At my vet in Canada they have a candle on the wall which is lit if there is anyone there having a pet put to sleep. It’s a nice touch so that people in the waiting room can be mindful of someone else’s grief.
I’ve had the same thing since about mid July. I stopped knitting for about two months but Christmas is coming so I went back to it. Not knitting didn’t seem to help anyway and by the time I thought physio might be in order, it started to feel better. Now I just have a lot of stiffness if I’ve been idle or sleeping. Pls update if the brace helps 
Aw, ENugent, I’m so sorry. I’ve had to do this twice, and it was horrible both times.
Christmas music, in small doses it’s great ,heartwarming and just lovely but having it blasted 24/7 from companies that are just using it to boost profits :/. Now I don’t work in retail or anywhere that has to listen to it all day but I feel for those poor souls that do.
(((ENugent))) So sorry for your loss.
Go find a physical therapist ASAP! They’re better at diagnosing this sort of thing. I thought I had carpal tunnel, my parents (both physicians) thought I had arthritis in my hand joints, and a physical therapist took one look at it and said “Tendonitis. Do these three stretches and massage this point right here.” Pain was gone within a week.
Good lord. The Post Office seriously needs more minions. I’ve been on hold for an hour and a half trying to reschedule a delivery that wasn’t delivered Saturday because it was going to my employer’s office.
Careful. Postal workers are notorious for going postal:)
My friend’s husband died last night. Lost his fight with a brain tumor. We knew it was coming, and in the end it was peaceful, but that maybe only helps a tiny bit.
Wore my Fuck Cancer t-shirt to work today in his honor.
this happened ot my great aunt (shes over 80) but she liked coloring those adult coloring books now shes bored all the time
I don’t worry about Mom writing checks – she’s scared to send a check for anything other than bill paying because she worries (rightfully so) about what becomes of the check if the recipient opts for mobile deposit, and she has a self-imposed list of charities. She still gets all kinds of solicitations in the mail, and will happily keep labels or other goodies they send. I do get worried about Christmas spending though…she’s feeling very generous and creative this year (unlike last year, when everybody got gift cards), and I keep forgetting to give her my discount card every time she heads off to the UPS store with another load of boxes.
And then we get to travel after Christmas. I just want to stay home and enjoy not having to go to work, but she wants to visit the place where she and Dad would have retired, so off we go.
Oh, and {{{ENugent}}}. 
I could rant for hours on trying to navigate our healthcare system. Waited months to see a specialist (who took as little time as possible, even avoiding a simple yes or no question with “I’m over booked today”). Getting an ultrasound, a followup and a referral to physical therapy has been dozens of phone calls and another month of waiting. While I down ibuprofen and aleve trying to cope without Serious Pain Pills.
Now, where’s the “anti-rant” thread? NO ONE can make it for Christmas. Daughter’s working all week in NY, sons would rather stay warm in CA… so we get to have as minimal a Christmas as we want. Maybe no tree, certainly no music (except Charlie Brown & Belafonte). Ahhhhh…humbug.
{{Rhiannon8404}}
I have a little potted plant, the only outdoor one I brought from my old place. There’s a bunch of plant pots in the shared apartment patio area, so I put it with the others. No problem for 6 months, but now every time I go outside it’s on its side.
It’s not unstable or catching the wind, someone’s knocking it over. Sometimes it’s been a few feet away from where I left it.
A couple of the other potted plants died over the dry summer, and someone moved the pots away when they were empty (just a little further back) so I thought there’s a vague possibility that it’s in someone’s way, though I couldn’t quite see how. So, I moved it to a new spot, next to another plant in the corner of on the raised area near the washing line. No possibility of it being in the way.
Just went out: some shit’s kicked it over in the last few hours.
I’m pretty sure it’s the sole kid in the building, him or his friend. No other kids play around there, it’s a private area. Problem is, I have zero evidence, just the fact that he plays there, glares at me and refuses to even grunt in reply to a ‘Good morning’ and is notably careless with stuff I have (bouncing footballs of my car, etc.)
His parents are barely on nodding terms with me though, when I asked his Dad if the motorbike was his that was parked right under the washing line, making it unusable, he got a bit pissy at me (his is the other motorbike apparently). I ask them to stop him, they’re going to shrug and say it’s probably not him.
In the scheme of things, it’s no massive deal, but… it’s my plant, I’ve been growing it for years, it was looking really good and now it’s getting battered and looking beat up. And I can’t work out what to do to stop it happening. I can’t move it inside, it needs a cold winter.
1100 bucks for new brakes and rotors and a battery!! Ok then.
That phrase is a thing of beauty.
I am here to rant against the ridiculous soppy sentimentality about the behavior of GHW Bush’s service dog since he (Bush, not the dog) died. I am quite sure that the dog is just going where he is told and lying down when he is told. Give it a rest, Facebook!
I don’t know why this kind of fake sentiment gets me so heated, except possibly that it draws attention from the real things in the world that actually deserve to be celebrated.
Nice dog, on to your next assignment, where I’m sure you will continue to do the good that you were trained to do.
In my correspondence for work, I use the initials HW frequently. It’s shorthand for the name of our major product line. For the past few days autocorrect has been changing it to H.W… Persistently. It takes me like 3 tries to change it back. It’s driving me crazy.
My rant is about UPS. Each month my wife receives two packages, sent out on Thursday and scheduled to arrive on Friday. One package is medical supplies, the other medication, kept cold with coldpacks for the 24-hour period it will be in transit. (It’s a blood product with a short unrefrigerated lifespan, and she injects it twice a week.)
This Friday only the med supplies arrived. I tracked the other package, the more important one, and found it was in Philadelphia, three hours away, with a Monday end of day delivery window. This would not do. So I called UPS. After about six phone calls over the next twelve hours, and discussions with at least three different people, I was told on Saturday morning that the package had arrived in my city and would be arriving at my front door “within thirty minutes.” Being transported by the manager of the local UPS facility, no less!
You can guess the rest. It didn’t arrive within thirty minutes, or within sixty minutes, or within three hours, or indeed on that day at all. It finally arrived Monday late afternoon. Luckily, I assume it spent most of the weekend sitting on a cold truck because the coldpacks weren’t quite melted and the medicine was not yet spoiled (we contacted the shipper to confirm that it would still be effective). But, good lord, this medication is delicate, and expensive, and necessary, and they could have fucked us up royally for certain.
Couple of takeaways:
–UPS representatives, when I say this is important, expensive medicine that must not be allowed to get warm, PLEASE do not suggest that I ask the shipper to replace it free of charge. First, it’s your fault, not theirs. Second, we aren’t talking amoxicillin or cough syrup here…
–UPS, is it really necessary to give your supervisors a SEVEN DIGIT extension?
–Which the supervisors then have to SHARE?
–With no place to leave a voice mail (“The voice mail box is full”) when I call the number I’ve been given and no one answers?
–UPS reps, please don’t tell me you’ve noted all my concerns and they’re in the file unless you actually have done so; it’s very frustrating to have to go through the whole rigamarole with the next person when you said I wouldn’t have to because it would “all be right there.” It wasn’t.
–There’s more but I don’t want to think about it any more. Fuck 'em. Thanks for reading.
I had expensive refrigerated medication (for MS) scheduled to be delivered by UPS on the day of a big snowstorm in Seattle about ten years ago. It did not arrive, and they tried to tell me that they had tried to deliver it and no one answered the bell. However, my husband had been sitting in his office that overlooked the street all morning and was prepared to swear that no UPS truck had driven down our street. Fortunately, the snowstorm also meant that it didn’t get warm too fast before they delivered it the next day.
A few years later, they and the specialty pharmacy conspired to fuck up my delivery again. For unknown reasons, the speciality pharmacy always makes me give them my address again, even though it has not changed. Let’s imagine that I live at 1400 181st Place SE (not my actual address, but similar). Pharmacy doofus guy, after making me repeat my address several times, sent it to “1400 180 First Street Place SE.” UPS looked at this bizarre address, and dropped the package off outside 1480 183rd Place SE. Thank goodness the guy who got it opened the box, realized it was medication, and then tracked down my phone number and called me about it. I was able to drive around the corner and pick it up. I had agreed to allow it to be sent no signature required, so I might have been on the hook for a replacement despite the fact that the address made no sense.
When they called me the following week and asked for my address, I paused, then told the (different) guy, “I do not think you are stupid, but it went to an address that was so spectacularly wrong last time that I am going to spell the whole thing for you now. 1-4-0-0-space-1-8-1-s-t-space-p-l-…”
Surely there is other news in the world today. When is CBS going to stop yammering about GHW?