In which I re-installed the board.
I’ve quit most social media except Twitter, which is or isn’t being purchased by Musk, and my timeline is full of people going ‘well this is basically dead now, like LiveJournal’ and ‘how do i mastodon’ and ‘where are we going’ so, what the hell:
HERE’S RANTS AGAIN!
It’s safe to join, nobody can see your email or anything. This will fail but whatever, it only took half an hour.
In which we bought the house across the street and moved into it.
Look at this adorable kitchen!
I thought I’d hate the yellow, but it’s growing on me. Looks cute with my blue stuff.
Still hate the pink living room and hallway, though! Have a painter coming Tuesday morning to give us a quote for painting over the pink.
The kitchen is mostly together, and the bedroom and office are unpacked. Still need to connect the washer & dryer, and the guest room is half full of boxes. Plus it needs furniture.
We love this house!
In which I’ve had a BONE GRAFT!
Friday I went to the endodontist and had a bone graft. Local only, no sedation. I’ve had four (wisdom) teeth extracted and two root canals, and I’m not dental procedure-averse, but this surgery was pretty rough.
He numbed me thoroughly, so nothing hurt, but one is still aware of what’s being done. It’s stressful knowing the doctor’s taking a scalpel to your gums! And having a tooth root cleaned under the gumline with a sonic is dismal. Don’t even get me started on the sutures, ye GODS.
I got three prescriptions: an antibiotic, some generic Vicodin, and a twice-daily rinse.
Apparently my wisdom tooth extraction left a pocket of bacteria that have destroyed some of my jaw bone, so this procedure cleared out the area, removed calculus from the tooth’s root, and added cadaver bone as a sort of scaffold for my own bone cells to use.
The first 48 hours post-surgery were a little rough because of swelling, but not particularly painful. I made a batch of gruel of brown rice and chora dal (it came out really good!) and drank a lot of cool water. Ice pack on the face for 20 minutes each hour. Slept on the opposite side. Napped.
Today’s day five, and it feels fine. I made the mistake of looking in there, though, and it looks gross and the suture ends are sort of wound around my teeth in a weird but ultimately probably very clever way.
I go in next Tuesday to get my stitches out!
If, God forfend, I ever have to do this shit again, I’m getting sedation. Root canals are fine, but having my gums sliced and flapped over while fully awake is a bit too much for me.
in which there’s an observation
nobody else could have played greg house because the character is a complete, irredeemable fucking asshole as written, and the show only worked because laurie’s intrinsically as soft as a lop-eared bunny yet obviously brutally intelligent
the show never would have gotten a second season, or possibly even past the pilot, if they’d cast literally any other actor in the role, because house is SUCH a total dick no viewer would have warmed to him without that inherent compassion
you notice on re-watch that laurie almost always plays house against the script, making him gentler and more internal than the plot suggests through the character’s actions and behavior
(yes, i’m watching ‘house’ in the middle of the night again, it’s a pandemic, wtf do you want from me)
for the record, both laurie and house (even though the former is probably passive-aggressive af and the latter’s a drug-addicted sociopath) could totally get it, i’m not gonna lie, and furthermore this is based entirely on closeups of those eyes and the scene where house is seen chopping up a line like a true partier lol
~+~+~
in news unrelated to ‘house’, i’ve been having actual hot flashes lately, like genuine full-fledged ones, and HA HA HA they really DO SUCK, and also The Dread returned a week ago and i’ve had two or three utterly shitty episodes, so if you’re thinking of developing a panic and/or anxiety disorder may i suggest you absolutely really just DON’T
did some very gentle isometrics the other evening — because i was reading a book about menopause that told me all about muscle loss (muscle mass peaks in your 30’s and then it’s all down hill from there) and how to maintain bone density — and fucked up my left knee for the next three days, and it’s still tender and weak, goddamn it
fucked up my right arm while sleeping last week, too, and it remains sore, but at least i can still wrangle throughout the day multiple 20-pound wheels of cheese at work like i’m supposed to
keep resolving to bike more but then i don’t like the weather so i don’t, need to just make myself ride anyway, keep my quads from dissolving
aging while female is serious business, bitches, i swear i never realized how robust i’d always felt until i got this old and menopausaly, it’s a fucking racket
~+~+~
I MADE VEGGIE PULAO, DAL MAKHANI, AND TOMATO & ONION RAITA TODAY and it was yummy, and i also did a ton of laundry because the bedroom smelled like sweaty socks
paid the bills, did the dishes, and mended a favorite dress and a favorite tunic today as well, felt so productive!
we’re gonna walk through the house across the street tomorrow, hoping to buy it, i am dying to see the weird built-in china cabinet i saw on zillow
in which it’s a random brain dump! because that’s what blogs are FOR!
– my sleep schedule is WHACKED, with various levels of exhaustion and insomnia, i’m either sluggish af when i should be awake or wide awake when i should be deep in a REM cycle. was a few minutes late to work every day this week, boo
– it’s been 112 days since my last period, so in another 253 days (if i don’t bleed) i’m officially menopausal!
– i can’t regulate my body temp for shit when at rest (i’m fine at work, still), so i keep a pile of items next to me when i’m studying, reading, or watching movies: a pair of wool socks, a sweater, another sweater, and a shawl, and all these items come off and go on in a never-ending shuffle, plus when i get hot i get SO HOT it feels like prickles all over my skin, which is like a hot flash but also not like a hot flash
– 34,000 americans died of covid over the past 28 days; the government is weakly recommending boosters but is otherwise doing nothing. THIRTY-FOUR THOUSAND PEOPLE DIED IN 28 DAYS, nobody’s doing anything of note, it’s literally fucking insane
– two of my co-workers are traveling for christmas, and no one is still in a bubble as far as i can tell. if anybody brings back covid i’ll be PISSED OFF
– i had an egg this morning and then didn’t eat again all day, so was starving when i got home. made myself a burrito out of various orphaned items from fridge and freezer and IT WAS AMAZING. so yeah, i do recommend you try putting a chopped-up tamale in a burrito with rice and beans, lettuce and tomato and onion, salsa and cheese guac, it totally works!
– i couldn’t finish the awesome burrito; ate a little over half and gave up: i can’t finish anything these days. i remember ordering and eating (!!!), a decade ago, entire mexican platters and it just seems impossible now, like, where did it even FIT lol
– yesterday someone asked if my nose ring “was a snowflake?” (my mask was low, oops) and it made me super happy because it DOES look like a snowflake and i’ve worn this thing three winters in a row without anybody noticing! yay!
– i watched die hard last night because it’s christmas movie season. hadn’t seen it in so long it was like seeing it for the first time (save the stills used in memes). fun!
– seriously considering (once my dental work is paid for, UGH) getting myself a Real Bike next year, maybe an e-bike, something with assist for longer trips? they’re expensive [well, expensive compared to $100 walmart bikes, but cheap compared to cars, of course] but the weather’s SO mild out here it’s always possible to ride, and maybe i could get a true step-through because (a) i wear long skirts more often than not and (b) i’m old, so getting on my bike is rough on the hip muscles when i’m tired after 6+ hours standing on concrete floors at work hauling 20-pound wheels of cheese, crates full of milk, and loaded delivery coolers
– speaking of which, some areas of the creamery are clean rooms, so i keep a pair of crocs at work. i wash and sanitize them at the end of every shift, and those shoes never leave the building, so this way i don’t have to put on slippers ten times a day to walk briefly into the creamery or the cave. the other day i took them off to wash them, and then walked around in my sock feet emptying all 7 trash bins, and HOLY SHIT IT HURT! age-related collagen loss is a bitch, i can feel the bones of my feet in ways that i never could have imagined twenty years ago, when the flesh on the heels and balls of my feet was so thick and plump. omfg those bouncy shoes are a BLESSING, i kid you not. bouncy and sanitizeable!
– my better half got a new job, he’s at whitman college now! likes his new pay rate. wants to buy a house. we’ve been looking, but goddamn the market is blown. reesty shacks are like a quarter of a million dollars?! insane.
– i knit a hat last month but it was too short so i had to pick up the hem, which i did half-assedly, to knit another couple inches so it’ll fit. still in progress, will look like hell
– my potted avocado, which i sprouted from a pit when i moved in with my beloved 8 years ago, seems to have died, and i think this SUCKS, but i’m keeping it inside and not letting it dry out in the hopes that maybe it’ll sprout again in the spring?
– i made cute little PROSCIUTTO-WRAPPED HALLOUMI kits at work: halloumi, prosciutto, a printed recipe, and a custom olive & cornichon mix, all in a little box, and people keep buying them and it pleases me a great deal to think of someone getting one as a gift and really enjoying it
– one aspect of studying in earnest for the CCP next year, which i am half-but-not-fully committed to sitting for because it costs a lot, is that i keep buying CHEESE BOOKS, so now i have a bunch of really cool CHEESE BOOKS in my house
In which I have to spend money on surgery.
Went to the periodontist last week and I need about $3k (initially) worth of surgery, including a bone graft, to help keep my teeth in my head.
Periodontal disease is bullshit. It’s basically bacteria eating your jawbones. Super fun. I used to feel so superior about never having cavities, but now I’d like to trade. A bunch of cavities would be much better than this bullshit!
Can I just fill the Waterpik with, like, something that will keep fucking bacteria out of my sockets?!
CADAVER BONE GRAFT, PEOPLE.
I’m not afraid of the surgery itself, I just don’t want to spend my savings on it and I don’t (think) I have insurance that will help.
And after the surgery, I apparently will want an additional procedure to help me not grind my back teeth out and an “appliance” to wear at night to stop the damage from bruxism.
Honestly wish I knew how long I’m going to live; it would be good information to help one decide how much to spend on keeping one’s teeth in one’s head. If I’m gonna die in a decade, I’ll spend the money on something else. If I’m gonna live ’til 80, well obviously stopping jawbone loss is a good investment.
Oh, he also thinks I’ll lose my most expensive possession, my root canal and crown. There’s bone damage so he thinks it’ll fall out somewhere between 5 and 10 years. So that’s exciting. Not.
in which i stayed an hour late tonight because of reasons
there’s new staff at the creamery (we lost five people in a single week a couple months ago) and they tend to leave their shit all over the work benches even when they’re not using them
“shit” in this context is buckets, scissors, slicers, knives, pens, vac bags, labels, tape, notes, and cheese. all these things have places they belong, and those places are NOT on on a work bench other staff need to use
nothing wastes more time than having to clean both before and after i do a task; workstations should either be actively in use or CLEAN, not abandoned and dirty
anybody starting a task should be able to do so from a fully reset kitchen, every single time, which means everybody needs to fucking clean as they go
when i went to slice and package charcuterie today, i had to clean the fucking slicer first, and then i had to clean & sanitize the bench, and then i had to clean the vac sealer
the number of times i have had to wash the wire cutter and knife and planer and bench and scale before i could even start cutting cheese lately is, well, too fucking many
i do too many dishes and bench resets for other people. like, i DO NOT mind helping out when it’s crazy busy, but this happens every single day now: i have to clean equipment and work areas before i can start to do my own tasks
i had to return an entire cart worth of buckets and molds (at least they were clean, i’m grateful for that!) to the creamery, where they belong (and where they traditionally sit to air-dry), from the kitchen, where they didn’t, just so i could clear enough room on the drying rack to do somebody else’s dishes after they left without doing them
all but one of the morning staff left without finishing their cleaning and dishes, and i staged their overflowing trash for them by the exit to go out but they all just walked past it so i took seven bags out myself tonight
i need to figure out how to communicate “clean as you go” and “take the trash out when you clock out” and “do your fucking dishes so i don’t have to wash equipment before i can work” and “don’t take a break until you’ve cleared your work area” without sounding as annoyed as i actually am
two of them have repeatedly told me they’re “so busy,” but they’re also standing around talking for the bulk of the first two hours of my shift; now, i know you’ve been there for hours already when i arrive, and i don’t mind if you sit down for awhile, please do take a break, but IF YOU FUCKING RESET THE KITCHEN FIRST, MAYBE I CAN ACTUALLY START DOING WHAT I NEED TO DO instead of waiting for a clean workstation and clean equipment or cleaning up after you again
i’m very glad i no longer have to package the hundreds of pounds of curds they do every week, and, as i said, i’m absolutely happy to pitch in WHEN NEEDED, but i don’t like having to clean the whole goddamned kitchen before i can do my job because everybody’s decided to just not clean up after themselves
so today i basically faffed around the shop for a couple hours when i got there, decorating for christmas, because i didn’t feel like doing everybody’s dishes and trash and bench resets, but i ultimately ended up cleaning the entire kitchen after they all left anyway, then doing my own work, and then closing (aka cleaning the kitchen again so it’s ready for them in the morning), which is why i clocked out an hour late
lol YES, I KNOW this is just another short stanza in the eternal open-versus-close-staff war, and basically, in spite of the above bitching and attitude and do-not-like nonsense, i’ve decided my approach: i’ll just fucking clean! i’m not too good for it, i’m not above it, i don’t need to have ego about it, and i’m just gonna set the standard and keep it myself without being invested in how other people respond, because the bulk of this rant is, i realize, just ego and attachment and judgement
yes.
In which I’m making soup!
I’ve just put some vegetables, herbs de Provence, and broth into the Instantpot. Will add cream when it’s done and blend it.
Baked a stunning loaf of bread last night; gonna make a brie sandwich with it and that’ll be dinner!
Pluto has a channel that just plays endless back-to-back episodes of The Love Boat and I’m super into it these past few days. What a weird-ass show! It’s so incredibly horny.
I cut my hair yesterday. The only cut I ever do: pull it all carefully to the nape, whack it off. Instant asymmetrical bob! I don’t really like how thin, straight, dry, and awful my hair is these days, but what can you do. I also don’t like being old and fat, either. Oh, well.
Work is insane lately. They’re making cheese probably four or five times a week, there’s ice cream now, foot traffic is really picking up, and we’re hosting Poutine, Eh? (a Tri-cities Restaurant) in pop-up format every Saturday. I used to order from the distributor every two months, now it’s twice as often and we’re always perpetually nearly out of crackers. I spend a lot of time making custom snack packs for local tasting rooms.
I’m the only person still wearing a mask at work; I’m doing it because the global consensus appears to be that it’s the best approach, even if local mandates say otherwise. As of today, I only know personally of two people who have caught Covid-19 (an uncle of his, and a co-worker of mine) but with everybody going back to normal and variants, well I want to do the right thing.
The kitchen window sill is full of herbs and a jade tree cutting Embo gave me. None of the several tomato plants out front have set any fruit. I guess next year I’ll just put flowers in the raised beds since it’s a rental and I don’t care enough to replace all the soil. (Did tell the owners we’d buy it if it were ever for sale, but I doubt they want to sell since this is their designated house-to-retire-into.)
Today’s the first day the high temp was under 95 in weeks. It’s been unbelievably hot and dry. It’s supposed to get down to 55 tonight so I’m going to turn off the A/C for only the third time in as many weeks (once for service, and a few nights ago to air out the stuffiness) and open the house up.
Time to go eat some soup!
in which i rage a little
you have no idea how much time and intention i put into overcoming that shitty “everyone is stupid” attitude smart people often fall prey to and which turns them into assholes, only to end up in this timeline where a third of the population is demonstrably, irrefutably stupid
i mean i used to say that people may look stupid from the outside, but if you understand their actual specific circumstances, most people’s behavior and decisions are actually rational in context
but here we are!
…adults railing against wearing masks and getting vaccines during A DEADLY GLOBAL PANDEMIC, because some bullshit about their “rights” being infringed
…people voting on the single platform of provincial, ignorant fucking racism (see: trump and brexit) and nostalgia for the fake era of 50’s american prosperity
…we just had a record-breakingly insane heat dome and shit’s on fire (as of the time of writing, cle elum has an evac order) AND we’re in a drought. plus most if not all of both WA and OR have official moratoriums on fireworks, but motherfuckers are out there BLOWING OFF FIREWORKS aka this neighborhood sounds like fucking afghanistan in 2010 because LET’S RAIN DOWN SHIT THAT’S EITHER ON FIRE OR JUST MERELY VERY GODDAMNED HOT on dry grasses
…if you watch broadcast TV, which you don’t if you’re under 45, because why the fuck would you, and you lack sufficient critical thinking skills, you probably think that a lot of those snake oil products you see advertised are actually legit because they’re on TV and you don’t know that whatever regulatory bodies that should be protecting you from such garbage lack the funding to do so
…the preponderance of our citizenry really feel that they not only can but should drive everywhere, all the time, because they lack the ability to imagine any other way, like, people will straight up fucking drive a tenth of a mile and back rather than walk or cycle simply because society is so incredibly, horribly, wastefully car-centric and while i have sympathy for thinking this (there are so many mechanisms in place to cause people to think this way) i also require people to FUCKING DO BETTER
in which there’s a complaint
being old sucks because everything hurts all the goddamned time for no reason and i get uglier day by day
but at least there’s rampant government and corporate corruption, grift, a global pandemic, and the climate to make me feel worse!
racists, anti-vaxxers, MAGAts (i cannot imagine finding the former guy intelligent, capable, and a good leader; the man’s a venal, ignorant, racist fucking moron and i have rocks in my yard smarter than his rabid followers), BUT WAIT! a billionaire class that could feed and shelter everyone AND give us all healthcare but just chooses not to because they hold us, their own species, the very one that made them obscenely wealthy, in contempt because they honestly believe their disgusting greed means they’re better than everyone else