Why have none of you clever title-makers started a December mini-rant, huh? I have rants, and they need to be heard!
My rants so far today:
I had to drive someone to the airport this morning, and as I was getting into the car, I hear a sort of thunk of something falling. Aha! One of my beloved, comfortable, well-worn sneakers had lost a heel! Yes, these Nikes were old, but comfy! I drove off and left it in the garage. Fortunately I just drove directly back from the airport and didn’t need to walk around, but have you ever tried to walk anywhere with the heel of one of your shoes missing? It doesn’t work!
Then I had a long nap until it was dark and went into my study to use the computer. I turned on the light and it seemed to flash for a moment before turning on. I turned it off and on again, and this time, I got a bee-like buzzing from it for a few moments, and it turned off permanently. This was a LED bulb. Aren’t they supposed to last practically forever? No, because there’s one in the outer hallway that also quit with an impressive display of buzzing and flashing.
No big deal, right? Just replace the bulbs. Wrong. I have a persistent pain in one leg that makes it difficult to climb up ladders. Especially the short, light stepladder I have in the house that I have to basically balance on in mid-air with nothing to hold on to. There’s a regular stepladder in the garage but it’s big and heavy.
Well, nuts. I was thinking that no one had started a December thread and I even came up with a dilly of a title, but you, @wolfpup, had to go and sneak in there first. HARUMPH, I say!
My mini-rant: as of this morning I have 7 working days left in the year. Suddenly, EVERYONE wants their documents NOW, and I only have one set of hands, y’know? Plus I have to do this stupid “mid-year” self review, and I really, really hate reviews plus it’s time away from what I’m SUPPOSED to be doing, plus I have to take a stupid security infomercial, too. Bah. There isn’t time for all this shit.
On the plus side, I’m going to Worldcon this year (yay for almost local), and I just found out that some neighbours are willing to look after my cats for me while I’m gone, which is good because one of them has to be medicated everyday and he can be something of a problem to pill sometimes so none of the pet hotels or my normal pet-sitting agency were willing to deal with him and the vet can’t because they’re not boarding any animals right now due to being short staffed. Even better, it turns out they’re SF/F fans AND they like to play games, so I may finally have local people to play games with. They have lots of games. Also a 6-month-old baby girl, and I’m really hoping they’ll let me cuddle her.
So it turns out the best treatment for ADHD is to take pills that you forget to take because you have ADHD.
I’ve missed two doses this week, which makes me cranky and foggy for the days I don’t have them, and then the days I do have them my body needs to get used to them again, so I can’t sleep. Ugh.
We are friends with a couple who are both retired. She used to work in advertising with my gf. He is a great guy who drinks more than I do, which is saying something. Before Covid they were doing 3-4 cruises a year, having a blast.
Well, now he is in the hospital needing a liver. His doctors are suggesting a living donor and a relative has stepped up to supply a part of their liver for him. Without a transplant he will die, but his doctors want him to agree to never drink alcohol again.
Yesterday the wife asked if I’d text/chat with him, as he is depressed about the whole situation. We chatted for over an hour. When he asked what I’d do in his shoes, I admitted to lacking his strength to even get to the point he’s at. I can’t imagine going through all the pain he’s experienced, and I’d never be able to say I’d never drink again.
Now his wife is pissed off at me. Apparently she would have preferred I stick to her script during our chat, instead of being honest. Fück.
Yeah, likely won’t work for her. I say it because a similar set up doesn’t work for me. I have no problem taking my morning pills with breakfast, but the evening ones? I must fail at least once a week.
How can I not take them when I have a freaking alarm that goes off? Somehow my stupid brain has learned that the alarm means:
turn off the alarm. It’s done its job, I know its the time to take the pills.
Realize that I don’t have a glass of water at hand right that second. Yeah, I try to, but then I’m likely to notice the water at some earlier point and realize, hey, I’m a bit thirsty…
Realize I don’t want to interrupt whatever I’m doing JUST at that second to get the water. Like, it can wait for the next commercial break, right? Or until I finish the chapter I’m reading, or at least this exciting scene. Or I’m in the middle of reading – or replying to – an interesting thread. Whatever. It’s just that I hate having to putting off finishing something JUST to do something that honestly could happen any time in the next hour, or even two, with no real effect. (My body does not run like a fine tuned swiss watch, you know?)
Decide I’ll do it ‘in a couple of minutes.’
Idea of taking the pills vanishes forever.
Actually, what is even more annoying is when I DO get up and get the water right away. Because somehow my stupid mind has decided that alarm imperative is satisfied by the action “Get up and get the glass of water.” Which I then set down on my desk or chair side table or such…and ignore. Yep, I go get the water, set it down, get distracted by something, anything, and don’t actually follow through with the act of swallowing the damn pills.
Talk about feeling really stupid. I need someone with a club to stand over me and force me to do NOTHING else until I put the pills in my mouth and swallow them.
It is really discouraging when I discover yet again that the previous compartment still contains those pills the NEXT time the alarm goes off.
If I can’t take my morning pills* right away, I pour them into my hand. Then I’m trying to do tasks uncomfortably, and wondering if the pills can melt from body heat, and I pretty much can’t think of anything else until I swallow the damn pills!
My secret: Schedule meds when the cat eats, keep them by her dry food. If I forget, there is NO way she will let me forget. Breakfast at 7am, she’s usually either staring at me by 645am, or sitting in front of her bowl loudly complaining.
Today’s complaint: Just a general feeling of grumpiness. I am so tired of some of my clients. I am irked by my supervisor’s attempt to be helpful, yet actually coming across as patronizingly petty. My dear mother is in another paranoia streak. I continually work on disengaging with her when she gets on these benders, but damn it’s difficult. My daughter is coming up this weekend and I’m preemptively annoyed at having to change how I live, even if it’s only for a few days. Other humans in my house is exhausting.
I can usually remember to take my pills in the morning, and have a reminder alarm on my phone that goes off at 9 pm for the ones I take at night. Although like StarvingButStrong I will usually dismiss the alarm then forget to take my pills until I’m in the kitchen at bedtime getting the next morning’s coffee ready (and washing my CPAP mask, which I also forget about until bedtime). My problem is Sunday mornings, when I refill my pill container. I’ll refill for the week, but then forget to take the Sunday am pills!
I also keep a small stash at work for the days I go into the office, just in case I get to work and remember that I didn’t take my pills before I left home.
Hell, I’ve started keeping a few pairs of earrings in my car, for the same reason.
Rush out the door / get halfway to work / realize I’m undecorated.
Sitting at a red light, fretting, fuming at myself, vs. Sitting at a red light, quickly shoving in earrings, and feeling better.
EVERYTHING costs more. A gallon of drinking water was 80c just a few months ago, now it’s 98c, and etc. (I live in the land of “don’t drink the tap.” e.g. Michigan.)
Don’t get me started on gasoline. Jeebus.
Have my hourly wages gone up to accommodate? No. Am I having a hard time stretching my thin dollars? You betcha.
… and that’s just “drinking water” and “gasoline to get to work.”
Imagine the price hike on luxuries … wait, what are those?
Crude oil prices have dropped by about 20 per cent during the last month, so I suspect a gallon of gas is more likely to drop below $3 in most areas of the US than to go to $5.
Yet gas prices are still climbing, to the extent that the President has asked for an investigation.
“The bottom line is this: gasoline prices at the pump remain high, even though oil and gas companies’ costs are declining,” Biden wrote in a letter to FTC Chair Lina Khan. “The Federal Trade Commission has authority to consider whether illegal conduct is costing families at the pump. I believe you should do so immediately.”
The $5 a gallon estimate was something I heard on the radio this morning. I wish I could remember who, I want to say it was NPR.
Fucking Christmas tree fell over while I was at work today. I suspect this was due to the stand’s prongs not being as secure as they could have been, or maybe even the tree not being properly centered in the stand (Mom insisted it was crooked after it was initially placed in the stand, so I had loosened it to attempt an adjustment). It’s nice and tight now, but geez I didn’t need this mess today. It’s a bit embarrassing to tell your supervisor you have to leave early to help your mother contain a flood of water from an overturned Christmas tree.
I’ve already picked out a new, sturdier stand (the existing one is about 17 years old). Now I just need to decide if I want to buy it now, or risk waiting to see if my company is going to give everyone the standard gift card for Christmas.
“Oh, Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree, how very much I hate thee” was going to be the alternate title of this thread, but it was a bit on the long side. I used to adore Christmas but I think I’m becoming a Grinch and a Scrooge. My son is way past the age where he gets excited about Christmas presents and indeed makes a point that he doesn’t care for Christmas at all. He’s always willing to accept cold hard cash, however, but for various reasons money is tight right now (not the least of which reasons is that I just paid off some extremely exorbitant backlogged house taxes – one of the highest mill rates in the entire province, augmented by the kind of exorbitant interest rates once illegally charged only by large burly men with names like Luigi and Giovanni who equipped themselves with baseball bats to break your kneecaps with). So my usual cash generosity is going to be considerably tempered this year.
Oh, and in addition to having to replace light bulbs with my crippled leg as noted in the OP, there are also three (not one, not two, but THREE) wired smoked detectors that need replacing. I have the replacements, but not the mobility to do it. Plus there is also the expensive HD cinema projector and screen that someone gave me, expecting me to put it up right away and comment on its awesomeness. I’m sure it’s totally awesome, but I’m to going to have to hire someone to do it. Which is going to impoverish me even more.
wolfpup do you have a local handyman you can hire to take care of stuff like your smoke detectors? There’s a lot of home repair/maintenance kind of stuff that I would have been happy to do myself 10 or 20 years ago, but as I get older it usually winds up being “screw it, I’ll just pay someone.”
ETA: never mind. Somehow I missed your last sentence.
Meh, the cost of a handyman to do a few simple tasks isn’t that big a deal. It’s a good idea. I’m more worried about finding somebody trustworthy and competent but I should look into it. I mean, lightbulbs are lightbulbs, but the smoke detectors will need some rewiring because they use different plugs, and if I find someone competent they could probably do the projector, too.
Re the projector, I’m perfectly technically competent to set everything up and I have all the equipment, cables, switches, etc. that I need. No need to pay a high-priced installation service. I just need someone who can competently locate ceiling studs and with the muscle to physically lift things.
I’m just not feeling it this year for some reason. I took two extra days off to decorate; Mom and I actually got both trees up and fully decorated (yes, two live trees…one in the living room to enjoy, and one in the formal dining room to be seen from the street). It typically takes a solid week to get all of that done. At work they’ve announced a Christmas lunch and a Secret Santa event, and possibly an extra Ladies’ Dinner…and I’m not interested in any of it. I did put my tiny fake tree up in my office, so that’s something I guess.
The troublesome tree is still sitting upright, and the rug seems to be drying nicely. Thanks to that thick rug, only one ornament got broken. I even managed to get a little work done remotely today.
I suspect this was due to the stand’s prongs not being as secure as they could have been, or maybe even the tree not being properly centered in the stand (Mom insisted it was crooked after it was initially placed in the stand, so I had loosened it to attempt an adjustment). It’s nice and tight now, but geez I didn’t need this mess today. It’s a bit embarrassing to tell your supervisor you have to leave early to help your mother contain a flood of water from an overturned Christmas tree.
“Oh, Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree, how very much I hate thee” 
was going to be the alternate title of this thread, but it was a bit on the long side. I used to adore Christmas but I think I’m becoming a Grinch and a Scrooge. My son is way past the age where he gets excited about Christmas presents and indeed makes a point that he doesn’t care for Christmas at all. He’s always willing to accept cold hard cash, however, but for various reasons money is tight right now (not the least of which reasons is that I just paid off some extremely exorbitant backlogged house taxes – one of the highest mill rates in the entire province, augmented by the kind of exorbitant interest rates once illegally charged only by large burly men with names like Luigi and Giovanni who equipped themselves with baseball bats to break your kneecaps with). So my usual cash generosity is going to be considerably tempered this year.