giddygeek

My dad (C5/6 quadriplegic wheelchair user) has been in and out of the hospital all spring and summer.

Initially, there was some kind of internal bleeding, I think, and he kept having very low blood pressure and cardiac events and then having to have his many medications adjusted. Then he had to have a colectomy, and then he got a persistently recurring UTI that is resistant to antibiotics. A lot of these times he's been carted off to the hospital it's been for low blood pressure or a slight fever, and it seems to my sister and me like they're just stabilizing him, tweaking his medication, and releasing him, sometimes the same day, only for him to be back in an ambulance in less than a week.

This is having a weird effect where it's cumulatively and abstractly more scary every time he goes, while at the same time it is becoming so familiar that it's starting to feel routine. I know this is why people got convinced they were safe from COVID after a few months of wearing a mask and why people are frequently injured in the streets near their homes: the cognitive illusion that an action is proved safe if you've done it a bunch of times and nothing bad happened. Or in the case of these hospital visits, bad things happened, but he didn't get seriously (ICU) ill.

It's rough on my sister, who lives with her husband and my parents in the US, and I can't really support her long distance very effectively. And even if it were safe to travel there now, there's no way to know how long it would keep happening, so it still wouldn't probably be practical for me to go.

celli

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cimorene

Tragically, the supply of ibuprofen we bought the last time we went to the US - in 2017 - is running out now! Ibuprofen is more expensive in Finland and you can only buy 30 tablets of 400mg each at a time, and you can't mail it internationally, but you can bring it in your luggage, so in the past, I have just brought back a bunch of bottles each time I visited the US. (Technically, you can only bring your own medication for personal use, but we've never had a problem.)

The even more tragic part is that my sister was here just a year ago, but I forgot to ask her to bring it. Obviously it would be unwise to go there in the near future now, and I'm not sure if it would be fully safe even for my white middle-class family members to leave the country in case they had trouble going back (although they don't have any travel plans in the near future, because my dad, being quadriplegic, is immunocompromised and air travel is an elevated risk for him, and he's been in and out of the hospital lately).

When I was a teenager and young adult I used ibuprofen heavily for cramps, but in my 30s the severity lessened dramatically and I was often able to skip painkillers or get by with a small dose of paracetamol/acetaminophen, so the supply from our last visit has lasted longer than expected. (The last bottle has an expiration date in 2020, so possibly it is only working by the placebo effect at this point.) Concurrently with the perimenopausal symptoms I've started getting over the last few years, though, the cramps have started to worsen again and a couple of times in recent months I think they've been more painful than when I was a teenager! (But I also can't be sure because it's about 25 years ago.) A few years ago I was advised to try 1000mg paracetamol + 600mg ibuprofen together in case of emergency, and I now typically need to do this a few times per month. And also to buy paracetamol approximately every 1.5 months, because you can't buy more than 30 (500mg) tablets of paracetamol at a time either, and Wax and I both get migraines (not bad migraines by you Migraine Sufferer standards, but they are still headaches)! I've just never happened to bring paracetamol/acetaminophen back in my luggage because (a) I didn't know I could and should use it instead of ibuprofen until I was in my late 30s and (b) until recently there was always a larger bottle of it around leftover from various prescriptions.

Ugh, and I hate big Finnish 400mg ibuprofen tablets, too. They're not nearly as nice as the standard round coated ones you get in the US. And if you buy gel caps you can't break them! Come to think of it, I also don't like the big paracetamol tablets, but I don't have any clear memories of the size and shape of acetaminophen tablets to compare them to. But, honestly, they would have to be fairly awful tablets to be worse than the inconvenience and annoyance of buying them 30 at a time.

cimorene

Sipuli is still unable to calm down enough to approach Tristana closely through the gate, in spite of ample opportunity; it seems like Tristana would like for her to.

(So no real change since I last wrote about this.) The problem is no longer that Tristana is afraid to come close to the gate; for the past 3? months it's instead been that Tristana will sit right there and if Sipuli just walked over and sat down they could sniff each other through it, but she wants to be friends too badly and she gets too excited and flings her entire body on the gate and tries to grab Tristana through it. And then Tristana backs off (without being too upset) because she doesn't want to be grabbed and she doesn't like sudden movements and loud noises.

After the thousands of times she got excited and pounced and Tristana left, Sipuli has learned that Something Bad is associated with her getting all excited... but she doesn't appear to know that it's the jumping/grabbing. Instead she sees Tristana and starts to get excited and then after about five seconds she gets embarrassed/anxious and retreats.

This happens even if she didn't make any sudden movements. She'll see Tristana sitting patiently on her side of the gate with her nose up against it looking curiously at her and she'll start towards her with fascinated ears, and then she'll pause about a foot away, turn around in a circle, pace a little bit, and then leave and go under a chair.

They HAVE touched noses through the gate a couple of times and Sipuli gets to take walks in the rest of the house on a leash now, but she has not managed to touch noses on these walks yet; she's still getting too excited and trying to lunge or jump towards Tristana and being prevented by the leash.

sage

( books: Greene and Sasportas, Nicholas, Greene and Sasportas, Greene and Sasportas, Sasportas )

yarning
I went to yarn group and had a really nice time. A friend there gave me a gently used pair of Merrill running shoes which she'd worn just too much to return and not enough to feel good about donating. They fit me perfectly, so yay!

family
mom asked me to come up and help, as they're both in really bad shape, healthwise. And also their TV and/or modem has died and they want me to fix it. I have no idea how to do that, so, that'll be fun. :(

#resist
August 2: 50501 Rage Against the Regime National Protest
August 3: first Move On "Won't Back Down" rally.

I hope all of y'all are doing well! <333

celli

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celli

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celli

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the_shoshanna

The heat index is going to hit 42C/103F here today, omg, this Canadian is not used to this. Good thing I made out like a bandit at the thrift store the other day (took in a load of donations and therefore went shopping): three cute little dresses and a pair of shorts, plus a Columbia rain jacket that was only $10 so I'm also ready for the tropical downpour that is predicted here.

I sanitized my devices to go through US border control, and then I was not only not inspected or interrogated, I didn't even have to speak to a person at all! I have Nexus/Global Entry, and all I had to do was unmask for a photo and be waved through. Which is pretty cool, except for the part where it's terrifying.

The friend I'm visiting is under a lot of stress these days (I mean, aren't we all) and last night she wanted to watch something enjoyably distracting, so we watched Conclave and she loved it. Yay! For me it was a repeat viewing, and definitely held up. I do still wonder what Sister Shanumi was doing in the cardinals' quarters that evening, though; I feel like there's a lot more backstory there than we saw. (Also I highly recommend this story https://archiveofourown.org/works/62100625 ("Oh, Sister" by veganthranduil) to anyone looking for more of Sister Agnes.) Next up may be Kpop Demon Hunters, about which I know very little (ditto kpop itself) but which I keep seeing people praising. On the face of it I wouldn't think it would be my kind of thing -- I've never been much for animation -- but I wouldn't have thought that about a movie of old men arguing about how to divvy up power amongst themselves, either, so you never know.

My latest haircut is not great -- sometimes my stylist knocks it out of the park, and sometimes she fouls out -- and I am sad that my first time in five years or more with two other friends I'm seeing on this trip will be with bad hair!

cimorene

Last time I updated about my learning to drive stick/standard shift I posted this, you may remember:

Total cost:

Application fee: 25€
Driving lessons: 875€
ADHD tax: 152€

Incorrect. That was my total cost thus far, but I forgot the fees for the theory test and the driving test! I have now reserved a time for the theory test on August 14.

Theory test fee: 40€
Driving test fee (not booked yet): 99€

Total: 1191€

I'll have to take the bus to Turku to take it at the nearest Ajovarma office. ( Read more... ) I have been studying the badly-translated textbook that came with my driving class (and also the good Swedish translation and occasionally the Finnish original, for clarity) and going through the test practice questions. I passed the first full practice test I took yesterday, but at about 70%, so I'm trying to make it so I know the answers to all the questions.

Friday I had a second lesson with the driving simulator, and it was much better than the first one. It was fun actually! But I completely failed to manage to start the car on a hill again (I failed to do this in my first simulator lesson like 8 times in a row and the teacher, after coaching me through the steps and explaining it, just gave up and reset the lesson lol) and had to reset it. Now I've read in the textbook I realize it's because the hill in the simulator was too steep for the instructions he gave me the first time (on a gentle slope you only need the brake, but on a steep hill you need the parking brake as well - terrifying).

BONUS OFF-TOPIC FUN FACTS: READING AND BANNING

After we watched the season finale of the Murderbot show, and I discussed it extensively with both my sister (who is extremely ALL CHANGE IS BAD CHANGE) and waxjism (who is not, but was annoyed because the show felt too YA for her, although she didn't HATE it), I reread the books. I had reread All Systems Red before the show; last week I reread it again, then all the others, and then I read the newest short story, Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy (about ART and its crew). And after that for days I just wanted MORE and didn't want to read anything else, but the next novel isn't out yet; I reread Artificial Condition again and started Network Effect again, and skimmed through the tags on AO3 and Tumblr to see what people are saying... but it wasn't really satisfying. When I'm interested in a ship that is non-sexual in nature, I rarely find what I want from fandom, and that's what happened again (though there is some gen friendship fic and some queerplatonic fic on AO3). I can't begrudge people their desire to sexualize nonsexual relationships, because I've definitely thought that was fun before. I wrote Finding Nemo slash (and I stand by that). But when you don't want to read that, and I don't, your odds are simply worse, because there's less of it.

Unlike my sister, I didn't hate the show, but I was even more annoyed by what Wax called "YA" writing choices than she was. I'm not sure if she can stand to watch it with me when the next season comes out, because I find it very hard to shut up when I'm annoyed at tv. I am happy with the casting and have no problem with the acting - all the things that I disliked are what I consider objectively bad adaptation and writing choices. But it was still fun and watchable when considered as its own work in isolation from the books! Just weirdly and unnecessarily YA in tone.

For fans of banning/blocking, the action, you'll be pleased that I banned someone from my design blog designobjectory last week! I like all ages and periods of decorative arts, but my blog contains a lot of my special interests - midcentury modern, Bauhaus, Art Deco and Art Nouveau, and Swedish and Finnish design (mostly 20th c). Somebody reblogged one of my MANY posts of Finnish midcentury light fixtures by Finnish lighting titan Lisa Johansson Pape (one of the many times I've posted a variant of her 44 cm. diameter metal pendant lamp shade, which is still in production by Innolux)... anyway, somebody reblogged it with a comment sort of like "This is the ONE Scandinavian modern thing I like lol. I hate light birch furniture!" My blog is extremely heavy on light wood because of my strong interest in Swedish and Finnish 20th century design! So I blocked them. First I asked Wax if that was too unreasonable and she laughed a lot and said that it's never unreasonable to block people on your own blog. Maybe a little weird though. I mean, probably. But it's so thrilling and satisfying to block someone.

Ever since DW made it so you can type @ + username to create the little username embed (waxjism), I have completely switched to it and whenever I want to use the version that links to another site I forget what the code is and end up having to google it. I mean, to search the DW faqs. This is the third time it's happened. That's because it's user name, with a space between. I always forget that.

cimorene

A couple of months ago, I don't know when exactly, I saw a link on Tumblr to an article about a "new summer trend" of not wearing mascara that the youths were (allegedly) referring to as "ghost eyelashes" (let's take the rant about the majority of people not wearing mascara as a given). Even though I find this kind of reporting (on beauty trends) mostly annoying, I frequently also find it... amusing, in an annoyed way, so I clicked to read it on the strength of my giggling bemusement at the headline.

The angle this beauty journalist chose to take was a Generational Divide one, pointing out how the trend was very young and positing that people older than their mid-20s would be uncomfortable with the shocking exposure of their natural eyelashes in full sun, and the article was peppered with links to other articles in the same website about generational trends that were so outrageous that I did what she wanted and clicked on them:

This publication has alleged in the past that wearing tapered or straight-leg jeans is an embarrassingly Millennial trait (no mention given of older generations: possibly the youth in question have forgotten that there are plenty of members of Gen X just among their own generation's parents, and obviously nobody older than their own parents is relevant, lol).

I went on an emotional journey of laughing, boggling, and remembering how in the mid-90s when the 70s-bellbottom revival was in full swing it became nearly IMPOSSIBLE to buy tapered jeans or even straight ones for a brief time, and how my friends and I used to refer to extant surviving tapered jeans as "boa-constrictor-ankled". Of course since everyone my age was growing extremely rapidly throughout the period from 1995-2001, it was impossible for any of us to own old pairs of jeans that still fitted that we loved; in high school, you're lucky if you fit jeans for more than a calendar year at a time. Everyone who had jeans that were ten years old or older was an adult, and their clothes were a minority of the clothes we saw closely enough to pay attention to, which made them stand out, I guess. I remember being actively amused by tapered jeans in the late 90s. And I clearly remember the few years before 2010, in my 20s, owning lots of pairs of bootcut jeans that were in some cases 10 years old and still fit me, and finding it necessary to get out the sewing machine to make several of them into skinny jeans (but the earliest ones, say, pre-2000, were unsalvageable then, because I couldn't consider wearing mid-high-waisted jeans ca. 2007, when waistbands were super-low). So the end of this emotional journey was laughing again.

Another article in this publication alleged that the crying laughing emoji is also an embarrassing Millennial trait. Apparently nobody who isn't a Millennial would use this emoji. The article didn't contain a lot of detail - I would've loved statistics about emoji use frequency, or a detailed look back at the pre-emoji days of emoticons. I was a heavy user of "XD" before the crying laughing emoji, which is supposed to be a cartoon of it (although IMO XD does not imply tears on its own; that's what X.D is for). But anyway, I have been remembering this stupid article every time I used that emoji for weeks now.

Current Mood: nostalgic
Current Location: hey finally a post that's PERFECT for this icon
Current Music: I Say It's Spinach (and to Hell with It)

cimorene

I was taught to sew as a kid in the 90s by my mom (an artist who can do every kind of art and craft practically, and also fix plumbing and electricity and do carpentry). My first clear sewing memory is making myself a gown (of leftover printed cotton curtain fabric) for an ice sorceress costume that I designed and made myself and wore to NASFiC/Dragoncon as a con costume when I was twelve I think - so 1995, maybe? I made myself shorts and a vest that I used to wear to school in the seventh grade (from a pattern), hemmed my cadette girl scout uniform skirt from knee to mid-thigh (and then did the same for two other members of the troop) at age 14, and at 16 made my sister, then 7, a copy of the allover-studded suede jacket worn by Christina Aguilera in the "What a Girl Wants" music video (also from a pattern, and not from real suede, but I did have to buy a literal Bedazzler). LOL that I did that, in retrospect.

Anyway, I learned to sew on my mom's old Singer, but since moving to Finland I have had the good fortune to enjoy the nearly-permanent loan of my MIL's sewing machine (ours since her death; but she didn't feel like sewing anymore before that), a Bernina 1004 made in Switzerland in 1989, fully mechanical, and basically free from problems (apart from those caused by user error). Until a few months ago.

I tried cleaning lint from around the bobbin case, and not only did that not help, but after it the machine stopped advancing unless you manually turn the wheel with great force. So of course I immediately panicked that I had broken it and became afraid to investigate further because I was afraid I'd find out it was all my fault.

But when I finally got around to watching a couple of videos (because I really wanted some new pajama pants and I can't buy any that meet my standards), I realized there's absolutely no way I caused this! But also it definitely is something with the main bit of the motor, and you have to take the thing completely apart to fix that. So it has to go to a repair shop that specializes in Berninas.

There's only one in Turku, and they closed for the month of July the day before I googled them. 😭 Also you have to book the service in advance and can't just drop machines off. The next nearest specialist is... nowhere near.

But I'm very motivated now, because it's been warm, and every day

waxjism wears her percale gingham hobbit (cropped) summer pj pants and looks adorable while I'm suffering with one old pair that are falling apart and are a synthetic blend. And neither of us has pockets!!!

cimorene

I just realized that all my most favorite savory foods are based on lemon or lime. Also all the cocktails I've liked (though I don't try many because I'm not big on them). I also love every lime or lemon dessert I've had mostly, but they're not my favorites (my most favorite desserts are apple- or coffee-based). It's just weird that it took me so long to notice that.

sage

( books (Oken, Hope, Tarnas, Hamaker-Zondag) )

yarning
no yarn group this week. I was all showered and dressed and ready to go, and boom, migraine. Apparently my pulse skyrocketed to 144 when just out of the shower, so that triggered the migraine. Stupid hEDS.

healthcrap
Had a useless appt with physical medicine Monday, where they put me on the Hypermobile Spectrum Disorder spectrum, instead of doing a full exam for hEDS. Irritating. They also confirmed that they couldn't help me, since I don't need further PT or equipment (like a walker or wheelchair) at this time. HSD is basically the same thing, but you don't meet the diagnostic criteria of hEDS. I wish I'd been up to arguing with them, but I wasn't. Also, still haven't worked out. :(

dirt
I watered the plants today for the first time in over 3 weeks, which means I've been taking my terrible mood out on the innocents in my household. I hope I haven't lost any, but it's the (moderate) depression's fault if I have. At least I did get them watered. That's something.

#resist
August 2: 50501 Rage Against the Regime National Protest
August 3: first Move On "Won't Back Down" rally.

I hope all of y'all are doing well! <333

celli

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the_shoshanna

It's always been a while. I wish I posted more regularly. And who is to blame for that, I ask ~~you~~ me?

Yesterday Geoff and I went kayaking for the first time this year -- almost; he went with a friend last weekend while I went hiking with a different friend, but this was my first time this season and our first time together. This was also my first time with my new kayak! He wanted to upgrade our kayaks but couldn't find one he fitted comfortably in, so in the end I got a shiny new one -- longer and lighter than my old one, cuts through the water more cleanly -- and he is taking my old one, which although a bit clunky is still lighter than his old one. He's trying to sell his old one, but no bites so far, apparently. Anyway, we got out on the water for two hours and saw goslings, and cygnets, and even a baby loon with its mama! We've only seen a loon once before, so that was really special. (The chick was swimming on its own, not riding on its mom.) Also, the first clutch of cygnets we saw were young enough that one parent huddled at the edge of the reeds with them while the other came out to meet us and warn us off; when Geoff got a little closer than it liked, it rushed him with great flapping wings! No actual contact, but the message was clear and we rapidly paddled away. The second clutch we saw were a little older and were out on the water in an adorable toddling line between the parents, and we were able to pass by them rather closer than we'd been to the first family without anybody getting upset.

(Loon chicks don't seem to have a special name? We tried to think of one: Geoff suggested "lunatics" and I counterproposed "lunettes," French for "glasses.")

I've just finished going through the most recent season of Yellowjackets for the second time, since I've been watching it with two friends on slightly offset schedules. It continues to keep me riveted without being what I'd call "a good show"? I love how Shauna has been slowly revealed (yes, I know it's probably more like "how the writers have slowly changed their minds about Shauna" but I'm living in Watsonia here, okay) and we keep hoping that all the spouses and kids are safely off somewhere starting a mutual support and therapy group, never to be seen again. I'm dying to know where Melissa will turn up next, and what Jeff and Cally are going to do. (Poor Jeff and Cally.) I'm still not entirely sure which Taissa we've been seeing all season. And I love it when the teen and adult versions of the characters get to interact. I admire how the show has managed to hedge its bets on the supernatural-or-not? question for so long (I hope it's not), I'm delighted that we've finally wrapped around to the beginning of the show, and I really hope the mystery of the weird symbol does get explained in the end. The show was originally planned for five seasons, but it's hard to see how they could keep it going that long; I will be quite content if they wrap it up in the fourth season, especially since the alternative will be biting my nails hoping they actually get a fifth! I just hope they do actually wrap it up...

Having finished YJ, I'm now watching Interview with the Vampire with one friend (new to both of us) and Shetland with the other (a rewatch for me, but it's been a while). IwtV is slow-moving and sometimes I wonder why I'm interested, but I am, and now that previously unadmitted mysteries seem to be being hinted at I am more intrigued... (No spoilers, please! I read the original novel in like 1982, and saw the original movie when it came out, but remember basically nothing of either of them [except that I remembered for decades the stupid way in which movie-Claudia's hair curled when she was turned].) And I love Shetland and the way that (after a shaky bit at the end of the Perez stories) it refocused to center on my girl Tosh and our new DI Ruth Calder. I mean, it basically did what I wistfully hoped the fourth season of Ted Lasso would do: waved goodbye to the dudes and settled in to tell a story centering women. I absolutely adore Tosh.

I'm doing a bunch of traveling this summer, which used to be par for the course but is excitingly new since the pandemic! I had that brief trip to Virginia in May, and then my inlaws had two (TWO) family reunions in Quebec, and now I'm leaving on Friday for almost three weeks in the States, visiting friends, some of whom I haven't seen in years. I'm excited! And then (after my stepmother visits here for four days) Geoff and I are going on our first big trip since the Before Times, spending two weeks in Wales! I'm even more excited about that, and also somewhat intimidated; I'm out of practice at managing logistics for this kind of thing, plus the first week is going to involve some rather challenging hiking. And of course I am still afraid of COVID. But we're both over sixty, we won't be able to travel like this forever even in the best-case scenario, and COVID isn't going away, so we want to do this travel while we can. We're still going to take as many precautions as we reasonably can.

And I'm not reading much that's meaty, but last night I remembered that I was halfway through World War Z and picked it up again, which was a mistake at ten pm; I read for a while, freaked myself out, and had to do crossword puzzles for a while before trying to go to sleep, so today I am le tired.

vaguely political stuff

I mentioned to a Canadian friend the the day that I was about to go to the States, and she got that look you get when someone tells you someone has died and said, "Oh, I'm so sorry." I keep thinking I can't reel any more and then there's more. The volunteer work I was doing so much of last year for the Movement Voter Project is slowly beginning to start up again; two different people in the group have independently asked me to develop a training program to teach other people to do the kind of Zoom tech support that I do for them. (I'm not the only person who does that work, but they tell me I'm the best 😊) I don't have time to do that right now -- look at all my travel! -- but I brain-dumped a whole bunch of tips and advice for the first person, who has written them up and will incorporate them into a training she'll do, and told the second person to connect with the first. And the work itself will really start up again in the fall, when I'll be back and ready to take it on.

celli

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Current Music: Jin, "Rope It"

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giddygeek

April 2009

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Reading

The Ambulance Merry-Go-Round

trope of my dreams!

The ibuprofen barrier (also the paracetamol barrier)

failure of classical conditioning

What I'm Doing Wednesday

many many books!

Embroidery: Murderbot

vacation: good things entry

I am traveling!

Driving lessons update

Generational Trends

sewing machine repair

lemons and spicy lemons

What I'm Doing Wednesday

reading

been a while

I got a job for my birthday!

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April 2009

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