Greetings, my (presumed) humans! It is I, your absentee narrator. Time for an update and I’m tired of the grim but there’s just so much of it being handed out all around, you know? You do know. But there’s good to blather on about too, fear not. So I’ll skim through some stuff and see where we snag up; not everything’s doom and not all of it’s gloom!
This has been a descent into the pits like few other, crisis upon crisis, basically since November and, in a more graduated version of the same thing, this past year. We keep being slammed with new circumstances and developments that require new solutions and equipment, new expenses, new contacts and support infrastructures, and new side adventures like the way my ex-workplace submitted my severance pay and the tax people’s reaction…
Let’s just… Let’s just throw ourselves through all that stuff and fetch up at a new beginning, shall we?
So the past year in super-brief. A year ago my kid started using a wheelchair (after being sick for two years after an infection we assume was covid) and turned 18 and has understandable, basically inevitable psychiatric troubles from all this, and we had to get the stairs lift (big bureaucracy event; they said we should move to a wheelchair apartment, we said that has a
waiting list of two years before we could even start looking and were Danny and I supposed to carry an adult up and down the stairs meanwhile... aaaaand we have a stairs lift now) and the electric wheelchair and there was a mega-crisis we’re all still reeling from that landed my kid without use of their arms and barely able to turn their head; two weeks in the hospital and a couple weeks further, and that’s better now, anyway, thank goodness… Our beloved elderly cat Vincent passed
away… The floor in the side-kitchen (a Dutch affair that’s basically a utility room but you also keep food in there) proved to be rotting so the landlord company replaced it but due to a saga-worthy situation with their planning department all the furniture from in there sat out in the rain for a week and we lost a lot of it, and we can’t afford a floor covering like lino yet so it’s just plywood now (also Ruby stayed in there for ten days after coming home from the hospital, until strong enough to sit up in the stairs lift)… Ruby couldn’t eat for a while (which caused the beginning stages of malnutrition despite ample supplements and contributed to the hospital events) but is eating well enough again now… Ruby also started writing what will be a VERY good mystery novel, too, though, and the relationship with their long-distance partner is blossoming, heart-warming, coming up on a year now, deeply genuine and solid, and really just fantastic. We are crowdfunding to get her over here for a visit ASAP. Nothing could be more bolstering for Ruby in their distress.
I guess that’s, like, many of the main points? Cool, cool. So let’s go on about the new cat for a bit. Curse has settled in with aplomb and is an absolute delight. He’s a conversationalist, and very expressive with his ears. He’s got a gigantic personality and is wicked smart. He enjoys spending most of his daylight time in the garden and just outside it in the neighbor’s. He’s not allowed outside at night yet but when we have several rain-free days next week we’re going to start with that and start phasing out the litter box. He has several weird habits, as befits a goofy super-smart cat. He likes to follow a person around (whoever’s doing something) barely a centimeter in front of
them and throw himself down randomly onto his side (which he does constantly anyway, often hard enough to make himself squeak), generally onto their feet. Unfortunately, this one also includes the electric wheelchair, which is pretty dangerous for him, so we’re working on training him out of that.
He asks for things by rubbing his front paws on nearby walls or doors but is not so good at using his ears to show us what he’s asking FOR, so I think he thinks we’re a bit thick. He “talks” a lot; meows to ask for stuff or complain, trills and barks for questions and answers, all kinds of sounds. I’ll try to get video soon. He licks weird stuff. He likes to lick the floor and walls in the bathroom, he licks furniture and random objects, cupboard doors, trees… Yeah. He likes being dried off, too. When it rains or has been raining he still spends quite a lot of time outside, and then runs in wailing wildly to be towelled off vigorously, like you would a dog. He absolutely LOVES it. And he’s a
burrower. Be it a pile of clothes, a blanket, long grass or other plants, pillows on the sofa, even a sweatshirt someone is wearing, off he goes worming his way in there, usually to camp out for a while. We absolutely adore him.
I suppose I should talk about myself, too… It is my blog, after all. So, ummm, not to be a downer but I’m not OK right now. But that’s OK, there’s no way I could be expected to be OK right now. I’ll get better. I’m exhausted, and depressed as hell. I’m physically overtaxed from all the hospital stuff and bed for my kid down here stuff and moving furniture and trying to catch up on housework and the broken nights.
My novel was just turned down by the last publisher left who’s willing to look at 163,000-word science fiction books so I have to try to find a better way to self-publish if I want people to read it – which is kind of why I wrote it. I’m having
a massive problem right now whipping up any sense of non-futility about my creative side; it feels like everything has to be “just hobbies” if nobody reads what I write or looks at what I draw or photograph, so there’s maybe not a lot of point in doing these things with an audience in mind at all. But I don’t like that. My knee hurts, my back hurts, my neck is in spasms which throws off my whole upper right quadrant and makes my jaw clench. But I got a sickle and it sure does a nice job on the wisteria; very satisfying too to use!
My blood pressure’s still fine on 10 mg lisinopril and the tachycardia hasn’t come back! My eyesight is becoming seriously fucked though: blurry, sometimes slightly doubled. I thought it might have been the alcohol but six months without and it’s getting worse. I need new glasses. I hoped to go to an ophthalmologist first but the doctor says they don’t refer, usually, until after a check at an optometrist… which will cost me 30 bucks unless I commit to glasses, which I cannot afford but obviously need (I believe strongly that the eye check will not reveal actual medical
problems, this feels like eye-strain). If they did refer me it’d be 2 – 3 months before I got seen, too. There's this monthly plan thing I’d have to use to commit to the glasses immediately, which would suck money away from the Patreon fund’s ability to help keep ends meeting and get things to help support Ruby and so on. But that’s at least possible, unlike just shelling out for the glasses cash-up on the spot. I need trifocals, and I need metal ones (I have a long history of weird accidents with plastic glasses frames).
There was a falling-out with a close relative that I think means that’s it, we’re quits, which is a damned shame because I do love them and I’d been hoping to reach some kind of reconciliation. I built a
brick patio (after some nice Mormon youths who had an ad on Facebook dug it out and flattened the area for me), so now Ruby can access the back garden and the narrow bit by the kitchen can be useful for something (*cough*pizza oven*cough*). But enough about me.
I’ll close this with some pictures. A bunch of them, in fact. I did an installation back in June, “Donut Shop”. Like last year’s “Market at Broken Jug” and the previous “Opening Day at Ice Giant Park”, I set up a place, put people in it having a variety of interactions, took a whole bunch of pictures of the scene from all kinds of angles, and took it all down again. Without further ado, and until sooner this time (and more coherent), I present: Donut Shop.
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