the girly who shall end all girls

• tried deep water exercise at Queen Anne on Saturday. instructor was terribad. a regular confirmed that they were a sub, so fingers crossed for a better time next week
• Photos app is feeding me memories of this time last year, and I've realized that I'm going to get hit with a bunch of one-year milestones re: mimerki now and in the next few months and that sucks
• still enjoying Poker Face. just saw the episode that Judith Light won an Emmy for; the casting on the show is top notch. so is the makeup that nails ordinary lower class people. the wig they have on Natasha Lyonne (at least I hope it's a wig, her hair is so gross) stirs up memories of high school and my couple hitches in manufacturing

i spoke too soon. C is covid positive again, one of the ~15% who have a rebound after completing their Paxlovid course. i am glad that he kept testing and we didn't accidentally spread germs at Thanksgiving. we've both had a good cry about it. at least my work trip next week was already cancelled? my fancy birthday massage i was able to reschedule for a couple weeks out. C is currently doing okay, his symptoms are still relatively mild.

this means that i did surprise Thanksgiving shopping blitz last night. i'm delighted that for a small meal the grocery options have evolved from pressed turkey loaf to an actual brined breast (and its seasoning and gravy makings are GF, which feels like the real miracle). otherwise i got sides to reheat because damn it i wasn't supposed to be cooking today; the turkey is in the crockpot. i'm leaning pretty strongly towards just making a failure pile in a sadness bowl out of it all.

there's GF cake for C and leftover birthday cake for me, and ice cream. i also got a few cans of flavored Liquid Death and a selection of munchy snacks for eating while we watch soccer and play video games...i suppose it would be a nice weekend if we had planned for it.

C and I are taking a long weekend on Whidbey Island for our anniversary (observed).* we're in a ridiculously well-appointed cottage on a farmette with goats and chickens, surrounded by lush NW woods. i think the only thing missing from the kitchen was a meat thermometer. (like, there's an espresso machine and an immersion blender and a waffle maker and some kind of milk foaming machine in addition to the usual pots and pans.) the hosts are ridiculously friendly and have already given us fresh eggs and a chunk of the smoked cheddar that they make on top of the local mead that was waiting for us in the fridge when we arrived.

yesterday started out like it should: we went out for breakfast in a nearly empty restaurant near home, packed our things at a reasonable pace, and had an easy time getting a ferry and finding the place. when we moved our things inside, the dog wasn't exploring the space, she was staying right by the door.

well, it turns out she was hanging out by the door because there's a runner there. she did come upstairs early on when i called her to come with me, and then she went right back by the door. she takes time to get used to new spaces, so i didn't think much of it until i was ready for bed and called her to come with me. she scrabbled a bit coming over, then skidded on the stairs and rushed back to the runner by the door and cowered there, shaking.

the flooring everywhere in the place is very smooth wood laminate.

she won't put a paw on the floor, the floor is lava. last night was rough; she was refusing her favorite treats and not touching her food, which is her signal of extreme agitation and distress. we finally got something in her by spreading wet food on a plastic lid and holding it for her to lick since she wouldn't touch it if we put it on the floor in front of her. and i realized: our kitchen has flooring like the flooring here.** i never observed her having any traction issues in our kitchen, but now i'm positive that we were making her do the equivalent of negotiating a sheet of ice every time she wanted to eat or drink, for years. so i had a meltdown. i was so damn tired and so very guilty, and i felt like a total fuckup.

we pulled out the sofabed so that we could be near her instead of going to a location she couldn't get to at all, since she was so miserable. the sofabed, unlike the lovely bed upstairs, has a shit mattress where you can feel all the support bars. i slept hard once i fell asleep, but i've been wrecked all day today. it's not just the mattress, the feeling reminds me of the kind of shaky post-adrenaline feel i get after falling down and picking myself up again.

we collected every throw and area rug in the place, plus the yoga mats,*** and have patched together a dog-safe area on the main floor that covers most of the living area where we hang out. i did some research and learned that we had also done her a disservice by not having her nails short enough - they dig in with them like cleats when they need traction, and if they're too long on slippy surfaces the dog ends up lifting their paw pads off the floor when they try to grip and it makes things worse. fortunately the local pet store does walk-in nail trims, so that's done (she hated it). she's still mostly hanging out in her safe place, but i've coaxed her in by the couch a few times today. so maybe she'll feel up to exploring the carpet archipelago before we go home.

i think tonight we're going to try sleeping upstairs because the sofabed isn't sustainable. i considered trying to take her back home for boarding, but they want a vaccination for canine influenza that we haven't gotten yet, so that's just another way that we're failures at taking care of the dog. maybe in time we'll laugh about this.




*it's actually the Ides of March but having an event/travel on a Tuesday is just weird. on the actual evening we went out to dinner at the same place we went in 2020. besides being a gluten-free kitchen, they're still asking for vax cards, bless them

**we had trouble when her food was in the kitchen - she wouldn't go in if anyone else was there, and howled when any visitor got near the kitchen doorway. we thought she was unhappy about the confined space - it's narrow and has one entrance. we moved her food station during the pandemic and all skittishness around food ended. she doesn't even care if we step over her while she eats. and while she looks in, she never puts all four paws in the kitchen.

***did i mention this place is ridiculously well-appointed? there's even one of those laptop rests with fans innit.

SIFF is virtual (and early) this year, which is better than no SIFF last year. I've built my watch list in the Roku app and tomorrow I'll just... watch movies on my couch like I've done for the past year+. Not feeling a sense of excitement or adventure or specialness. One of the great things about the pass is watching something random because you really want to see the movie before and after it at the same venue, and then it turns out to be amazing. That's not happening this time.

I'm afraid that it's going to be like my attempts at online conferences and I'm just going to slide off. It's okay, SIFF can keep my money. But maybe a film festival I'm not excited about *is* worse than no film festival.

one thing I can't stand in holiday movies is going "home" and hooking up with your ex.

I hate not catching it in the description, ruins the whole vibe.

My ECCC refund came through.

I think I'm doing fine most of the time, but this still hurts.

i did some unsubscribing and turned some notifications off. it's temporary i think, i'm just trying to figure out how to be my idea of a good citizen and be mentally ok at the same time.

i was humming along and did too many repeats on the current interesting knitting project and need to undo about eight rows in order to have enough yarn left to finish properly. i am close to changing balls on the current boring knitting project and may run out of yarn before i get home to pick up another ball. (no links because i am behind on taking pictures for Ravelry. i need to figure out where i put my tripod, because no one should have to deal with me micromanaging them until i like the angle and exposure.)

SIFF starts today! (i don't count the galas-since they're not included in my pass they might as well not exist.) this time in May is also when Seattle wakes up and starts having all of the everything happen at the same time. so i'll easily see a dozen movies this weekend, but i won't be doing the LYS tour, or going to any parties, or hopping a bus to the Sounders away game in Vancouver.

i saw The Pitmen Painters at ACT on Wednesday, thanks to e_bourne. (i've seen several shows there but this was my first in the upstairs, with the arena stage. the community theatre of my youth was an arena, and my college mainstage was a thrust, so i have a soft spot for them.) nice play, solid cast and production design, and a really interesting topic. it was good, but it could have been excellent. alas, the experience was marred by directoral sledgehammer at the close of each act. for me any art about art is masturbation; if i have to be a voyeur i want a crack in the closet door, not the donkey show.

weekend is not going entirely as planned.

the 360 has the red ring of death. considering that ours was made in 2005, it's had a remarkable run. repairs are still cheaper than replacement, so i need to drop it at the UPS store and deal with the withdrawal. i knew we played a lot of rockband, but i didn't realize just how much we used it to stream netflix. regular television is even worse than i remembered.

and i need to get off the computer because my right eyelid is grotesquely swollen since i woke up and it's kind of hard to read right now. i suspect it's a bugbite but i'm not sure, took some benadryl and we'll see. i'm supposed to be social this afternoon. hoping to avoid the ER :/

(sparked by sirriamnis and javagoth's roundup on Roman Polanski.)

i am often confounded by how to deal with objectionable humans who make art. the work does not magically suck the second i find out something nasty about the creator. my general rule is that i don't give them money anymore, and i don't worry about money already spent (no buying new books/tickets/DVDs, but no throwing out of things i own.)

Roman Polanski really did drug and rape a 13-year old girl. and he really did flee the country to get out of going to jail. change the name, and no one would be questioning that the man should be back here doing time and it wouldn't matter how much time had passed.

i'm pained by the people and organizations who think that Chinatown or The Pianist makes him a special snowflake.

the list of protest petition signers is worst if you are a film nerd. extra-hurty for me: Fatih Akin, Pedro Almodovar, Penelope Cruz, Alfonso Cuaron, Guillermo del Toro, Terry Gilliam, John Landis, Michael Mann, Tilda Swinton, Wong Kar Waï, Wim Wenders. (others might care more than i do about Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, and David Lynch.)

the full list is very long and dense, so it's under a cut. ( Read more... )

is apprehending him at a film festival setting a precedent that puts dissident filmmakers in danger? um, no. and if Polanski had stayed to hear his sentence read in 1978, none of this would be happening.

i have a few months to think about how my money rule works with a SIFF pass.