Tag: personal

One good way to attract fruit flies into your bathroom, of all places: Bandages with manuka honey in the trash! 😧

I felt like a dumbass, taking that long to figure out what might be drawing them in there. (Seeing some congregating around the trash can kinda helped, a little while ago.) But, it’s really not much honey, and I haven’t even been thinking of it as food in that context. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Guess I’ll try closing that up well in plastic bags, besides making sure it’s emptied more often for a while.

Reminded by that eastern hemlocks post earlier, because there at least were some right around there 10 years ago*–here’s one distinctive piece of the Blue Ridge.

A chunk of Staurolite-Garnet-Mica Schist, from just around Fairy Stone State Park in VA.
Happened by there just driving Mr. C around the last time I was home, stopped by the appropriately named Fairystone Pit Stop, and decided to drag him for a stroll up the mountain behind the gas station. Because that’s the kind of fun date I am.

This particular piece doesn’t have the super obvious staurolite inclusions that the couple of others I picked up did, but it feels good in the hand. The main reason I kept it. (This one actually looks a lot like this piece of Garnet-Mica Schist, but looking more closely you can see a few edges of staurolite crystals in the rock.)

I made a half-assed attempt at finding the couple of other pieces with more obvious staurolite, along with the few (irregular) loose twinned staurolites. But, I am a goblin who hoards interesting rocks on cluttered shelves and then can’t remember where I put them 🙄

The small mica flecks weren’t showing up very well in that light, but the sparkle is a little more visible in that last shot. Along with some pockmarks where the teeny little chunks of garnet came out at some point over the past several hundred million years.

* The situation may not be quite as bad as expected, at least: Eastern hemlocks that have survived insect infestation have a story to tell. They didn’t seem to be doing too badly then, in that area; no idea about more recently.

Another of those times that I’m to the point where I’d much rather get out a little and do something I enjoy while feeling like crap, than continue to hang around Plague House and feel like crap anyway.

People on the same bus might not agree, but I really do not want to get close enough to anyone to spread the germs around 🙄

I think Mr. C was maybe looking for a good excuse not to drag himself into work this morning. He was just about to put his jacket on to head out, and suddenly let out this huge sneeze.

“Well, from the sound of that, I guess I’m staying home!” *start taking off shoes*

(I had to get a little tickled, but yeah it was probably a good decision anyway, as sick as he was all weekend.)

At least the timing worked out better than it could have with this virus garbage. Mr. C got sick Wednesday, and had already planned to take Thursday and Friday off as “use it or lose it” vacation days. Today, he seems to have his voice back some.

At this point, he may not be going in Monday either unless things drastically improve tomorrow, but that is at least less time missed. Even if I’m fairly sure that wasn’t what he was planning to do with the long weekend 😩

He’s one of those people who rarely gets sick, and usually throws it off quickly when he does. Bit of a surprise whenever it does drag on even this long.

As for me, I wasn’t totally sure Thursday if I was also coming down with it, or if it was just an extra crappy day, “normal” chronic illness styley. Then I suddenly got exhausted and had to lie down for a couple of hours–which somehow turned into 11 or 12!

My throat hasn’t been as bad as his, and thankfully so far the asthma hasn’t been going crazy (*fingers crossed*). So, hopefully it won’t mean a couple of months of coughing this time. I don’t care as much about the rest, as long as I can breathe. (Or so I tell myself…) Not much fun right now, but priorities.

But, that’s a decent summary of the past few days around here.

I did get an NHS flu shot letter with clinic times this year, with diabetes putting me in a priority group. And yeah this is a good reminder to try and get out to do that, once this bout with the crud is over.

But yeah, I’ve been increasingly feeling like my political alignment might as well be summed up as “Exasperated Moderately Old Hillbilly Punk Weirdo”.

(Mostly OK with that, other than the exasperated part.)

Unfortunately reminded again of when my grandmother couldn’t keep it in her head that my mom had terminal cancer–and kept complimenting her on the weight loss. 😨

No matter how terrible she was looking in reality, because extremely ill and weak enough to barely stay on her feet. As you can maybe imagine.

I knew the lady was pretty screwed up in that department, but it still startled me. I mean, she managed to land herself in the hospital with I think kidney failure among other consequences of starvation when my mom was a kid–and never really acknowledged that she had any problems there, even after that. Her take? “I looked the best I ever have in my life, but I felt terrible!” Nah… 😑

That reaction to the results of her daughter’s Cancer Diet still startled me, though, after listening to her usual for 30+ years. Besides the basic short term memory problems aggravating that particular example, I guess it was another example of dementia disinhibition helping bring out the worst. I still have some hard feelings, though.

It couldn’t be easy, living your own life like that. (95 years of it, next month.) That sounds terrible. But, also laying it on the people close to you at every opportunity? There’s really not much excuse for that. At all.

At any rate, no damned wonder I was the fourth generation that I know of on that side of the family to end up with the Family OCD partly coming out through a pretty serious ED.

My Mamaw got it from her mother at least as bad as what she’s handed out herself, but there’s still no excuse. I know how hard that shit can be to deal with, and refuse to pass it on. But, I am also the only one so far to acknowledge the problem and try to stop hurting myself with it 😩 Overwhelming to think about.

ETA: Not to mention the number of people who wouldn’t have any issue with most of it, as long as nobody outright said “eating disorder”.

Things Mirrors is evidently willing to accept as treats, in a pinch 😹

He was just bugging me when I was trying to get something to eat, and also decided the pouch food I gave him was inedible. Good thing I remembered this weird little sample pack of dry food in with the pouches.

To make it better, I think that’s even the same flavor as what’s in their dry food dish right now. But, everything is so much better when it comes out of a little treat bag!

Still not too pleased about getting woken up by pain (again) a couple of hours ago.

But, it was probably just as well that I didn’t manage to get back to sleep again when I tried, since Parcelforce just showed up with those shoes I ordered over an hour before the time window the tracking page was estimating.

Not going to complain about that unusual behavior, because ST Chucks. Glad I was conscious for it, though.

Now it may be time to finish my coffee, and try to get down for a nap soon 🙄 Way more concerned about the original problem which woke me up than caffeine maybe interfering.