Warhead On Legs

Today wasn't the worst day in the world, but it was by far not the best day I've had in a while either. First the credit card company said there weren't going to be any more forebearance/deferments coming which, um. Have you missed the fact that a lot of people are still out of work/about to be out of work again as things shut down again and people get sick? And then my aunt basically cleaned out my desk and dropped it off on my front stoop, leading to some questions from the boy that I didn't know how to answer and got more and more stressed about. I don't know why my aunt wanted to clean out my desk, and I don't have any different answers for why they're shutting down the store other than they're all old, this isn't going to go away anytime soon, and no it's not ideal or even fun but asking me for answers I don't have is only going to make me yell at you and then cry at you.

So I did. I yelled. And then I cried a lot. I am.. not that much better. But oddly, more confident in my ability to get through tech school, assuming there is a reasonable possibility of a job that doesn't involve me moving house. I'm assuming that is not an unreasonable demand from the admissions person. I hope.

I just don't know. And I'd feel a lot more comfortable about this if I did know. But I don't. So I'm going to try not to worry about that part of it for now, and worry about getting my skills back up to snuff.

I looked on their website. Their coding bootcamp prep talks about studying HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Ruby, and "technical interviews" which, huh? But HTML and CSS, yeah, those I'm definitely familiar with. JavaScript not so much, Ruby not at all. But I know where to go to practice it, and I have a notebook ready for notes and things, I have advice from people in tech. ACTUALLY. I should go ask a couple other people I know in tech. (Actually I should probably stop thinking about it.) (I'm going to do that second one because the thought of them giving a non-favorable answer is closing my throat right now.) Anyway. I know what I need to study over the next week. Now I just need to study it.

The rest of the day, not bad? Beads were put away, cross-stitch was gridded, garden was watered and is doing fine, the cherokee purple tomato plant looks very happy to be in more dirt. Dinner happened. Dishes happened. Writing happened until I got too stressed to do it. It's just. It's been a day. A long, worse, painful, scary day.

I don't even remember when I last updated, although it's probably been less time than I remember. Long story short, someone brought something up in discussion yesterday that turned out to be a major trigger of mine? Somehow? I think it was a perfect storm of it being a sensitive (racism-category) topic, and it was duly labeled as such! And then on top of it being that and me having already had a hard past 12 hours emotionally, it managed to mash one of my trigger buttons really hard, such that I spent a good 3-4 hours in what I can as a Farscape nerd only describe as barely controlled Luxan hyperrage. I was really mad, okay. (Not at the friend, btw. Not the friend's fault. But the person who said the things, ooooh grrr.)

So after a while, and by after a while I mean as I was drugging myself to sleep with ZzzQuil that night, it occurred to me that maybe I had been under a lot of stress lately, and to list the stressors. And I started listing them out, starting from March 26 to almost three months:

Going into quarantine, thus isolating myself so I see only the boy every day and some store employees about once a week if I can. A couple weeks after that, going into in-house quarantine because of the boy being on the covid ward with actual patients there, therefore inducing in myself touch starvation for... I don't know how many weeks it was but we'll guess 8? It was after local lockdown. Windstorm of doom, tree falls, thereby bringing half of an actual nightmare I've had repeatedly come true. (In the nightmare the tree destroyed the house. This did not, thankfully, happen.) Got into a giant money and logistics fight with my Aunt, who believed she could just tell me things and I would magically be reassured and convinced everything would be taken care of. No. Second windstorm comes up, thereby confirming that the first windstorm has now given me a panic trigger. The windstorms continue, about three or four of them before the windy season dies down. I'm still in quarantine. Around the end of April, I think? No, beginning of April, Murdock gets sick, losing weight, badly limping, vet can't figure out what's wrong at first, so that's about a week of stress before we take him back for a proper blood test, vet confirms diabetes. Keeping in mind this is added stress because six months before our other cat had started abruptly losing weight and it turned out to be an extremely fast moving fatal cancer. So. Thankfully that stress has since resolved. He still walks funny, but that's because of muscle loss and we're working on building it back up. He's taking his medications well.

So we're into... May? Ish? My birthday happened. That turned out to be much less awful than I'd expected given we were able to do none of the things we'd planned, and we'd planned some extra special fun. Then George Floyd was murdered and the entire United States overturned in protest. (Several other countries have had protests too, but the US seems to be overturning more than most due to various.) About that point I got off Twitter because having an endless parade of 'and this city's police department did this heinous thing' 'and these people were ignored by medical departments' 'don't forget the concentration camps are now gas camps' was... not good. So that took away both one stressor but also one source of relief because I wasn't talking to my glam squad anymore, or sharing things with my writer friends. I'd started making new friends in a more smaller, contained, with a designated "awful stuff goes here" area type of place, but making new friends and feeling connections takes time! So that's a work in progress, albeit a positive one. People in my neighborhood started shooting off intermittent fireworks even up to midnight and 1 in the morning, which is a sign of overall positive morale but still a stressor. And then also our downtown area, where the store is and where some of my relatives live, was subject to three or so nights of tear gas, vandalism, fireworks, and cops being awful.

And I think even at that I'm missing stressors, I haven't been reporting on here as much and... ugh, I don't know. It all came to sort of a head yesterday afternoon? Ish. I think yesterday afternoon, and time is doing that crash into itself thing again. So, trying to get back into the habit of daily blither on here so I can keep track of what's going on. Also tagging. Tagging should be a thing. If for no other reason than then I can look for the tag to find out how much stress I've been under. Even apart from the individual things there's been the ongoing isolation stress, the boy-is-working-on-a-plague-floor stress, the financial stress of not having a job and unemployment only stretches so far (there's a thing there but until the thing happened that was a stressor) and the when will this end what happens after stress. I'm under way more pressure than I allow myself, is what I'm saying. Not that I can allow myself to be stressed or not stressed, but I haven't been accounting for it, and I probably should.

... this has gotten long enough that I think this is going to be a two post day. Post about what I've been up to incoming.

( Russian: still horrible, and not in the difficult way )

Keep moving. Do the Russian, do the languages, do the writing. Keep moving. Instead of shark week I've hit shark mode. Keep swimming, don't stop. On the plus side shark mode is not like red queen mode, it's not a constant run, it's just a constant keep moving, even if it's crawling on one's hands and knees.

Speaking of hands and knees, I really need to start in on the kink bingo.

Hopefully this upswing is more of an upswing now that I'm away from boy issues (he is getting taken out behind the coal shed and beaten for SO MANY REASONS RIGHT NOW) and have gotten some goddamn sleep. The lack of sleep is not the boy's fault. The crushing disappointment of yesterday is not entirely the boy's fault, though sleeping through what I thought was our intended dinner and a movie date is. Along with the ants. ... Okay, that's really the extent of his crimes for now, but I still ... he is on my last nerve right now, and I don't have many left. But as far as other things go, I may be stabilizing. I just seem to have hit the point where it takes very little to tip me over. Which means at least one extra hour of sleep, being more careful than usual about not overdosing on cheap sugar and eating balanced meals, and getting my exercise. The more physical components of depression I can alleviate the better.

Yes, I said the D word. For those of you in the cheap seats, SITUATIONAL DEPRESSION. Not the fucking other one. I am not ill with a chronic illness, though if that comes to play I will dolefully murder everyone. I have SITUATIONAL depression. Which is a goddamn head injury. Yes, this is a sore point right now, I have not bitten anyone for it yet, but let's get our terms straight. If for no other reason than chronic/severe/etc, long term forms of depression are treated VERY differently than situational depression. And if anyone tries to treat me for long term depression I will alleviate my situational depression by punching them repeatedly till they go away. Treatments or suggestions for situational depression, on the other hand, are much welcome. Money, gifts, chocolate. Booze. Cabana boys. That sort of thing.

.... Okay, so that button's still there. Good to know. The other possibility is that instead of getting better with sleep and minding my food is that I'm on an upswing and will soonish crash, which will suck. I'm keeping an eye out for that.

Um. Okay, no, I have way too much shit to do. By the numbers: Gods and Monsters by THIS EVENING, edit the fuck out of Blood in the Gutters, two Kink Bingos that I have vaguely planned, and one other thing. Clean house, make the boy finish pinning up my goddamn hem so I can fucking hem that costume and finish Huntress and be done with it, finish weeding/cutting down all the fucking pokeberries and ailanthus. Because they're pissing me off. That's not actually a depression related thing either, they've been pissing me off for a while, I'm just now writing about it 'cause I actually cut down the pokeberry that was in my way this morning. Too much shit to do. At least work is slacking up for a day or so. Oh god, and I have a dentist appointment tomorrow morning. Don't wanna. Might actually bite the hygienist.

No, Irish just isn't happening this morning.

Apparently shit went down last night while I was asleep.

Also, it's April 19.

( Cut in case anyone else reacts to April 19 like I do, or worse, or is just suffering bad news overload. )

( Русский яызк, и другие языки )

So, um. Yeah. This is happening, with more questions and things as I get them to come to mind. And more languages as I get time.

I used to translate at a free clinic for prenatal/post-partum checkups. Well-baby appointments, etc. Since this was a free clinic for low/no income people, there's really no PC way to say this, we ended up getting a lot of Spanish speakers who had no English. Which is fine; my grandmother volunteered as a translator, and I did too. I didn't have much medical Spanish but I did sit at the front desk, take appointments, etc. When everything went down yesterday, apart from fantasies of putting on an Iron Man suit and flying people to hospitals, doing analysis on the remains and flying off to kick ass, etc. (Such are my coping mechanisms.) I also thought, well. If this happened, assuming I didn't freak out completely, I could be of use. I speak four non-English languages well enough to get through some basics. I could be of use. And I imagined going to some triage station, going "Hi, I speak Spanish, German, French, and Russian, do you need me to translate?" And, you know, failing that, I have full use of my limbs and can fetch and carry, but.

Such are my coping mechanisms. I can do this thing that not a lot of people can do? FINE. Put me to use. Please.

Anyway. So for the next few days I'm going to be pulling out all my old skills out and brushing them off and applying them to the other languages I've since learned. I've actually been meaning to do that anyway since part of my backup plan involves translating at gov't offices, which will essentially be the same hundred or so lines over and over, with the occasional random person who comes over and has something completely out of left field. Which is why I'm doing the larger practice, too. But having this dictionary of phrases will be good. It's something I can do, anyway.

So tired. All of my LJ comments for the last I don't know how long seem to have gone into my spam folder, thanks, yahoomail. Still haven't heard from my friend in Boston, pondering shooting him a DM to see. I doubt he was in that mess. I hope he wasn't in that mess. (C, heard anything from zombie_dog?) I'm just really, really tired now. And I have too much shit to do and I don't want to do any of it. And I'm going to be on my own this weekend 'cause the boy's going home for the weekend and. Meh. Just, meh.

No. Today is not the day to talk about gun control.

Ten fucking years ago was the day to talk about gun control.

Today is the day to talk about how we can make up for an egregious lack of common fucking sense with regards to our medical care system, our mental health care system, our attention to our fellow man, common fucking decency, putting our love of things that go bang and rat-a-tat-tat above our love for our fellow human fucking beings, pushing people we think might be violently unstable off on the grounds that "someone else will help them," ignoring the problem because we don't want to make waves, a despicable lack of empathic long-term planning or looking at the consequences our wants are having on others, blaming the victims for not being armed themselves and failing to act in their defense against their own fucking murder, and not doing a goddamn thing to prevent this happening again. And again. And again.

Oh yeah, and gun control. I lied.

Never has my icon been so appropriate.

( Русский язык )

I really, really need to straighten my head out as to how to translate gerunds and progressive verbs in my head in Russian. Argh. If I have this right Russian uses an entirely different convention, but I keep freaking out that I don't have it right and am making shit up. Bleh.

Also, all this voter bullying bullshit? That can stop right the hell now, please and thank you. Voter bullying, voter tricking, all that shit. Cut it the fuck out. I would like to think this is still the United States of America, and not any of half a dozen other countries (Russia, I'm looking at you) where the elections are so corrupt you might as well just rig them your way altogether. If you're not doing that already. God, I want to punch all these people in the face. Coercing people to vote the way you want them to, scaring them away from voting, tricking them so they don't vote? That is not what this country is fucking about. Fuck. You. So much hate and rage. Not that I like Romney but fucking hell, this offends my sense of patriotism on so many goddamn levels. And they call themselves patriotic. Our founding fathers, who they so often call on, are generating electricity in their graves. Enough to power New York City till after the polls close.

Anna's right, I shouldn't read Yahoo news this early in the morning. And the boy wants to go vote early tomorrow, so there's that, which means I need to hustle my butt and research the candidates for the non-partisan positions. I've already all but decided to vote straight party ticket because there is not a single goddamn Republican I like, which is truly depressing, but I should double check for third party candidates I like better. Blah. So much work. But worth it.

I have no idea what I did to tweak my back last night, but I really, really hope it's over. Not even middle of back pain this time, some muscle group right under my right shoulderblade extending around to my underbust ribcage area. Ow. Up to nausea-inducing levels of pain at times, though I slammed back an 800 milligram tab of ibuprofen which seemed to have killed it, and today I did a number of dance/yoga stretches that seem to be helping. But fucking ow. I disapprove in the strongest terms. Of course then I was an idiot and watched Center Stage which resulted in me going I FEEL BETTER I CAN TOTALLY DANCE AROUND THE ROOM and Anna going SIT THE FUCK DOWN YOU IDIOT. Oops.

And no fashion show for anyone today, because it turns out what Kohl's means when they say 41" bust they actually mean 45" or so. Um. No. So, returns it will be and I will get another batch of shirts that are more my size. On the one hand, I like being a M-to-L. On the other hand, goddamn. The sleeveless t-s turned out well, though, apart from needing to put in boob darts, I think. That's easy enough done. Except for the fact that I won't have my sewing machine set up for a month and a half. Someone remind me to do that. And finally on the fashion front, I have discovered that thing I was looking for! Apparently it's called Polyvore, this thing that lets you assemble clothing to create a look and even if you can't see it on a body, you can see all the items together. Since I'm not fussy about getting the exact item pictured, this will be awesome for planning out what I actually need to get vs what I have vs what I'm looking for. Woo! This might not turn out to be the world's most unfeasible idea. Seriously, I have been jeans and t-shirt girl for ... almost 15 years now. Except for special occasions and laundry day in college. Getting me to dress with some vague care beyond I-feel-cranky-it's-a-Rorschach-T-day is going to be an interesting time.

( Gaeilge )

I don't even know what to say or where to begin to say about Tony Scott. I knew of him, he wasn't my most favoritest of directors, but then again neither was his brother, necessarily. They both made some movies I enjoyed. And yet the suddenness of this seems to be leaving everyone reeling, as though a piece of the sky snapped off and left a big gaping nothingness where blue and cloud should be. Everyone says they didn't see it coming in the aftermath. I've never had anyone close to me do this, so I can't say if that's true or not. I imagine, like most other things about human behavior, it's variable. His friends and family get to pick up the pieces now. And the rest of the world who comments will undoubtedly use this as a springboard to stump for the Suicide Hotlines, depression counseling, things like that. Which is good. I mean, it's good to be kind every day. Like the sudden surge of good will around Christmas, maybe we should try at least a little to be kind every day. But it's good that we're talking about it.

I hope he is at peace, now. I hope his family and friends can find some sort of peace.

Less seriously, I saw Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter last night. It was exactly what you'd expect from a movie entitled Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. There was Lincoln. And vampires. And he hunted them. It was shiny and full of gratuitous violence in well-choreographed cinematic slow motion. Also axe twirling and stovepipe hats. It did make me want to watch Night Watch again. More vampires!

Today's mood is decidedly erratic. I'd say volatile but that has other connotations. Need to get my head on straight and adjust, accept, something else beginning with a? Only I don't wanna. This is going to be awkward. And interesting. At least work is relatively busy.

And I am not going to hash over what Todd Akin said any more than I already have this weekend. Which was mostly you fucking jackass and your science is broken and get the fuck out of my country's legislature. He is wrong, the reasons he is wrong have been repeated continuously since he was wrong on television and the internet, and everyone knows there is a wave of misogynistic douchebaggery trying to drown women in this country one asinine comment at a time. Yes, he is contributing to my cranky. No, I have nothing much more to say than that.

( Deutsch )

... there was going to be a pile of bitching here about the house buying shit but, really, I don't know anything solid yet and getting tweeted at by Jackie Earle Haley with truly horrible puns makes everything better. I love you, Jackie. Never change.

Ahem. Okay, so, yeah. There's supposedly some things that will cause yet more delays with the appraisal and thus the house buying, but the appraiser says that the house is "habitable though it needs some serious TLC" is the toned down from techspeak version. So I don't know what that means in terms of whether or not the appraiser will sign off on everything, or if they're just saying "Um, dude, this house needs some serious TLC, are they sure about this?" After all these goddamn delays I am about ready to scream at the slightest hint that something might be snagging again. I'm trying to be rational but, people. Please. If I have to submit a detailed report and timeline saying that I will repair the fucking thing and this is my schedule for doing it and this is my estimate of costs and this is the breakdown of every goddamn repair, I will do it. Do not test me.

I might declare for fuck everything takeout tonight. No, I shouldn't, I'll probably end up making, ooh, sweet and sour chicken. That's healthy comfort food. God it's tempting, though. I am so fucking sick of all these delays I'm starting to sound like the fucking McManus brothers. Or a character in fucking Deadwood. (That should be the actual town name, Fucking Deadwood.)

Maybe my journal should start having one of those warnings. "Warning: I say 'fuck' a lot." I suppose I could always change it to 'frak.'

Right. No takeout, going home, doing the thing where I have good, healthy comfort food for a change. Lots of protein, some sugar, some rice. And then writing all the things I'm in the middle of, and more rewriting of BigBang Mixups, and things and stuff. No point in freaking out until I know for sure there's something to freak out about. And calling Mom, because Mom is usually able to make everything better, and in this case she's doing a good job. Except I called her in the middle of both our workdays. Oops.

It's my birthday on Saturday. Can I PLEASE have my house for my birthday? Pretty please? It's not even that it's unpossible, the deal is almost through, it's just taking forever and a data figure. So, please, universe? Can we just finish this up for my birthday? I promise I won't ask for any more marriage equality victories for, oh, two months, at least.

(Though that would be a nice birthday present, too.)

( Русский язык )

I don't even. So, yesterday I get a couple of emails that basically amount to we might not be able to complete the appraisal because of the problems that need to be fixed. And the selling bank isn't going to fix it, and apparently there is an exception paper that could be written out but everyone has to talk to someone else and check and can't this just be fucking over with already? I'm not even sure what I can do about it, everyone has to talk to everyone else today and then get back to me. I put all my mortgage ladies in contact with my realty lady, so hopefully that can get untangled today. Right now ...

Fuck Everything, Half-Naked Sasha Roiz forever.

No, okay. Right now things are happening at an incredibly fast clip, but at the moment it looks like I can get an estimate of the repair in writing from the plumber I contacted and brought out to have a look, and there's a new contact person at the bank who isn't a fucking moron. He says he might be able to get them done. I'm hoping he can because this is about to drive me homicidal or something.

Right. Nothing more I can do unless I really want to make a pest of myself calling people every half hour or so. I hate it when there's essentially nothing I can do except beg, plead, and throw myself on the mercy of other people whose job it is to keep an eye on the bottom line. I really hate that bottom line shit. I mean, I understand it? I just don't like it. But I have other shit I could get done right now, so. Come on, Jag, let's do the other shit.

I did see some interesting survey about racial self-identification of hispanic peoples on US census things. It made me wonder a little, am I a second generation immigrant if only one of my parents immigrated? (And, for that matter, did my biodad immigrate or was he a second-generation immigrant himself? It's one or the other, I'm sure.) Does it count if he is only my biodad and my actual Dad who raised me was born and raised in the States, himself? It's funny because these aren't questions I ever think about, myself. I am an American. Whether I'm being patronized and treated as, for lack of a more accurate term, a fellow white person who can reach out to those "hard-working Mexicans" (and 6-7 years later I still remember that fuckhead) or whether I'm being looked down on as someone who belongs with the hired help, I am still an American. It's never occurred to me to define myself otherwise. If I have to self-identify as one race or another, I'd probably pick white maybe 40% of the time and hispanic the other 60%. Depending on whether or not I think it'll lead to me getting treated badly by police, shafted for a job or a place in a school, depending whether or not I can tell the person means I feel like a part of this group or that group... depending on a lot of things. Racial identification isn't something I think about a lot, either. Not until someone asks me. Which is more of a class and geographic luxury than anything, really, due to where I grew up and live now.

Anyway. I swear, my next entry will be kittens and bunnies and something fluffy to break from all these heavy thoughts. Pictures of hot men. Something. I am so tired and suddenly all the plans I had for the rest of ever are back in a state of tremendous flux. Okay, not all the plans, but a big chunk of them. At this point it's not even maybe losing the house of awesome that irritates me, it's the lack of certainty. I want to go home and curl up and sleep, and I can't.

Right. Shut up and soldier, soldier. I have filing I can do, writing, editing, I have German I can do if I get desperate for stuff to do, I have word gardens I can plant. There are other things I can do while I wait for word to come back, so let's get on and do them. (Also at some point I really should start writing my own Russian things. At some point.)