the girly who shall end all girls

whitetail deer are probably a reservoir species for covid-19

/insert rant here about how this is what happens when sprawl takes over their habitat

i am horrified for my family in PA. but also, if whitetail are carriers, i don't see why blacktail wouldn't be the same. the island deer population is down but there are still a lot of them living in close proximity in western Washington.

nah, that flight was delayed so now I'm scheduled for tomorrow. third time's the charm?

Mom and I were awake anyway so I took her out for a nice breakfast. I guess I'm gonna finally watch Leverage Redemption since I don't have anything better to do.

PA: you can check out, but you can never leave.

a thing about being in PA: it's profoundly dark. even though mom is in a housing development, there are no streetlights and no outdoor lights on houses to speak of.

there have been thunderstorms almost every day (2cm today and mom is still complaining about the lack of rain). tonight I stepped onto the back deck, and there was distant lightning flashing while fireflies danced.

I miss fireflies, and being able to accelerate up the ramp onto the highway. driving is really fun on overbuilt roads with no traffic. (there's infrastructure to handle game days, but in the summer there's no one here so zooooooom.)

spent most of the evening sorting papers with Mom. found a letter I sent at the end of our first month in Seattle, and a paper I wrote in elementary school about Dad (it's super wholesome and I need to transcribe it).

got notified today that I am officially on the developer career ladder at work, and got the compensation bump to go with it.

we went out to eat, to celebrate that and the formation of a grand jury to indict a certain asshole. this is the first time I've been inside a restaurant since March 2020...it was Olive Garden. can't win them all.

Meme time! rosefox gave me three things that I may or may not know or care about:

1. Cabbage, or cabbages.

my parents don't like cooked cabbage and so we never ate it at home when i was growing up therefore i am still learning to eat it.
my favorite use of cabbage is in Lion dance (according to the internet some places use lettuce instead and wow that is so much easier than cabbage) where the lion "eats" the greens that are tied up high with the red envelope that contains an honorarium for the dancers. the person in the head has to tear up the cabbage and spread it around like the lion is a messy eater.
cabbage is closely related to kale, broccoli, cauliflower, and turnips in addition to the perhaps more obvious brussels sprouts.


2. The Mona Lisa.

is very small and dark. it was kind of a disappointment to see it in person. i'd rather look at the Prado copy which has been restored and gives a better idea of the color and detail of the painting.
i dearly love the Mona Lisa cards (Excellent Forgery, Real Thing, Obvious Forgery) in Chrononauts and the Mona Lisa plot in City of Death.


3. Natural gas.

it's not common in western WA, which continues to make me sad. i don't really want the responsibilities of homeownership (and it's not financially possible right now anyway) but i definitely want to have a gas range again and that's probably the only way. yes, it's a fossil fuel and our electricity here is cheap and from sustainable sources and electric stoves suck.
natural gas is cheap and common back east; much more now than when i lived there because of fracking. Pennsylvania still doesn't have a severance tax on gas... a billion dollars of missing revenue that should be getting spent on the truly shitty and impoverished areas where the wells are. meanwhile the well water is poisoned and the roads are destroyed by heavy machinery.

Anyone want three things?

even though Seattle includes the most diverse zip code in the US, the town as a whole is pretty white. this means that while there are products available for textured hair, there isn't the full range that gets discussed in curly hair forums.

I lost a lot of time at Target today just goggling at the textured hair aisle that is easily twice the size of the one at home. breadth and depth, plus so many sample sizes of All The Things. I thought about filling a basket full,

BUT

The climate here is completely different, so something that works here is likely to be overkill at home. I finally understand all the people layering three moisturizers and coating their hair in oil. I tried my usual overnight routine - little vertical ponytails to sleep, in the morning finger comb and let the steam from the shower reactivate the curl - and it failed completely. Totally the unruly straight hair of my childhood. So far I have to wet my head daily, use a heavy conditioner, and cover it with product to seal. At least it dries by the time I've eaten breakfast.

I may yet buy samples and ship them home since there would be too many to carry on.

as noted previously, the hospital has charming robots trundling around. of course i haven't seen one since the other day, but their parking signs are definitely all over. here's an article about them.

Dad is doing fine now. other than being super-tired he's lucid and chatty and able to do things like feed himself.

( cut for medical squick )

tomorrow will be a second surgery with the plastic surgery team to finish putting his head back together. i'm pleased since it means that they figured out what to do. unfortunately we never managed to talk to the doctor ourselves, just got stuff second hand from Dad or his nurse. so i guess now we'll get the real rundown when the surgery is done and the surgeon comes out to do the customary family debrief.

i seem to still remember how to drive in snow, which is fortunate since snow and also hella hills. (i have a soft spot for Pittsburgh and if i had to pick a place to live in PA, this would be it.)

***
in other news, NBC Olympic coverage still blows. really missing CBC.

And i am safe at my parents' house.

All went well, even the part where I had to cross the entire Philadelphia airport in under 30 minutes.

It turns out the roads were terrible last night so it would have been bad for my brother to pick me up in Wilkes-Barre, it would have been bad for me to have tried to rent a car from Newark, and this hot mess was probably the safest of all outcomes.

I have snatched a bite of my cold pastry, and soon we are having grilled cheese and tomato soup for lunch which is the great comfort meal of my childhood.

And then, fortified, off to Pittsburgh.

Now I get to spend the night in Chicago.

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.