutes by corporations & billionaires.

Vote in every damn election? Fascists have the courts.

Economy doing great? How ya doing with annual increases that haven’t kept up with inflation in years and the constant threat of layoffs? Or just trying to find work?

Trying to be an informed citizen? My god, the unrelenting firehose of bad news out there.

It’s all so much. It’s not your imagination. I know so many folks who are having to put all their energy into just surviving – thriving left the chat a while ago.

Grab any and every bit of joy you can. Don’t feel guilty about it. Big, small, medium joy – grab it.

Today it was the farmers market and cherry tomatoes for me. It’s small and silly, but I love it and dammit, we need joy. And I even had a laugh – wherever my late friend is, he’s mad he missed 4/20.

Hang in there. I know it all seems futile, lord knows I do, and I’ll admit I’m still going cause I don’t know what else to do, LOL.

But I’m still keeping the bog witch option on the table.

Yesterday morning I found out that my dear friend Allen passed away. Fucking Long Covid. The only consolation I have right now is that he was not alone, and he just fell asleep and didn’t wake up. I will miss him so, so much, and I am so sad and so angry right now.

It just is another one of those things that makes everything feel so damn futile anymore. I still am taking serious precautions against Covid, not just for myself, but for him and everyone like him – and he’s still gone. I have wonderful memories of him, our trip to Aruba, and all our goofy assed conversations at the bar, but dammit, we should have gotten to have more of them, and could have if people had fucking given a damn about others.

So, fuck every employer that makes people come to work sick, and every jackass that has walked out of the house knowingly having Covid when they could have stayed home. A pox on all your damn houses.

And who was up a good hour and a half before the weekend alarm went off? THIS GAL!

And though there is a ton I should do around the house, the most super critical things are done. Starbucks has been acquired. Put up two pitchers of cold brew for the week. (100% flaked on it TWO weekends running.) Taxes have been filed. (Bleh.)

Of course, then there is the matter of the remainder of the to-do list… FFS, just what I’d consider the “bare minimum” is two freaking hours. Add everything else that I should try to get done and that’s like 3 1/2 damn hours all told. So yeah, the struggle is more than a little neurofuckedness, and I’m probably overestimating some of the time it will take, but fuck me, why does it take so much to keep a place from falling the fuck apart?

And if you’re thinking, “Why are you sitting here writing when you could just be getting it all knocked out?” HAHAHA, do you even know me? 🤣🤣🤣 I made the critical error of sitting down so I could get the taxes filed and well, my ass might as well be superglued to the sofa. (HATE THAT FOR ME.)

But, I HAVE A PLAN! I have to go to the market, and I was thinking about doing it later today, but if I get up and do it now, then I am up and moving AND I’ll have the benefit of being out in the sun for a bit, and then I’ll have momentum when I get back and it’s just a matter of firing up the tunes and getting everything done.

And I know what you may be thinking, “You could just…IDK, stand up, turn on the music and get going” – trust me, I ask myself why the fuck I can’t just do that all the time. Task initiation is a bitch and a half, but I’m gonna try to overcome it today.

Completely unrelated to everything else in my day, I’m gonna need Iran, Israel, Hamas, and the US Republican party, and anyone else I missed to stop trying to start World War III – things are bad enough already, stop making it worse, and FFS, capitalism requires I go to work tomorrow and act as though everything is Just Fine. Could we just knock it all off for a few weeks? Or maybe forever?

And on that note, I’m out to get paper towels and dinner and do housework – because as fucked as everything may be, I still have to eat and clean up.

You go do the best you can today.

It’s a bit windy out there, BUT THERE IS SUN! A LOT OF IT! And there is supposed to be sun ALL DAY!! And for the next few days! And it was pleasant enough to eat outside after work yesterday to boot!

You never really realize how much the seasonal depression has been hitting until it lifts, and this winter, well, oof. And our winter was pretty damn mild, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and say the continuing pandemic and unending firehose of terrible news around the world really didn’t fucking help matters at all.

But hey, I’ve landed on the sunny side of the street, both literally and metaphorically, and I’ve taken notes for next winter, so it’s all good.

Honestly, I was pretty damn giddy running errands today – it’s been waaaaaaay too long since I could cruise around with the windows down and the music cranking. Even makes up for the ADHD tax on cat food. (Two Chewy boxes in the house that I swore I had completely unpacked and just not broken down – nope, still had some goodies in them. Discovered after I put in the next Chewy order.)

How great am I feeling right now? Saw something skitter across the carpet, thought it was a spider, but no, it was a waspy type thing. Captured and released with zero freakout. (It seemed to be near death anyway which made it easier, but hey, no freakout and no waspy thing in the house!)

And the O’s game is on and me and the LilyMonster are gonna enjoy it.

You have a fantastic day.

OK, I started watching this last night based solely on the tiny trailer on Netflix – knew nothing else about it other than seeing the title in passing in entertainment headlines. To be clear – I don’t hate it. It’s got a great cast – I’d watch Liam Cunningham read a phone book if we’re being honest, and I love seeing Benedict Wong and Rosalind Chan do anything, too. Visual effects are great. I’m only 6 episodes in and maybe this will all be resolved in the next two, but I don’t know…

If you like SciFi that is mostly earth-based/current reality, I’d give it a shot. I didn’t realize when I started watching it that it was based on a Chinese novel – so, at least you know that all these references to China/Chinese history are because the author was Chinese, not that the TV writers had some damn Asian fetish.

It’s super fucking weird but I got through 6 episodes in one sitting, so if nothing else, it’s definitely gripping and the only reason I stopped watching was that it was near 2AM in the morning.

So – let’s bring on the beefs!! There are spoilers, so I am putting space in here so you can leave the page or scroll really fast and not see it.

SPOILERS BELOW!

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SPOILERS BELOW!

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SPOILERS BELOW!

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SPOILERS BELOW!

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SPOILERS BELOW!

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• This is NOT about a human computer made of millions of soldiers in the Ghengis Khan era, as suggested by the little Netflix preview/trailer thing. To go from that to the Cultural Revolution in China in the actual opening scene was a little jarring. (I am blaming Netflix for this one.)
• Bearing in mind that it has been 30+ years since I took a physics class and damn near failed – I had to look up what the 3 Body Problem is and whether or not it is a) real and b) unsolvable. I still cannot wrap my head around the fact that physics can’t figure it out. Physics and math can figure out everything. OR SO I WAS TOLD.
• The aliens have figured out 1% light speed interstellar travel (amongst other things) and they somehow haven’t figured out the 3 Body Problem with regards to three known stars in their own system? Seems sketchy.
• The aliens will be here in 400 years, but we have to stop them now so they don’t conquer the world when they get here? Pretty fuckin’ bold to think that this place will still be fit for human habitation and anyone would be left in 400 years.
• We’re gonna get the whole world to cooperate to build a nuclear staircase so the probe can get to the alien ships? HAHAHAHAHAHA.
• What happened to Ye Wenjie’s boyfriend who gave her the copy of Silent Spring?! She saved his ass and I’d LOVE to see him pop up in the present somehow and be like, “WTF, I didn’t give you the book for all this shit to happen. How the fuck did you get ‘start an alien worship cult’ from this?”
• When Alex is walking out in the water and sees the origami boats – I couldn’t have been the only one fully expecting him to look back and see his own deceased body sitting in the beach chair, right?

Here is some stuff I loved:

• Thomas Wade (Liam Cunningham) – He is SO good at playing the rat bastard, no-nonsense good(ish?) guy, who just wants to get the fucking job done. (The “open the window” scene…)
• Da Shi (Benedict Wong) – I suppose you could say it’s copaganda, but he’s really just an investigator trying to figure this shit out. But I love his character, and though we don’t see much about his personal life/backstory, there is an interaction with his son, who is gay, and it’s just not a thing other than “he has terrible taste in men” – loved that.
• The “video game” visuals are really cool and well done.
• Ye Wenjie telling the aliens, “Fuck it, come and get it” – absolutely ill advised, but I totally get it. (And it wouldn’t be much of a story if she hadn’t done it.)

So, we’ll see if any of this is resolved in the next two episodes.

But yeah, 4.8 quake in North Central Jersey, apparently felt in NYC and beyond. 4.8 isn’t terrible, but having lived in Japan and been through more than a few quakes, they can be a bit unsettling, and thankfully this appears to be nothing like what happened in Taiwan earlier this week – that one was BAD.

Things are quiet and FUCKING GREY AS HELL here in the DMV – I swear, we’ve not gotten more than 3 hours of sun in the last week. I know, it’s spring, it’s cloudy, it’s rainy, it’s normal, but fuuuuuuuuck me I am tired of not having sun. Or, having the sun show up and I get all excited and as soon as I leave the house, it’s gone again.

Work is work, but I at least have a three day weekend, and the timing is perfect, because damn that place kicked my ass this week. Found a last minute bug like, 36 hours out from when we were supposed to release, dealt with some petulant people, started on a new feature that is gonna be a bitch and a half to test, and had a moment where I looked at a Teams post and literally said, “What the Kentucky Fried Fuck?” (It’s fine, it was just one of those moments.)

But I got to sleep in today, got paid (and watched most of that money u-turn back out the door, LOL) and outdoor market season is kicking off! My brother found a spring market tomorrow not too far from here, and I’ve found an Asian food market that is once a month starting at the end of April, and the farmers market opens in 2 weeks! And not a moment too soon, cause I really, REALLY need the weather to shape up, and fun outside things to do, especially if they involve any kind of food. My brain is fucking DONE with the indoors.

Speaking of food, like many folks (at least I hope many folks) – I have a whole damn folder of saved Instagram cooking reels and I am finally gonna make something! Of course, it is the easiest thing I’ve seen, LOL, but it looks so good. It’s a tortilla pizza/Italian quesadilla kinda thing – tortilla, melted garlic butter, mozzarella cheese, another tortilla/butter/cheese and stick it in the oven at 425 for 5-6 minutes. (400/5 minutes for the air fryer.) I mean, it’s hard to go wrong with garlic butter and cheese.

You have a fantastic day, and get some cheese, it fixes just about anything.

And I am SO glad it’s the weekend.

The LilyMonster had her followup vet visit on Tuesday and the sore/mass/IDKWTF in her mouth was still there. We were able to get a biopsy done Thursday so we can at least know what we’re dealing with. The vet said that he thinks it is a carcinoma, but we’ll know for sure when the lab reports come back and we’ll figure out what’s next. If it can be treated in a way that isn’t totally traumatizing for her, great, if not – the spoiled kitty will be even more spoiled on comfort care. I would do pretty much anything for her, but there is only so much I will put her through, ya know?

Her biopsy recovery is going well, despite the fact that her dumbass human short-measured her liquid pain meds Thursday night and yesterday morning. She was not feeling awesome yesterday, but once I realized my fuckup and fixed it with the next dose, she was MUCH happier. This morning she was all roly-poly and wanting belly rubs and I’ve had to get her off the not-allowed counter twice already today.

Thursday when she got home, no food or water for 2 hours and “keep her calm”. HAHAHAHA! She hadn’t eaten since 9PM the night before and spent the those two hours just going from place to place in the house that she’d ever gotten food hoping it would magically materialize. Adding insult to injury, when she could eat, I only let her have a spoonful every half hour to make sure she didn’t have an upset stomach. (The instructions were “1/4 of regular amount of food” – she eats on demand, I have no idea how much “regular” is, LOL.)

She understandably didn’t want to eat much yesterday with the vet sedation worn off and not enough painkillers, but has had a bit this morning and we’re bringing out the big guns food-wise this weekend. Today there will be tuna and I’m making chili shrimp tomorrow and a few will be set aside and butter poached for her majesty. And I just put down a licky stick for her and she sniffed it and walked away and I looked again probably 30 seconds later and she’d hoovered it, which is excellent.

So yeah, VERY tiring week.

And on top of all that, on Friday, the full scope of one of our CTO’s decisions has come to light and JFC dude, did you think that a) no one would find out and/or b) when we did, we’d go “yeah, great idea!” (I see why my VP quit.) Cause, it is NOT a great idea, but it does make me realize he was not brought in to innovate, but to cut costs. I think we’re definitely looking at a false economy here, but whatever, not a damn thing I can do about it.

But it’s Saturday, it’s sunny, Lily is happily snoozing, and everything is good enough for now.