the girly who shall end all girls

had my first migraine of 2024 today. one of the remarkable things about mine is that effective treatment includes a large dose of caffeine and sleep. the caffeine has no stimulant effect at all, I was out in less than ten minutes after donning a sleep mask

later this evening while I was still lounging on the couch we watched the first two episodes of Poker Face. so far, so very very good. the structure is a murder mystery but in a why done it/how solved it structure - you see the murder in the opening scenes. so kind of like Columbo (if he was a human lie detector on the run from the mob)

( health update )

because i've been tired i'm way behind on all the silly Hallmark movies i recorded. tonight i finally sat down to watch the first one in a couple weeks and had to rage quit.

( three times, NO )

so i turned that off and watched A Holiday Spectacular, and it was surprisingly good? poor little rich girl auditions for the Rockettes on a whim to keep her friend company, and she gets in! hijinks of the "I'm going to go to New York for a couple months and lie to my parents about what I'm doing" ensue, but it's mostly a found-family story set in 1958 New York with a very nice framing device of grandma telling it to her granddaughter (who is waiting for her callback slot in auditions for Clara). it passes the Bechdel test, it acknowledges the presence of Jewish people, and our heroine goes to the city and has an awesome career.* it is a fantasy in that 1958 NY is magically fully racially integrated at all levels of society. (the Rockettes didn't hire a dancer with dark skin until 1987 *sigh*) but it made sense since there's plenty of footage in the film of the real Rockettes doing their thing and being awesome, and i'm glad they went that way instead of excluding the dancers of color.




*the laziest Hallmark plots feature our heroine leaving her high-powered career in the city for some earthy dude, often her ex from high school, and living happily ever after in some small town that is usually the place where she grew up. wish fulfillment for parents, i guess.

( health update )

i'm really out of it; yesterday a scammer nearly got me. the call woke me out of a sound sleep and my first mistake was to actually say that i was ill and the call woke me up. dude must have been thrilled to get someone already disoriented. apparently this is a long-running thing - i didn't get the identity theft version but i did get the "pay a fine" version. in hindsight i can pick apart everything, but the dude was good enough for sick me - he used real information about me and about the local court system mixed in with the bullshit, kept me isolated, made me write down a bunch of info, and was playing ACAB to the hilt. fortunately the whole thing fell apart at the fine payment part, where he wanted a direct payment via Zelle (which is a person-to-person cash transfer service in the US that isn't subject to any chargeback protections) for an amount that was less than the stated fine. at that point i noped out and called the actual sheriff's office who confirmed the scam.

the phone number they tried to use for the transaction was a Georgia state area code; i guessed that the dollar amount was about avoiding a felony charge and i was correct. Georgia law: "theft by deception of any property worth more than $500 committed against a person age 65 or older: five to 10 years' incarceration". (i'm not that old yet but i'm sure many of their successes are.)

i went to the pool for deep water exercise for the first time since...probably the end of 2019 because it was already closed for scheduled maintenance when covid hit Washington. everyone was nicely distanced and i think about half the class didn't use the locker room so it felt pretty good, fear-wise.

the class was a good workout and i am sure tomorrow i will know what parts of me were hit hardest. the good news is that i had no trouble getting my suit off (i was afraid i might be wrecked enough that getting out of the straps would hurt) and the seal on the swimcap was perfect. hair color safe, body happy, pool good, Tuesday night routine is a go.

yesterday i had my first migraine in a while. it took me down at the end of the work day and i ended up missing Friday night game. (i fell asleep hard after having dinner, drugs, and two tiny cans of Coke Zero, and even after i woke computer screens were a no-go.)

i felt better this morning. we picked up breakfast from Hattie's and coffee while we walked the dog, then watched Falcon and the Winter Soldier while we ate. then we walked to the better grocery store, which had potted bulbs 3/$10 and got 3 clumps of narcissus and three clumps of tulips. we picked out ones that hadn't bloomed yet; originally i had intended to just sit them on the balcony, but they were all quite rootbound in their little plastic pots, so i ended up doing some impromptu gardening. dead cruft and moss cleaned out of the planters, geraniums trimmed back, dirt fluffed, bulbs planted in the open spaces.

i ran another errand (boots getting stretched, the left one needs a bit more, should be done next week) and picked up some beers and ciders. C had fallen fast asleep with the dog, i should have taken a picture. but that made it easy to go sit in a sunbeam on the balcony with my kindle and a cold beer.

this being a four-game week, we had a pretty frustrating dungeon crawl tonight - lots of traps and a fight that yielded nothing but decoy treasure. we did, however, find a magical vending machine with discount healing potions. it could move and seemed to have some intelligence and the poor thing was chained to the wall, so my character used her smith's tools to set it loose. (we ended there, we'll see how that plays out next time.)

this group is mostly educators and essential workers, so they're all qualified to get vaccinated...ranging from having both doses to fighting to schedule a first appointment. i'm really struggling to tamp down my feelings about being last to get my shots; we are healthy and mostly safe from exposure,* we should be last, still feels like shit.




*if you are going to get into the weeds on this, it would be nice to have living in an apartment building with interior hallways and elevators considered a risk factor since we definitely share air. but the state has come out specifically to say that it doesn't count as "congregate".

one good result from the pandemic is home testing kits. I was overdue for a routine pelvic exam but I'm not into going to the doctor if I don't have to right now. so they sent me a test kit and a postage-paid return box. I swabbed myself, mailed it, got the results in email tonight, easy-peasy.

Have to wonder why that wasn't already the norm.

backdated to the right place in the narrative. i had this written and never posted it.

Dad has meningiomas, which grow back to impairment size every 7-10 years. see the braaains tag for some backstory.

i'm heading for PA pre-dawn on Sunday. ticket is booked, ride from the airport is set, i finally knuckled under and bought a real laptop bag.

we're choosing to plan as if dad will survive surgery, so i'll be the one with mom at the hospital.* care rotation is set up with A and D; i'll hand off to A (after she's cleared to travel post-surgery on her eye), A will hand off to D (allowing him to go on his planned vacation). B lives in the area and will pinch-hit as needed.

currently i am most concerned that i could get sick. i feel rough, but i am so emotionally wrecked with worry for my parents and pre-missing C and father-in-law D getting some ugly screening results that i'm not really able to tell the difference between allergies and viruses and stress chemicals.

***
making things to hold back chaos:
i've been obsessing over packing knitting for the trip. i think i have myself down to three projects: the sweater that will be good chart work for the plane and a nearly mindless project as soon as i get into the body, the very portable socks in the prettiest yarn, and the very portable cowl that is so soft. i quickly talked myself out of packing my wheel (the sidekick is wee enough to possibly be a carryon, but i would have to check the rest of my stuff) or a spindle (the mindlessness is good, dropping and damaging my purpleheart spindle because of stress butterfingers would be bad).

clothes:
when i do one of these trips, where shit could go horribly wrong, i always debate about whether to wear favorite clothes or not. am i willing for this item to be the thing i was wearing when dad died? vs shouldn't everything i bring give me joy and make me feel confident?



*my siblings are half-siblings; their father died of cancer when they were kids. i'm not discounting their relationship with dad (mom remarried while they were still pretty young and he is beloved) but i do what i can to keep them out of the hospital. i'm also the most fascinated/least squicked by medical stuff.

I have a comically common name. My dentist's office has two of us. Between that and a retirement and remodel, our records are muddled.

Twice now I've gotten up early for a cleaning appointment, to be turned away. (I should feel glad, I guess. My doppelganger needs implants.) I really don't want to find a new dentist office, but they have one strike left.

i've had a lot more headaches lately. nothing out of standard pattern for me, tension that rolls from my right shoulder, up my neck, and feels like a c-clamp with contacts behind my eye and at the back of my skull. i know the warning signs and how to effectively treat them. but they had been a monthly or less occurrence, and now they are weekly or more.

this doesn't really fit with the general sense of peace in my household, the books i've been devouring*, a new quilt underway, a good last session of D&D before the holidays, and lovely visits with friends (just passed and planned in the near future).

this does fit with 2009, though. i'm coiled and waiting for the next blow.** i was going to post this quote from warren_ellis earlier today, but i thought that i was just asking for trouble. with more lousy news coming from all quarters it seems more appropriate than ever:

"I’m starting to get the sense that 2009 wants to finish me off before it dies of old age. A calendrical unit yelling "I’m taking you with me, you bastard!" from its vanishing final paper bunker marked December, every spent day a room deleted from the structure until 2009 is finally huddled in one small box marked 31 and screaming obscenities in stark terror."



*i'm on a big Bujold kick. somehow i avoided reading any of her books previously, and now i have a steady flow coming in on library holds. they seem to be the grilled cheese and tomato soup of speculative fiction - i don't know that they're terribly good, but they are fatty and salty and filling and exude comfort. the only minus is that Baen has the worst art direction possible. i find myself wanting to hide the covers when i read on the bus because they are so embarrassingly ugly. i have an idea for an epic linkpost of bitching about this, but may never get around to it.

**and i'm pretty sure i'm grinding my teeth in my sleep. i should see a dentist about that. did i mention that my dentist seems to have retired with zero fanfare? i have several hearty recommendations to sort through. staying at the practice he joined before disappearing is not acceptable.

went down about as mysteriously as it swelled.

ate, took benadryl, went to sleep. woke up late in the afternoon and the swelling was almost entirely gone. today when i look in the mirror i can almost see that one eyelid might be thicker than the other but it's so subtle that i'm not even sure it's there.

um, okay.