Continuing the discussion from Mini-Month Mini-Rants (Feb 2026):
Been dealing with an annoying cold all week and it kicked my butt today. I slept in until noon and I’ve been coughing and sneezing all day.
What really sucks is that it’s not bad enough to be in “sick mode”, but it’s bad enough to make me miserable. It’s that sweet spot where I’m sort of sick but not really. Make up your mind, body!
I somewhat pit myself.
I had a phone stolen, so I obtained a cheap replacement. Now I want to install various software. It is an non-jailbroken Android, so I am required to use the Google Play store.
But… I cannot remember my password, my previous phone had a password manager for most things except Google’s suite of products (ie, the ones I need to keep secret)… but I can’t recall my latest Google password.
I had to change it because, obviously, I don’t want to lets some random person access to my account. I just failed in that most important step… remember the new password. DOH!
Worse yet, I set up my recovery email to redirect to Gmail. So that address points straight into the account I cannot access.
And on the 1st of March, 2 mass shootings, one in Texas one in Ohio.
The day started when I forgot to turn on my alarm the night before. Woke up late when I was hoping to get into the office early today.
Picked a great day to lose my key fob. Front desk has been unstaffed. Standing outside in the fucking cold texting everyone I can think of. So far I have no idea where the fob went. Not in my bag or my car. Hoping it’s somewhere obvious at home.
I’m so fucking sick of losing shit all the time.
I’ve been trying to recover from burnout. I crashed last week hard. It was my husband who pointed out this appears to be neurodiverse (ADHD/autistic) burnout. Key features are intense fatigue, skill regression and increased sensory sensitivity.
He also pointed out I don’t have enough friends. He’s not wrong. I used to have eight friends I saw regularly through my writers group but we can barely find time to meet these days, and one of us is dead (It still sucks. I watched a YouTube video I wanted to send him. Can’t. He’s dead.)
So I’ve been moving in as small of increments as possible trying to get back to life again. I puttered this weekend, played a low-stakes video game.
I’m turning 43 Wednesday. I’m okay with it, unfortunately it’s going to be a busy work day and a lonely evening just because of how schedules work out this week. I kind of wish something cool was happening.
Instead I’m trying to live vicariously through my son’s birthday. He doesn’t know it yet but this weekend he’s getting his own small laptop, Steam account, and Minecraft. I’m a little nervous he’s too young to master the art of using a mouse/trackpad, but we’ll see.
We’re also going to start giving him an allowance. 
Six years old. I can’t handle it.
I’m so sorry. I sort of know what this is like. 5 years ago, my best friend had a stroke and went into a coma for months. We did not know if he would live, or wake up, or be able to communicate if he woke up, or be coherent at all. He did wake up eventually, and regained the ability to talk, and walk (which some doctors said would never happen). He definitely has severe consequences from it, but he’s mostly the same person he was before.
But for that long period of time, he was gone, and so many times I saw something I wanted to send him, or ask him, and he just wasn’t there. It was weird. He wasn’t dead, but he was dead to the world.
Losing a friend is like having a phantom limb. They aren’t there, but you can feel them and you forget they aren’t there, and you get reminded over and over.
I know the burnout too. I’m going through it right now, to a very lesser degree, but I’ve had it to an extreme degree before. A couple of times in jobs I had people leave, and I had to take up the slack, and worked my ass off to make up for it, and did well enough that the powers-that-be decided everything was great; they could get away with paying just one person and save money! Each time, when I realized that was the case, I got the fuck out of there. But that’s not always an option, or at least usually not an easy one, and sometimes burnout is temporary (as I’m sure it is for me, as we are going through a tough transition at work because of budget issues and “reorganization” causing chaos) so it will get better. And sometimes you can’t tell which is which.
I don’t have a solution for you, I don’t know that one exists, and I doubt you’re looking for one, but just know people are reading, and do care, and are sorry.
Thank you, I very much appreciate your compassionate response. There’s a lot of upheaval right now and I think as an economy we’re going to see more and more of it.
I probably need to get a part time job. But there aren’t many, and competition is increasing, and my entire field may disappear as more and more employees are forced to use AI regardless of whether it actually improves anything. My first long term career goal was to work for the government - well it’s not exactly a secure job prospect anymore. My second plan was to be a consultant, but as grant writing positions are phased out, everyone is going to compete for those jobs. Plus what happens when every consultant is using AI? We typically charge by the hour and the real money is in federal grants which take 100-200 hours of work. That might change radically real soon. So I’m working on finding a better situation for myself but it could take a while.
Now tomorrow our water will be off All Day, something about an emergency situation. Its on tonight though.
I plan to just go out bussing around.
Homer weighs in:
I had a weird anxiety attack during All Staff meeting today. I’m not sure what triggered it to begin with but the presentation by the DEA didn’t help. I lost two family members to drug overdose, one at age 30 and one at age 19 (father and son.)
I guess maybe it was triggered by the trauma stewardship activity. Every time we have an infrastructure failure or an outage, because we haven’t raised the money, I keep thinking, “this is my fault.”
I have to work on this.
I was curious what type of emergency your town had to have your water turned off for a whole day. Where I live, the tap water has just been treated with hydrogen peroxide by the water department but was thankfully not turned off.
That’s not at all weird around here. They just every once in a while say that they need to flush out the water main or something, and for a day you can’t use water. I’ve had that happen in a few different towns I’ve lived in.
I went a whole week without water when I lived on Guam and endured a super typhoon, a day isn’t that big of a deal.
(Before anyone asks how I survived, when you live on Guam you stock up on gallons of water in your typhoon closet because that’s just something that happens there. So it’s not like I had no water, it just wasn’t coming from the plumbing for a while.)
This has happened regularly for the last ten years in my small PA town.
High bacteria readings/water main breaks/ clogs/etc.
We finally had the entire water main/sewage system replaced over the last couple years so I am hopeful we can move forward without so many water interruptions.
Its just our building. The heaters arent working and they have to do something to fix it that involves turning water off. Hopefully it will be back on shortly
Yes a quick fix is good! Maybe I should build a water closet for myself. I go through water like an elephant at the zoo.
I have an appointment at a local pain clinic next week and they provided me with an eleven page form to complete.
It’s so subjective. To begin with the definitions of so many words make my head spin.
What is seldom? Sometimes?
These numerical scales are meaningless without some kind of guide to make sense of what they are asking.
It’s giving me a headache.
I’m here in Tokyo on a trip and meeting my friend in Shibuya at the famous statue of Hachiko, a well-known meeting place.
People are lining up to take pictures of them in front of it. Tourists. Whatever.
There’s a Western guy wearing bright, loud clothes and drinking a beer (which you don’t do) standing by the statue and getting in everyone’s picture.
He could simply move over a bit, but then he wouldn’t be the king of the universe, I guess.
Yeah, but how bad of a headache?
Happy birthday @Spice_Weasel
May you have no reason to post in this thread today !
Now I have to rant that I saw the birthday icon and someone beat me to it! 
//i\\
On a scale from 1 to 10?
LOL…