Mid-November, and the weather here in So Cal is hot and dry.
Allergies abound.
And lack of motivation to do anything around my non-air conditioned house …
Had a new name misspelling today. A woman insisted on taking the first letter of my last name and affixing it to my first name. So “Bob Smith” became “Bobs Mith,” along with all the other misspellings she made. Who the hell hires these people?
Now, when I call to make a doctor’s appointment, I just give them my patient number, rather than my name. Then THEY tell ME what my name is (with the usual mispronunciations).
I do that, too. Or I give my name, then wiggle my eyebrows and say in a fake James Bond voice, “But you probably know me better as 112358675309…”
It’s been steadily in the 50s-60s here in New England. Also still taking my Allegra. It can stay this way. My arthritis would greatly appreciate it.
I hate not being able to word something the way I’d like to word something without sounding like I’m putting down the other person or inviting an argument. I’m not trying to do either. But it’s crystal clear I’m trying to do either because I don’t fully agree with the other person’s view.
I’m NOT trying to argue, I’m trying to UNDERSTAND because, frankly, I don’t get it. That’s all. I mean, if that alone makes you want to rake me over the coals because I don’t get it , then you’re the problem, not me.
JFC :shakes head:
I was done with my allergies for the year until all the forest fires broke out. And now we’re not getting any rain so they keep burning and burning and burning and the smoke keeps hanging around.
What the crap is still out there in the Midwest? Is it maybe leaf burning, which traditionally only made me cough? I haven’t stopped sneezing and nose honking for days except to sleep. Feels like May or June.
Not that I’m complaining about this weather.
I need to pit my body. If someone were to ask me which part of my body I’d like to replace if I could, my answer is “the skeleton”. I have rheumatoid arthritis, and have for my entire life, so I’m extremely familiar with the pattern of how my body reacts to things like exercise. Generally, everything is normal until I do a large amount of intense exercise and then I get a full-body flare up. For example, if I did an extra long, hard bike ride, not only would my knees scream at me the next day but elbows, neck and jaw would as well. People who aren’t familiar with the disease tend to think of it as a localized phenomena and ask things like where (in my body) I have arthritis. They’re always confused when I answer “all of it”. It’s systemic.
But that’s not all, I’m now in my mid-50’s and done with menopause so some new things are afoot under my skin. I started taking a gentle yoga class a few weeks ago. It’s just once a week, gentle and slow stretching to work slowly up to the simpler yoga poses. When I was younger it would have been easy and held no repercussions. Instead, I’m having systemic flare ups like you wouldn’t believe. My back is a mess, neck, shoulders, hips and knees are all extra stiff and sore. I feel like I’ve been beat up by several Agent Smiths in The Matrix.
On the positive side, my hair has always been a pretty natural color. Ya gotta grab those silver linings where you can, I guess.
Had a temporary crown installed last week. I’m still taking Tylenol to deal with what appears to be nerve pain from the injections. 
According to the office, what I’m experiencing is due to my bite being misaligned, since the temporary crown isn’t properly contoured. Yeah.
Also, there are apparently a metric shit-ton of dental offices in the immediate area that have same-day crown service. Why am I just now learning about this???
Grandma, I loved you and I’m sorry you’re gone, but the recipe for fruit salad you passed down to my mother is terrible. What the hell is a #2 can? And what size was a carton of sour cream in 1950 or whenever you wrote down this recipe? It’s baffling.
And then there was the other recipe I was trying to follow that didn’t clarify its units and wound up with me putting in a massive amount more molasses than I should have. People, write your recipes with clear units!
Was it a #2 can or a 2# can? And yes, I agree with you. My mom had a recipe for wonderful sourdough biscuits I can’t use because it’s all ingredient with no measurements. :mad:
I work with recipes with no, foreign or odd measurements frequently . … [try figuring out 12th century Mongolian measures, or Persian sometimes - WTF is a ‘ratl’?!>actually we know the answer to that one :)>]
If you are dealing with a 20th century American product, traditional measures prevail - dairy tended to be sold in cups, pints, quarts and gallons. I would imagine the sour cream would have come in a 1 pint tub. And a # 2 can is a traditional Campbells Soup can size [as opposed to the more commercial # 10 can which is about half a gallon or so.]
I have some family recipes that I learned by watching the person making the food, so I have sort of winged the measurements [hey, I don’t judge much, I still make bread using a McDonalds Flintstone cup as a measure, 3 measures of flour, 1 measure of water, a half palm of salt, and a measure of the sourdough barm from the fridge. Knead til resilliant, sort of like a baby’s butt and it can use up to a measure of flour for dusting the board, and a small glug of olive oil to oil up the dough ball while raising. Been doing it this way since the early 80s.] Once I have a rough recipe, I make whatever a number of times refining the recipe because I know what it is supposed to taste like.
Because the election didn’t suck enough…
A friend I’ve known since kindergarten came to my milestone birthday party last year, I went to spend a weekend with him a couple months later, no strings attached, we have never been a couple, etc. He had been divorced since 2007.
We kept in touch as old pals via text until March of this year, when he stopped responding. He also deactivated his FB account some time later, leaving me and our mutual friends to assume that he just wanted to take a break.
Just the other day, a mutual friend found his new wife’s FB page. They got engaged in April and married in July. He never said a word about it to me or to anyone in our circle of friends. I’m not upset that he remarried. I’m upset that he wouldn’t even send an announcement.
I cannot fathom why he has trashed a 45+ year friendship.
Still in shock.
New wife cutting him off from his friends, especially his female friends.
That could be. His previous wife wasn’t like this at all. Obviously I shouldn’t expect everyone to be the same in that regard.
Bit the tip of my tongue a couple of days ago, and it still HURTS… OWIE.
{{side hug}} Why do tongues hurt so much? I get canker sores that feel like they’re meteorite craters, but then I look for them in the mirror; often they’re pinhead-sized.
I’m looking forward to some tongue-biting pain as we host my elderly Trumpist mother for Thanksgiving. At our very liberal home (with a number of vocal “America will devolve if Trump is elected” in-laws).
My last name sounds like a common name, but is spelled entirely differently. If I’m dictating my name to someone, I don’t say it at all. I only spell it. That way, I may only spell it twice. If they don’t know how it sounds, I’m already two steps ahead on getting them to spell it right.
The trade-off is, my last name is an almost impeccable shibboleth. If you call me and pronounce my name the way that almost the entirety of the world would based on the commonly understood usage of English and it’s spelling: You do not know me. If I’m not immediately interested in whatever you’re calling about, I will cheerfully tell you that no-one by that name lives here as if I am a child in a sitcom.
Funny thing is, I was reminded of this last night while bailing my sister out of jail. The officer pronounced my name as it was spelled. To protect my shibboleth, and not bother with making a public servant needlessly uncomfortable*, I just pretended it was supposed to be pronounced like that.
Sis was once the independent one. She was the one who was dedicated to moving out when she turned 18, and pretty much did it. For a long time, she worked hard at 2 or more jobs, and did well at them. She had new vehicles, lived in nice apartments and did what she wanted. Somewhere along the way she ended up with meth being the meaning of life. She had to move back home because her problems. Dad wanted to kick her out at one point, I talked him out of it out of some sense of sympathy. I had married and moved away before she moved back, didn’t have to live with her, and didn’t honestly know what I was advising. I’ve regretted that advice for almost 15 years, and I will never give advice of that nature lightly again, lest the problems of the advised become mine. He died less than two years later. Awhile after that, sis went into state jail. Life was pretty peaceful, and mom went on vacations.
Long story short, sis got out again, and things progressed in a nightmarish meth spiral to the point where I moved back home to protect my mother from my sister for around a year. Mom got cancer, was treated, then was in remission. Mom allowed sis to move back home, and return to her old ways of theft and general lunacy for about half a year before mom came out of remission and died. Sister then tied up the estate (including her third) by squatting until she was arrested. Finally, I was able to dispose of the estate, and distribute it. Sis bailed herself out against my advice and went back in for the same charges around a week later, then had a return trip to state jail and probation.
Now, as far as I know, which isn’t far, she’s been mostly behaving herself after her last stint. No drug charges, or other charges, or really any craziness I’ve been aware of. She’s been desperate, but not the person that acted like the rest of the world was actively trying to get them.
Yep, super long mini-rant, but you kind of need to know that perspective to make this an actual pitting.
Anyway, while waking up before work, I receive a call from an unrecognized, local number. I don’t recognize it, so I figure if it’s important, they’ll leave a message. They do. Upon listening, it’s apparent that this is the collect calling number from a jail. I don’t know anyone who’s in jail that I’m interested in paying to talk to, and the message didn’t catch the name, so I go back to dozing until the phone rings again. Same number, this time I pick up. Yep, that’s sis saying her name. I’m still not willing to pay to talk, and hang up, but at least I know what to look for now. Plus, I know she has a job interview tomorrow.
So, I wake up and talk to my wife about it. She pulls up the charges. Possession of marijuana <2oz. Hmm. Damn. That’s a bullshit charge. Especially compared to the things I actually dislike her for. Not to mention, that she floated me a loan to bail me on the same charges 20 years ago. She can’t repay this, but I can afford the gift.
I deliberate with the wife, who has little sympathy for my sister for a myriad of entirely valid reasons, and I decide to go with my better angels, and bail her out.
So, I don’t know if I am pitting my sister for rooking me into the one literal “get out of jail free” card she was able to manage through knowing how to manipulate my remaining sense of honor, or I’m pitting myself for being sympathetic enough to get myself into semi-hot water with my wife over the same sense of honor. Who knows, maybe I’m pitting everyone involved (including myself and the system) on the principle of the whole goddamn thing. I’m just one unhappy motherfucker who can’t see the good in this interaction, at all.
Seriously, I thought this was gonna be a mini-rant.
*Hell, I know who they meant. There’s only one right way to pronounce my name wrong. Besides, I wasn’t actually pissed at them.