Auuuu au-AU-GUST, Rant she must

The BBQ Pit
261

Welp, the urine lab results came back. It recommends I eat low oxalate foods.

I drink a lot of diet sodas, and my relatives thought that was what gave me kidney stones. It’s not on the list of things to avoid, so plplpllplplp to them.

However, the list says to limit wheat bread, which I eat instead of white bread because I have to limit carbs bc of type II diabetes. So essentially, I can’t eat any type of bread now. But what’s worse is that I have to limit nuts and chocolate, which are ingredients of my favorite snack trail mix! I eat that shit for dinner sometimes. It’s the perfect balance of salty, sweet and bitter, and now I can’t have it anymore. WHAAAAAA! It’s the only sweet food I can tolerate. Cakes, cookies, and candies make me sick, and fruits like apples and oranges get boring, and bananas trigger a bile impulse. Grapes are too high in calories, and let’s face it, everything that tastes good is poison.

262

Ugh, why does Facebook still have “profile videos”? That shit’s annoying. When I scroll through my feed, I don’t want to be distracted by someone’s profile picture frickin’ moving around.
It’s odd, though, that I’m not bothered by other moving things on Facebook, such as actual videos.

263

When you’re at the BMV to renew your driver’s license, it’s never good to hear the clerk say (as she’s staring at her computer monitor): “OH NO! I can’t believe this!!!”

Fortunately the glitch that wiped out multiple pages of info I’d entered only cost me another minute or so, and Janelle was very nice about it.*

*it’s probably a good thing that I didn’t have to deal with Wanda in the next kiosk over, as she was a sourpuss who closely resembled the BMV clerk who gave Sheldon a hard time in The Big Bang Theory.

264

According to my various doctors, I have to cut way down on calories, carbs, sugar, salt, calcium, caffeine, animal protein, dairy, fruit and anything white. I think I can eat small quantities of bran and diet jello.

265

Man, this waitress sucks.

266

I then ask “Are any of these going to kill me?”

And my wonderful doctor says “Y’know, if it were me, I’d eat them all… in moderation, of course.”

267

I buy Oat bread for home, eat whatever bread I get out, and mostly limit my ‘candy’ intake to dark chocolate. I periodically binge on nuts. I eat less rice, potatoes and pasta, but don’t go out of my way to avoid them. I pretty much don’t do anything else but take my metformin and Januvia. My A1C was 6.2 last month.

Really, it comes down to watching what makes you spike, then eating less of it. But seriously? Dark chocolate. Heck, I just drove 6 miles out of my way this morning because I was dead out, and bought two of these and a couple of these.

I don’t take a statin (recommended for men my age) because my cholesterol is awesome without it. I attribute that to my constant moderately heavy consumption of dark chocolate.

268

Endangered Species Chocolate? Fuck you, environmentalist bleeding hearts!

As Artie said of veal in The Larry Sanders Show: I don’t care if they do torture the animals. It’s a damn fine cut of meat!

269

The one with the baby penguin on the front (dark chocolate and peppermint) is delicious though. :o

270

I was just at the gym, on a treadmill. Had to watch a half hour of ‘Fox Business News’. Or more accurately, the "Hillary suxxs and let’s elect Trump’ channel.

Breaking News! Hillary is traitor and should be executed. We have with us a blowhard from the Trump Campaign to tell how outraged we should be.

I wonder if the attractive host of the show had to suck Roger Ailes’ dick to get the gig.

271

I like the one with the baby Harp Seal on it. I freeze those and when I want a piece, I whack 'em with a baseball bat.

272

I laughed.

273

standing ovation

Now I really want some dark chocolate.

274

My husband is fucking stupid. I (normally) love him to tiny pieces, but what kind of moron thinks “great she’s drunk. Let’s chat about the issue of her beloved dog - that, incidentally, i refuse to help curb the dog issues altogether, cause it’s fun” - who does that?

275

You’re the customer – you pay money to this gym.
So complain about this! It’ll never change is you just sit (walk) there and watch it.

276

I’m just going to bitch about some stupid bullshit drama in my writer’s group that is causing me consternation.

We recently became a juried group. We recently juried a new guy. Some people were on the fence about letting him in because his writing skills were not great, but majority rules for the jury and we liked his thoughtful answers on his query form. He showed up at the first session, he was kind of rough. I think he was nervous and trying to fit in but he started interrupting and talking over people and just being blindly critical (without really understanding the context of the writing, or our relationships and the fact that we are all intimately familiar with one another’s work at this point.) The kid ended the session by agreeing to submit his work for critique at our following meeting.

It really pissed one of my friends off. He’s a dark, sarcastically mean type but for some reason I adore him. He decided he was gonna rip this kid a new asshole at our next meet. I practically begged him not to, but he went ahead and did it. I would say all of us delivered a rather harsh critique because there was a lot he needed to work on, and that level of honesty is just reality in this group, we need it in order to improve. But my pissed off friend decided he was gonna run the group in our Leader’s absence, and he totally eviscerated this kid. Not just regarding craft but questioning his commitment and then tearing apart any critiquers (including me) who said anything positive about his work.

My friend was a complete dick. Usually he’s all bluster but this is the first time I’ve seen him treat someone so badly. Then my friend agreed to submit a short piece for next session, and we all made jokes about the opportunity for revenge.

So me, having the nature I do, have spent the last week trying to do damage control with the new kid, apologize for my asshole friend and generally try to make him feel included. That was hard enough.

Tonight my friend decides he’s not going to submit after all, because he feels that he won’t get anything out of it if we’re only going to do it for revenge. That pissed me off so hard! I was thinking, you spent literally two fucking weeks talking about how you were going to feast on this kid’s soul (his actual words), you actually followed through on your plan to publicly humiliate him, and now you can’t take a fucking joke about revenge without being all sensitive about it? God damn. God fucking damn.

Thing I don’t want in my relationships: drama.

Stressed because I feel it was my fault for setting a bad tone at the new kid’s first meeting (everyone tells me it’s not), I feel like trying to fix things made them worse, and I don’t want to feel this pissed off at someone I care about.

This group is my lifeblood. It’s one of the greatest things that ever happened to me. I don’t want to see it ruined by petty bullshit. Fortunately, our Group Leader agrees, and he is returning with a vengeance, including revised critique guidelines and full-on ex-Marine-style laying down the law, I’m pretty sure. He called me tonight to talk me down from full-blown panic. I asked him to give me a role so I feel like I’m doing something to aid in the solution, as I feel so incompetent at this point. He told me he just needs me to back him up when he talks to the group next week.

Fuck. I hate drama. I hate this Mean Girls bullshit. I hate conflict. Fuck.

Rant over.

277

Wow.

Reading that line about drama being a thing you don’t want in your relationships, it seemed to kinda clash with everything else you wrote about the group; that bunch seems like it’s almost pure essence of drama, distilled from the finest expository tensions, and lovingly crafted into potential conflict juice of an almost artisanal quality.

Or perhaps it was a problem with your writing that made it come off that way. Maybe you could find a group to help you workshop that.

I keed, I keed! Please, put down that rock! :smiley:

Seriously, I hope the Group Leader is able to get it under control, and y’all get back to a more collegial mode of operation.

278

My friend is already feeling guilty. He said I get upset over things that aren’t my responsibility. That is true. This wouldn’t be nearly as stressful if I didn’t feel I had to fix it. Our Group Leader excels at leading groups. I think I didn’t realize that until he left for vacation! We are going to get things back on the right track. The lesson here, I think, is any time you bring in someone new it changes the group dynamic. We are still trying to work out who we are, I think.

279

Got our first snow last night. Good bye summer…

280

This depresses me. The older I get, the more I dread everything about winter. Especially “lake effect” snow.