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health: allergies

There must have been a musk in that curl spray

Like oud or something. Not patchouli anyway. Because after shampooing it three times the night before last, I could still smell that on it yesterday every time it got in my face (the physically irritating part of the smell did wash out, but I personally dislike musks and think they're gross even when they don't make me sneeze). I can still smell it today too, but my hair is dry, and I don't want to shampoo it again yet.

So I guess this is no longer directly related to allergies, but I don't have a haircare tag or an "I fucking hate perfume flames on the side of my face" tag.

Entry tags:

health: allergies

Not a satisfactory situation or explanation

Last night I was joylessly reading until way too late in bed, and then after I put my phone down, I suddenly started to notice my throat hurt a bit.

Now, I do have a perfume allergy that has caused my throat to swell mostly-closed in the past, but only about 5(?)x in the past 20 years, and only after a Lot (the perfume has to be concentrated close to my nose and mouth probably).

And yes, yesterday I had tried a new curl-reviving spray and I had been mildly annoyed by its perfume all day, but it hadn't irritated my nose right away the way dangerous perfumes (and also many others) do.

So when I started to worry that the product was causing an allergic reaction that might make my throat swell closed and kill me in my sleep, this was extremely unlikely for several reasons: the perfume had already proven itself not similar to ones that caused a reaction before, and also that's not really how anaphylaxis works, probably?

But my throat hurt and every perfume I could smell seemed to be aggravating it. So I decided that getting up at 3 am and showering all the perfumed products off would be a better use of my time than going downstairs to take antihistamines, painkillers, and a benzo. I shampooed my hair three times and combed conditioner through it in the shower, then put a folded towel on my pillow and slept on it after towel-drying, without applying my usual leave-in.

My throat feels a little better but still irritated today, and I took loratidine and paracetamol with breakfast. I wonder why my throat got irritated, though. I hope I'm not getting sick, but probably not; the last time I went to the store was Wednesday, so the incubation period for a respiratory infection wouldn't match up very well.

Entry tags:

plant and garden

Benjamin the benjamin ficus is living in the enclosed porch for the summer

Benjamin is one of several large and venerable potted plants inherited from Wax's granny, so he's probably older than I am; he has been in front of the east window in the kitchen since we moved here. However, he's had a hard time this spring after Sipuli peed in his pot several times to protest her litter box being smelly.

Once it got warm enough to not shock him in the process, Wax discarded all his old soil, shook and jiggled and rinsed his roots, and repotted him with new soil; and in apology for the trauma of that, she felt obliged to let him stay out for a while (but not fully outside, where the temperature fluctuations and wind and rain would be too much for him).

The thing is... Benjamin hasn't been pruned in a long time, and he's probably about six feet tall and four feet wide, now.

The porch isn't large.

As Wax put it when carrying out the recycling last week, it's not very convenient having your porch half full of tree.

She says she can't bring him inside, though, because he's enjoying himself so much (making lots of new leaves) that it would be mean.

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What I'm Doing Wednesday

( books (Sasportas, Greene & Sasportas, Greene, Greene, Hodgson) )

family
the trip to help the parents has filled me with worry and preemptive grief. At least I fixed the tv in a few clicks of the remote and showed her how to use the Fire stick (again). Dad's got his westerns back and she's got her musicals. It's something.

house
my house is a disaster area again, and I'm overwhelmed and daunted by the amount of chores that needs doing. That is not helpful. Must get myself motivated to tackle (some of) it.

#resist
Monday, 9/01: Workers over Billionaires (#5051)

I hope all of you are doing well! <333

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3+1

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places: pargas

Shades of Local Color in the Villages of Ålön

We live in a tiny town with only one commercial street, but spread out with low population density. Our island of Ålön is about 77 square kilometers (about 44 square miles), and most of it is farms and forests.

My late MIL's summer cottage was fifteen minutes by car out towards one of the corners of the island, in the village of Levo, but what a world of difference! Behind its little orchard stretched fallow and planted fields; across the winding road lay a little forest, and on the other side of that the bay of Finland. (The neighbors gave permission to park extra cars in their field and to use their little scrap of sand and dock for swimming.) The music of the evening in Levo was birdsong and the rushing of the wind.

Here one block behind city hall and the police station, in the village of Parsby, we sit in the midst of urban decay, as mentioned recently. Our little street contains three inhabited houses and two abandoned wrecks that the city owns and is allowing to fall into public health hazards, with asbestos everywhere, roofs caving in, broken windows, and fallen trees and power lines. The street leading down to the back of the police station contains two more inhabited houses and three more decaying wrecks, and the city tore all the pavement on it up last January to fix the pipes and hasn't paved it again yet. Across the other street (we live on the corner) is a big clot of densely-populated midcentury apartment buildings, whose retired inhabitants risk their lives on the above-mentioned poorly-maintained ripped-up road in winter (it's a steep hill).

Because our town is rural and the driving age for cars is 18 in Finland, the plague of Parsby (and small towns everywhere) is teenagers on mopeds. The music of the evening in Parsby starts with wood pigeons, thrushes, and the distant buzzing of cars on the highway, but is interrupted periodically by the deafening roar of mopeds speeding by under the window and teenagers practicing being cool and adult by shouting the equivalent of "FUCK" at each other. (I fantasize several times a week about an externally-mounted loudspeaker that would play a voice yelling "Shut up" towards the street.)

It would've been impossible to quickly walk to the store from Levo, though.

Entry tags:

dad's injury

The Ambulance Merry-Go-Round

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.

trope of my dreams!

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finland,
health

The ibuprofen barrier (also the paracetamol barrier)

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.

Entry tags:

cats

failure of classical conditioning

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.

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What I'm Doing Wednesday

( 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

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many many books!

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art,
art:misc

Embroidery: Murderbot

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vacation: good things entry

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I am traveling!

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!

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Driving lessons update

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.

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)

Generational Trends

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.