Unplug the phone in the hotel room.
I speak from experience.
Good luck!
I turned 50 in May. So…
Yup
Check
Check
Check
Absolutely
I feel you, dude. Doesn’t it just suck?
On the upside (sorry!!) I find that these days I’m getting much better at giving less of a shit what randoms think about me over this that or the other weird stuff I may be doing. And that really is a superpower you can keep practising till you keel over.
Yes! I’m pushin’ 70 and I love it. Sure, my health problems have health problems, but I’m one tenth as neurotic as I was when I was younger (especially when I was working for sociopaths, and with prima donnas).
On my Bro-in-Law’s 60th I texted “Welcome to the decade of not giving a rat’s ass what people think about you. Wear that ratty t-shirt to an upscale store, mow your lawn shirtless, get deliveries from pizza places every night… and eat it on the front steps with a 6-pack of crappy beer.”
As a recently pregnant person who kept horking up her psych meds in the first trimester, I want you to feel full permission not to enjoy being pregnant. I hated pretty much every minute and there is a lot of pressure to receive it with unadulterated joy. I hope you do get some joyful moments (and I did toward the end - I loved feeling him move) but if you hate every second that is totally okay.
Power is back on! Earlier than expected. We were in the hotel all of six hours, but man, what a long six hours. We’re finally home and unpacking. We had two cartloads of stuff to schlep to the hotel and back and I asked myself, did we bring anything unnecessary? No we did not. You really need all that stuff for a baby. Yowza.
Our first outing with the Spice Kit is over. I’m gonna put him to bed and then have a long, hot bath.
@GuanoLad I will help validate your feelings, getting old isn’t for wimps. However, as @digs has mentioned life is much easier when you no longer give a shit.
I used to get all sorts of upset when I got the wrong thing at a drive through because they always fuck you in the drive through. Now, as long as the food is about the same cost as what I ordered and doesn’t have anything objectionable, my attitude is “This is just one meal out of the 93,000+ meals I hope to eat in my life. Its totally not worth fussing over.”.
I think people are misunderstanding my point about being old.
I’m not upset that I’m old, or that my bits aren’t working as well as they should be. I’m upset that people don’t take my being old as a legitimate thing that should be accounted for, and instead all try to reassure me that it’s just a number and I look fine and I don’t look my age.
I am not looking for reassurances or compliments. When I tell you I am old, please take me seriously that I now have limits; acknowledge those limits, don’t ask me to do things that young people can do, I am not young anymore, I am old. Just because I dress like I’m 25, doesn’t mean I am still 25.
I can’t lift things. I can’t walk very far. I can’t see very well. I can’t keep up with rapidly changing technology. I can’t sprint up the stairs. I can’t do this stuff. I know I can’t. Don’t tell me “you look great to me, what’s the problem.”
(the people I am complaining about are Job Placement staff)
It seems like what you’re looking for is what we in the USA call “reasonable accommodation.” Try cutting to the chase and asking for it by name.
(Caveat: here, the term is usually associated with the Americans with Disabilities Act. It might not be a thing where you are. And if it is, it might not apply to age-related issues.)
I have a doctor who, when I have my physical and bring in a long list of Parts What Ain’t Workin Right, nods and mutters “Okay, not going to worry about that, what’s next?”
I finally said "You’re not going to worry; it’s not your knee. And you’re half my age, you’ve never had to use a stair rail like a ropetow."
And less than half my age are those kids on my soccer team who keep passing me the ball twenty feet ahead, leading me like I was thirty. “I coulda gotten that when I was your age. Whenever you see grey hair, pass TO them.”
I am thankfully not horking up anything, just wishing I could so that maybe I would feel better.
It seems that Michigan is in the midst of another COVID spike. The school district sent out a letter, saying that they would be recommending to the board that all the students go to remote learning through the end of the year. I was onboard with this plan. This seems like the best course of action given how many cases the schools have had.
Welp, the school board didn’t approve it. We will be in person until Thanksgiving. I suppose that’s not all that long but, I am so anxious we are going to have to quarantine with every passing day Daughter goes to in person school.(I should note that Husband and I already had COVID and it is likely Daughter had it too, though she showed no symptoms. We aren’t concerned about catching COVID again but we definitely don’t want OTHERS catching it.)
There has got to be a better prep for a colonoscopy. After finding so kind of need I’m being scoped upper and under. One good thing is that I’m COVID negative.
Colonoscopy prep is the goddamn worst. I don’t know how they haven’t figured out something better by now.
Yep after all that 30 minutes later…no bleed.WTF.
For some unfathomable reason, the Peter Cetera/Amy Grant song “Next Time I Fall” has been stuck in my head nearing a week now, making it one of the worst earworms in recent memory. Hell, peops, I even watched the video three times yesterday and the only things I got out of it was wondering if Peter Cetera usually sings with his eyes closed and curiosity in Amy Grant’s schedule - what, this is the biggest break of your life and you can’t even make the shoot w/ Cetera?
Anyway, hate it when this happens.
Truly pitiful grumps this morning:
Only was able to get 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep
Decided I deserved a cup of faux mocha to try and wake myself up
Opened up the box of ‘try me’ K Cups - so many random cups I would never use (if anyone wants 8-9 random K Cups, please message me- we’re talking pumpkin/vanilla, birthday cake - the flavored ones) so was slightly disappointed
Find a super strong one, pop it in the Keurig, but don’t start it so I can heat up the chocolate creamer mix I make.
Start the Keurig. Start the microwave.
Trip the breaker.
Go flip it back, trip up the stairs, banging my elbow on the wall.
Keurig won’t restart, have to add more water, weakening it
Finally get my cuppa made. Walk back out to the living room, accidentally kick my own damn ankle, trip, spill half the cup on the rug.
And I have three meetings today.
I, sadly, just canceled my subscription to Disney+.
Not because I had to, not because I wanted to, but because I learned today that they are cheating at least one professional writer out of the royalties he is owed. Alan Dean Foster is one of the big deal writers in the world of SF&F. If they’re cheating him, how many others without his name recognition are they stiffing? I’ve enjoyed Mr. Foster’s work for decades. I can’t knowingly contribute money to a company that is cheating him out of what he is owed.
I felt your story in my soul @MissTake right down to kicking myself in my own ankle.
Me? Oh, I managed to smush my finger in the door at work because I didn’t want it to slam shut, since my badge doesn’t work on that particular door. Big, sore bruise across that fingerbone; in hindsight, I shoulda just knocked.
Then while rummaging through my bin o’snacks I managed to get a friggin’ paper cut from the packaging on something. Same hand, next finger over from Smushy-Bruise.
I’m not terribly accident-prone, and hit my quota for the month all at once on my dominant hand. Wah!
Miniest of mini-rants: the “OMG CATS” edition.
Got some fancy schmancy glucosamine treats for felines. They even come with a “warning” label:
Due to the delicious nature of our products, do not leave unattended around pets.
Bold claim!
You guessed it: The 13-year-old vintage feline with increasingly stiff hips won’t touch 'em.
The six-month-old hoovers them like candy … but then, he’ll eat anything.
I am seeing multiple targeted ads for alternatives to cemeteries in Minnesota (Twin Cities area).
This is a mystery, as I have not been pricing burial plots, urns, or anything to do with post-mortem planning, and have not researched trips to Minnesota, dead or alive.
In fact, of all the states in which I might choose to be non-traditionally deceased, Minnesota is near the bottom of the list.
Someone hit the stop sign in our corner easement and knocked it into the street. The person also drove through a corner of our yard to do so. Considering the speed and erratic behavior both before and after hitting the sign and driving away, I am sure drugs and ETOH were involved. The damage to our property is very minor, but now there is a heavy metal concrete based sign almost blocking a very dark, no street lights residential road.
As we are old farts and have old fart neighbors, we couldn’t deal with it ourselves, so hubs called the non-emergency sheriff number and was told that they couldn’t send anyone out tonight, but they would report it so the roads department could come out first thing in the morning.
Its not a busy road, and the speed limit is only 25, but yanno, one would have thought that the folks who are supposedly trained to try to keep people safe might consider a big ass metal sign and pole in a dark road to be a hazard of some sort.
I called 911 and played hysterical old woman “SPEEDING CAR, DRUNK, ALMOST HIT OUR HOUSE, CAR PARTS ALL OVER THE PLACE, STOP SIGN IN THE ROAD!!!”
I know that nobody was being killed or robbed or injured because of the stop sign in the road, and I am not sure if I should feel bad about abusing the poor 911 operator, but I really did think that someone could have been hurt by hitting it in their car.
Good for you JaneDoe. I mean couldn’t they at least send a cop out to drag the sign out of the road?