Dec the Halls with Rants and Howling

The BBQ Pit
61

What a beautiful kitty. I’m sorry that she is gone. Cats just don’t live long enough.

I also love orange kitties, even our rotten house feral. Kinda surprised that Duchess was female though, most orange kitties are male.

My rant is also kitty involved. Our senile old cat is still kicking and still enjoying life. This is good. He likes to be warm, like cats do. He’s learned that the best kitty warmer is a dog. Its not a problem when he curls up on Buttercup, she seems to enjoy the company and gives him sloppy head washes. Poor Westley lays under Lucky and shivers with fear.

Thanks to the advice I’ve gotten here, Westley is OK with cats in the same room. She doesn’t cringe when they are sharing the couch with her. She is frozen with terror when Lucky just wanders over an flops down on her.

62

Kitty rants are the best. They always make me smile.
Well, except for Inner Stickler’s sort. Those are very sad. Much sympathy being sent your way.

I have one of the better kind; Lucy, the housemate’s ‘foster’ kitten. Foster in scare quotes because the cat rescue group that gave her to us has become massively uninterested in homing her. As we find out more about this group it’s becoming apparent that their method for finding homes is to turn a few locals into crazy cat ladies. We’re on our way. Lucy is kitty #4.
And she’s a kitten with all the joys that kittens bring. Curtains climbed? Check. Check book shredded? Check. Pill bottle lost? Check. Dogs terrorized? Check. Leather sofa punctured? Check. Any and all bags; plastic, paper or reusable, entered and mauled? Check. Kitchen counters and dining tables explored? Check. Other grumpy old cats annoyed? Check. Closets, doorways to outside, and into the garage zipped through? Check. Materialized in the most unlikely and inappropriate places? Check. Lap warmed, fingers chewed, leg climbed, face smacked? Check. Little ball of warm contented purring on your lap whenever you sit? Check.

I think we’re keeping her.

63

Kittens :slight_smile: Cute little bundles of destruction. They are very hard to resist and its so easy to forget what a PITA they are when they are curled up on your lap looking all innocent and sweet and stuff. Thank goodness they grow up into cats.

Lucy is a lucky kitten and I wish you many happy years with her.

For me this time: Ignoring the problem hasn’t worked. Denial hasn’t worked. I’m going to have to put my big girl panties on and call the dermatologist to look at an iffy spot on my back. I’ve already had several pieces cut off me due to skin cancer and this looks just like the others did. Crap.

I sure do wish I could go back in time and kick my stupid vain ass over wanting the perfect golden tan. I did look great, but I’m paying for it now.

64

Keeping you in my thoughts, flatlined. Here’s to tests that show concerns to have been overblown. Your critters and BB (and we here on the Dope) deserve to have you around for a long while, yet.

65

Likewise, Flatlined. Good thoughts are being sent. But it’ll be fine. You’ll get sliced a bit more, or maybe some of that cream that gives you a yucky spot for a while that my hubby keeps putting on his head. Either way, it’ll be fine.

Can I bitch about the spindylolisthesis in my neck? Everyone I know IRL is sick of hearing about it but it hurts. I’ve had stiff neck problems for years. Getting massage therapy helped for a while but lately I’ve noticed a clunking sensation when I turn my head. Quite unpleasant and getting worse. And it’s making my neck and shoulder muscles seize up. Finally moaned at the doctor and got diagnosed.

Aaaaand, I just read the WebMD description. Nevermind. No more bitching and moaning. Compared to what it could be I have nothing to complain about. Sheesh!

66

Thank you for your kind words. I know that this is really minor considering the big picture, but its really annoying and getting cut is painful and ITS ALL MY FAULT!!!

Not to mention that its right over my spine, so I can’t tell people that I got shot in the back during a bar fight. Sighs sadly.

I’m so thankful that I don’t have chronic pain. Waking up in pain, trying to sleep in pain, hurting all day. Horrible and those of you who have to deal with it have my sympathy and respect.

67

But I’d believe “thrown into a barbed wire fence by a stallion you were breaking”! (You can add “topless” if you want)

I’ve had a lot of bad sunburns, and a mom with tons of skin cancer, so I’m sure I’ll get sliced’n’diced a lot in the next decades.

But, hey, compared to almost any other cancer…

68

Not a rant so much as absolutely exhausted and frustrated…

A year ago I finally started treating my depression (meds only, can’t afford therapy) but just couldn’t find the right type or dosage that worked for me. I switched docs in March and he was happy to change me to something new which worked okay but not well enough. He bumped me up to the highest dose a few months ago and told me to keep him updated about my symptoms.

So a week ago I contact him to let him know I’m having serious side effects (insomnia, nearly crippling anxiety) that were also making my depression worse as a result. His only response was there’s not much more he can do and I need to seek help from a mental health professional.

So… keep you informed so you can blow me off? Really? No explanation like “I don’t feel qualified to try other treatment options” or a referral or lowering the dose or anything? Ok. Fine. I still can’t afford therapy so I looked up guidance on tapering off of my meds. I found what I thought was good advice and emailed my doc to explain that I’m going off of my meds and asked if he had advice on tapering safely, since he knows my specific history.

His advice was to take half of my current dose every day, then discontinue. Great, except these aren’t pills you can just cut in half, asshole, which you should fucking know. He didn’t change my prescription, he just… gave me completely useless instructions. He has a patient suffering from severe depression, suicidal thoughts, insomnia and severe anxiety, and the sum total of his advice is “not gonna help ya, go find someone else”. Real helpful.

On top of the side effects and now trying to adjust, my husband is out of town and Buzzfeed is having a (surprisingly decent) Mental Health Week. I made the mistake of watching the one interviewing people that lost loved ones to suicide, and then reading the shitty comments.

Ugh. Thank fucking god I can watch an old lady play Skyrim to cheer me up. Today sucks.

69

I hope y’all can get appropriate treatment soon.
My rant cum PSA:
Yesterday I attended a talk from a fireman (yes, he’s handsome, at least if you like your dudes solid. No, I don’t have pics. Yes, I am slightly evil) about What To Do In A Domestic Fire. He talked about getting smoke alarms (not required by law here, but available), dissected a bunch of errors usually found in the “emergency instructions” of office buildings and hotel rooms as well as some movie things that give him the willies to the eleventy.

The rant is that most of the people in the room had never received safety training at work; most of the places where I’ve worked don’t give safety training or what they give is a joke or full or errors. And the PSA is, please take advantage of any safety training you can get at work, and if you’re involved with safety commitees or unions or anything like that, push for safety training that goes beyond “there’s some evacuation instructions stuck to the walls”.

70

So in a meeting at work, I am told to post on the Main Calendar an upcoming drill about what to do in the event of an active shooter.

The Main Calendar is generated directly from Outlook meetings, using a very massive and elegant macro. Due to past incidents, we’ve made it agonizingly clear to everyone who sits in this meeting that there must be an Outlook item for each calendar entry. If they don’t want to send it to anyone, I can send it to myself, but it’s gotta be there. We do far too much volume to try to remember one item six months down the road is entered by hand each time (several times a day) we reprint the calendar and post it to the IntraNet used by the entire organization.

So in this meeting, I need to determine what wording the Powers That Be want for this drill, and I make the question into a joke. “What do you want the Main Calendar entry to say? If I put ‘Active Shooter, 10:00,’ you’re going to have a LOT of people call in sick.” Everybody laughs! Yes, they agree, we can’t panic the staff. Here’s the wording to send out to everyone, they say.

So I do. Send the Outlook meeting to all staff. It wil also automatically appear the next time the calendar is generated.

A day later, I get a frantic e-mail that this was NOT supposed to go to all staff!!! The event’s creator is receiving many nervous questions.

What? What do you mean, not supposed to go out? Turns out they don’t want staff to know the drill is coming…they’re alarmed about the Outlook meeting. They only wanted it posted to the Main Calendar!

Never mind the bit about there being no Main Calendar “document”…it’s generated fresh each time from Outlook. But you DO realize the Main Calendar is posted TO THE SHARED INTRANET where all staff read it every day? That’s what it’s FOR. Everyone in the meeting knew that, even you. Hell, we joked about how to phrase it BECAUSE everyone would see it. You were there!

What’s wrong with you?

71

Why would people get nervous about something called “safety training practice” or similar?

72

Presumably this is one of those weird workplaces where they want their drills to seem like the real thing to everybody except the Safety Team.

73

So my insurance provider bit the dust. Now I have to go get a new one through the health exchange. Since it went out the door early so to speak, I had to get a provider for the month of December as a stop-gap, with January getting back to normal where I get a whole year’s worth at once. This insurance looks good, has decent reviews on the exchange, isn’t terribly expensive, my doctor takes it. Let’s go for it!

Wait, the hospital only takes the “medicaid version” of this insurance? How can there be an insurance version that is actually another insurance provider? Wait, this plan is CATHOLIC run? Oh shit, do they not cover abortions or contraception? I thought they had to cover contraception? What does their policy page mean I can access services like those through State Department of Health-contracted entities? Is it provided or not? And why wasn’t this stated on the health exchange website?! I don’t know about this…

OK, let’s look at other plans that I can start in January. My doctor takes these two other ones on the exchange. Wow, that one is…expensive. With a really bad deductible. And that one has…bad reviews, has a bad deductible, but it’s in my price range… uhhh…

Well folks, I’ve got a week to figure this shit out! Tomorrow I get to find out if my one-month insurance will cover my birth control prescription or not. I guess if they do, I might keep them for next year…maybe…considering my options.

74

I work at one of those places (a chemical plant). Alas, what usually happens is that everyone has heard about the drill beforehand through the gossip grapevine… and the Safety Team is startled when the alarms go off. “What? Are we having a drill? Today?”

I shudder to think how an active shooter drill would go down.

75

Why the fuck is it so difficult to get a dishwasher delivered before Christmas??? (The old one isn’t worth repairing…even if I were to tackle the repairs myself, the parts needed are expensive enough to justify the purchase of a new machine.)

Also, I don’t have hot water in my kitchen right now…

76

How does anyone get anything done this month?

I have to take Velociraptor to sell Christmas trees 3 times a week (he’s in Scouts), study for a final, deal with my mother’s paperwork and plan and execute Christmas. Most evenings and weekends are taken up by the above and working takes the rest of the time.

This year has just been on and on and on. At least I am almost done with school, I just have to figure out what I’m doing and how much I will actually do for Christmas. I mainly just want the tree up and a couple batches of cookies. Somehow I will find time to finish shopping, some of it has been done in between things or when taking mom out and about.

I have really felt the pinch of being the sandwich gen this year.

77

Oh fffs.
I quite likes this housemate when he moved in, he seemed like a decent guy. Late 30s, just moved around a lot, so he seemed like he might be a bit more mature than the previous guy.

After a month or so, I started realising that the washing up that was piling up in the kitchen was all his (he works away a lot, and didn’t cook much over summer). The other guy here, the landlord, has a habit of leaving washing up til there’s a big pile, then doing it all at once. Which annoys me a bit, but hey, he clenans it eventually, and it is his house. But new guy never seemed to reach the ‘doing it all at once’ stage. Just heaped it up and left it. LL (the landlord) finally questioned him about it, and got the reply that he wasn’t sure what the deal was with washing up in this house, so he didn’t want to get in the way. Riiiiight.

This, apparently also extends to not ever cleaning anything (though he does helpfully complain that things are really dirty). His hygiene is so bad, I’m pretty sure he gave me food poisoning by chopping raw chicken up on the counter, then not bothering to clean up (apparently LL came in at the end, and caught him wiping his hands - without washing them - on a teatowel, then hanging out back up for use).

He also neither raises the toilet seat nor wipes it off if he aims poorly.

A few months later, me and LL started realising as well that, though NG was using all the ‘communal’ stuff, including a somewhat impressive quantity of olive oil and condiments, plus toilet paper, he never contributed anything. It was pointed out that it was expected that everyone bought a share of such things, and using everything without replacement was Not OK. NG cheerfully agrees to replace the olive oil he bought a full bottle of “next time he goes to the shops”.

Several months have passed, his sole contribution to the communal store has been a roll of toilet paper, apparently stolen from a dispenser in a public toilet. No olive oil has been forthcoming, and me and LL are reduced to hiding everything we don’t want him to use all of.

Then this morning, I discovered the freeloading git is using my toothpaste as well. My fucking toothpaste.

At this point, I wouldn’t be all that surprised if I found him wearing my knickers because my underwear was cleaner than his.

78

EW!!! Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew!!!

Aaaaaand, now you know why he moves a lot.

How soon can you kick his ass out??

I think I would seriously go college flashback right now and get a bathroom/shower caddy for all my stuff so I could keep it in my bedroom. And possibly eke out space for all possible kitchen pantry items in the bedroom, too. And possibly a refrigerator food locker! Ack!

79

Some workplaces have even had the great idea of holding surprise realistic active shooter drills.

80

Oh, God, yes, please. Is that an option? Let’s do that! :slight_smile: