At the clinic, a nurse was putting an IV in my wrist. We were chatting and I mentioned something about being old. "No, you're not!" she said, cheerfully. Our conversation moved on, but since then I cannot stop thinking about it.
My age is a fact. I'm old! The government thinks I am old, as I am on Medicare and receive social security. My hair is grey. I have all kinds of health problems.
The idea that being old is bad and shameful is pervasive; that is what underlies the nurse's comment that I'm not old. She knew how old I am; she was reading my records. I think she heard my acknowledgement of my age as some kind of admission of defeat. I think she was trying to cheer me up or offer support.
Or perhaps it was that my appearance, in spite of my grey hair, doesn't match my numerical age.
When someone tells me that I'm not old or that I'm not ill or that I'm not autistic or that I don't have ADHD, I want to politely and honestly explain why what they said is a problem. Unfortunately, my experience is that there is nothing I can say that will achieve this. I've tried. The need to deny that I am any of these things is so great that people won't listen. They keep talking, defending their belief.
I understand this is about their own discomfort, their own issues. But it annoys me no end.
Rok continues to be the best at everything, and deserves all the hugs. Though I remain baffled how ST thinks they can on one hand have post-scarcity nearly everywhere (including, one presumes, in places just outside of the Federation where they can easily abscond with probable Federation citizens) and also have seedy underbellies everywhere as well. The problem is that they never actually worked out how it all works, and I think the only solution is to ditch the idea that even the Federation really has no currency and is totally post-scarcity. Everybody has their basic needs met, I'll agree is supported by the writing. Anything past that, no.
Anyway, Rok's friend in her tragic backstory was clearly no more able to leave that situation than she was and though I can see there's too much plot for that to happen in canon I really hope they could rescue him.
Speaking of tragic backstories, I cannot believe a. that Dal tried to say his was the worst and b. his version of being "the worst" absolutely skips past the part where ( Read more... ) But seriously, dude, you grew up as a slave on a mine full of child slaves. It's not a situation people get into because their life was just so great beforehand. If everything was hunky-dory, none of you would've been targeted in the first damn place. You all have a terrible backstory, you don't need to prove it!
Moving on, Murf continues to also be the best, but ffs, can somebody get him an AAC? Or a whiteboard, at least? Teach him sign language? This is a solved problem even in the real world, surely Starfleet can figure it out!
Nothing to say about Jankom, he's just there. *shrug* And I feel kinda ditto about Zero, tbh. I mean, I like them, but....
Ma'Jel, between her cool hair and her increasingly consternated expression as the turbolift got more and more crowded, is clearly not one of the most unemotional Vulcans out there. (I don't care what Vulcans say, the opposite of "logical" is not "emotional", it's just "illogical".) I feel like she and our darling T'Lyn would have a lot to talk about.
The adults on the ship - this show is clearly trying to walk a fine line between keeping them competent and allowing the kids to run circles around them. I'm not sure it always works, but I appreciate the effort, and also I appreciate how they were careful to make it clear that the adults, whether they're being strict or a bit Too Much, are only acting the way they do because they're sympathetic. (Frankly, all the kids could stand to appreciate their new situation a bit more - except Rok, she already gets it - but I understand why they're struggling a bit.)
I dunno, what do you guys want me to rant about? The Freedom Flotilla? LA vs. ICE? The fact that my government is planning more pipelines while sending in the army to deal with out-of-control wildfires? Or, closer to home, Bill 5 or the Toronto bubble zone law, or...?
This is why people curl up and retreat into fiction.
In 2018, I wrote the post below about bedtime procrastination. The term was new to me, the concept was not. I was a bedtime procrastinator. And, spoiler alert, I still am a bedtime procrastinator. Zero improvement.
There’s a new term now, an even more delicious one: Revenge bedtime procrastination. Here’s how a Web MD article defines it: “It means you get ‘revenge’ for your busy daytime schedule by fitting in leisure time at the expense of shut-eye.”
Who am I retaliating against? In this case, I am both the subject and object. Who will win? Me, by reclaiming the time work, children, and chores have stolen from me! Who will lose? Me, by getting so little sleep I am irritable and exhausted the next day (or, because this is habitual, every day). Whee!
*****
Yesterday at 8:23am, my husband texted me a link. No note, just a string of random letters and slashes and dots. I clicked and landed on a research article titled “Why don’t you go to bed on time?”
The manuscript begins like this: “Most people do not get enough sleep on work days despite sleep’s importance for well-being, performance, and health. A phenomenon held responsible for promoting insufficient sleep on work days is bedtime procrastination. Bedtime procrastination is defined as ‘going to bed later than intended, without having external reasons for doing so’, that is, ‘people just fail to [go to bed].’”
Ah, bedtime procrastination. I had never heard the term before, but I am intimately familiar with the concept of failing to go to bed. If bedtime procrastination had a poster, I would be that poster’s child. My husband, on the other hand, does not procrastinate. He is a bedtime anticipator. A bedtime enthusiast. A bedtime yearner. He would go to bed right now if you let him.
The texted link was clearly the latest passive aggressive salvo in our years-long battle to define an appropriate bedtime. Me: 12-1am. Him: 9:30pm or, better yet, immediately.
According to the prevailing scientific theory, procrastination—of any task—can be explained as a failure to self regulate. That is, I want to go to bed at 10pm. I know I should go to bed at 10pm. I know staying up will cause next-day exhaustion and general grumpiness. But I still cannot manage to get my head on the pillow. Instead I stay up watching TV and eating ice cream. I give into delicious temptation.
The authors of this new paper, however, argue that bedtime procrastination might be driven instead by an individual’s circadian rhythms. In other words, I procrastinate going to bed because I am naturally an evening person (what chronobiologists like to call an “owl”), not necessarily because I am momentarily reckless and impulsive.
The researchers didn’t find overwhelming evidence to support this idea. In fact, their results were decidedly mixed. But neither explanation feels very satisfying to me. It’s true I’m a night owl. And, yes, I am not great at resisting temptation. But there’s another factor the authors didn’t even mention: parenthood.
I have a two-and-a-half-year old who goes to bed at 8pm on a good night. She wakes between 6am and 7am. If I want to ensure eight hours of shuteye, I need to be asleep by 10pm. That gives me two hours of free time each evening. But not really. Because I need at least 30 minutes to get ready for bed and to fall asleep. So I’m down to an hour and a half.
Here is what I can do in an hour and a half:
Eat a piece of chocolate while sorting through the Subaru dealership coupons stuck to the fridge.
Pick up 27 Magna-tiles, 13 puzzle pieces, 11 paper coins, three stuffed dog toys, two pairs of underwear, one pile of smashed purple Play-doh, and a pretend sippy cup of pretend orange juice.
Contemplate reorganizing the living room.
Research possible Ikea solutions for living room reorganization.
Liberate a giant bouncy ball from under the couch.
Vacuum the living room really well (even under the couch).
Pour a glass of wine.
Fold the laundry while watching the tail end of some stupid cop or doctor show (is network TV composed entirely of cop and doctor shows?).
That’s it. That’s all I can do. And I have to really hustle. 10pm rolls around and the wine is not drunk. The laundry is not put away. And the vacuum is still lying in the middle of the living room rug.
I have not read a single word of my novel. I have not found an Ikea solution to my living room chaos. I have not pondered any mysteries or had Deep Thoughts or eaten a second piece of chocolate. I have not made popcorn. I have not done anything satisfying at all (except getting the bouncy ball unstuck). A 10pm bedtime doesn’t even allow me to watch the 10 o’clock news. I have to go to bed without knowing tomorrow’s weather. Like an animal.
And so the clock strikes 10 and I think “No!” or sometimes “NO!” I #resist. I stage a one-woman rebellion. I watch the local news and comment on its inanity. I finish my wine. I read a chapter of my book. I watch a highly acclaimed show of my choosing from start to finish. I live, goddammit! I live like no one is watching.
Usually no one is, because by then it’s 11:45pm. My husband (the Man) has been in bed for hours.
He used to try to cajole me into bed earlier by saying things like, “we should really try to get a good night’s sleep.” Or “we should go to bed really early tonight.” But that only added fuel to my bonfire of bedtime resistance. “You go to bed, old man!” I’d yell. And now he does.
Before I had a child, I could spend my entire evening eating chocolates and sorting Subaru coupons. Now my free time is condensed into that hour and a half between my toddler’s bedtime and my own theoretical one. By procrastinating bedtime, I am reclaiming my time. That reclaimed time is precious. More precious even than sleep.
When there are 2 people wearing masks on a bus, sometimes the other one will mention it to me. When I'm the only person masking on a bus (as is increasingly the case), sometimes a person will ask if I'm masking because I'm sick, and I'll usually say I'm just being cautious. I usually don't want to go into details.
I had several quick and pleasant interactions with strangers on the trolley and and at the bus stop with strangers who liked my hat. I believe they appreciated my idea of sewing a progress pride ribbon over the hatband, or perhaps meant to express solidarity. It was even possible they recognized the low crown and broad brim makes it the most flattering hat I've ever owned. In any case, I wasn't expecting an unpleasant interaction on the bus.
Stranger: Why are you wearing a mask? Adrian: I'm being cautious. Stranger: Why are you wearing a mask? Nobody else is wearing a mask! Adrian: I'm being cautious. I had a bad case of Covid and I really don't want to get it again. Stranger: Nobody else is wearing a mask! There is no Covid. You can't have Covid. What are you doing wearing a mask?
I stopped talking. There's no point trying to reason with nonsense. A few minutes later a nice person offered me a seat.
In retrospect, I wish I had told him "I'm a weirdo. I dress like a weirdo. You had better get used to people who dress like weirdos pretty quickly, because this bus is going to Cambridge."
For reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, I made a GF variant of Emma Goldman's blintz recipe this morning. (It's because for reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, I happened to have farmer cheese in the house.)
When I went looking for something snappy to turn my blintzes into a post, the first quotation on wikiquote is from a newspaper report after her arrest:
I feel sure that the police are helping us more than I could do in ten years. They are making more anarchists than the most prominent people connected with the anarchist cause could make in ten years. If they will only continue I shall be very grateful; they will save me lots of work.
Anyway I am not an anarchist by any measure whatsoever, but I have generally found reading Emma Goldman to be informative and fulfilling (My Disillusionment in Russia is gutwrenching and honestly I think keyboard warriors should read it). Her wikiquote page is so chock full of evergreen statements that I can't even cherrypick anything else to quote. But how about this one?
The very proclaimers of "America first" have long before this betrayed the fundamental principles of real Americanism...the other truly great Americans who aimed to make of this country a haven of refuge, who hoped that all the disinherited and oppressed people in coming to these shores would give character, quality and meaning to the country.
You can make blintzes vegan, too, if you use banana instead of the egg and flip the blattlach very gently. That can be potato or blueberry blintzes, although I've seen a recipe for blintzes with cashew cheese.
My right knee is healing, and stretching worked significantly better than yesterday. I even did a few carefully selected PT exercises this afternoon.
I can do more things standing up, and walking around the apartment is easier. However, I seem to have been leaning too much on the other leg, because my left knee started to hurt earlier. Not badly, but enough that I am putting the cane aside for the moment.
Good news: No emergency medical visit for 7 days! Carrie's been to the vet twice after coming home. Healing well. We're getting better at bandaging the open wounds. Carrie is off fentanyl, so she's gotten better this weekend at getting out of the muzzle and pulling the pads out of the bandage. So, i need to up my skills at wrapping. I do wonder how long we need to keep bandaging. Two open wounds are each about a square inch, another is about four square inches. I think it will take a while.
Sister in law D thinks she will be a widow in a week. Saturday morning i sent B a close up of an elderflower cyme, all snowy petals wet from the rain with prominent creamy stamens. Later, checking the rain gauge, i saw that the white cala lily had bloomed and the flowers lay on the ground. I picked the two, dislodging the tiniest of snails, and then added a few lizard tail (Saururus cernuus) and an orange hummingbird mint (Agastache Poquito Orange) to make this morning's bouquet. Elderberries are just beginning to ripen.
Other good news: i'd bought a bottle to deliver very targeted drops of herbicide to noxious plants (wild briers that have multiplied around the fig tree and on the other berm, honeysuckle twining on fences and out of control, trees on the septic field, poison ivy) and could not find it. I finally ordered a replacement, months after it should have been in use. And then i found it. And i was able to cancel the order in time. Yay.
Sequentially:
I left work early on Friday. ADHD rejection sensitivity probably is amplifying feelings about a meeting. I was just too emotional and so very very tired. After an afternoon of reading, a visit with my Dad, and more reading, we watched the documentary about Ocean's Gate, the Titan submarine ... hubris, and the guy who ran Ocean's Gate sounds just like the exec director who is involved in my distressed feelings.
I did get a good bit done in the yard on Saturday, flame weeding while it was wet. Moved woodchips a short way to mulch an area at the end of the sidewalk that has been annoying to mow. Then i planted some annuals (coleus and lantana), some Trimezia gracilis ... babies? propagules? , and transplanted a chrysanthemum that survived the winter and has started blooming. The lemongrass is in real soil for the first time in years, and i hope it multiplies. Finally, the native plants i bought are all in the new heavily mulched bed around the front yard apple tree.
Christine's been telling her siblings that "Carrie is avenged." I found a coiled copperhead in the woodchip pile when working yesterday, and killed it. I don't feel good about it but i would do it again. There are brush piles in the woods and that's for them. But this was a little too close.
I then went on to have an ocular migraine and then a bad headache. Today has been less outside. I picked sochan and mint, spending time thinking about where i was putting my hands. I've got several Talenti gelato containers full of blanched sochan in the freezer, mint and bee balm on the dehydrator, and elderberry flowers hanging by the water heater. I imagine gifts of mint-elderflower tea.
I also made whipped cream cheese with the lavender syrup and pulverized dehydrated mulberries from last year. Very purple, not over sweet, and only mildly flavored.
I haven't seen the hawk this past week, and wonder if the smelly snake repellents have repelled the hawk. Instead, i've seen a rabbit almost every morning.
I am avoiding feelings and reading and reading and reading. It;s been a fight not to go to the book and finish this.
the cosmolinguist (cosmolinguist) wrote2025-06-0809:42 pm
The other day I overhead D telling someone that I now naturally have the voice that I put on for my character in our D&D game a couple of years ago.
I was an orc barbarian, heh.
I was delighted to hear this because I hadn't consciously been doing a voice for Bulrik (I went through dozens of orc names I hated in one of the online name generators before finding one I could live with at all, only much later realizing it's most of the name I chose for my self!) and I didn't know that's what I sound like all the time now! How delightful.
I haven't done any conscious voice training at all, just let the testosterone do its work. And I didn't record my voice at any point with the intent of tracking the change, which I guess is a norm in some online cultures. Both of these choices have been conscious decisions made to protect my mental health and I feel really good about that, but it does mean my boundless self-absorption has nothing to work with here! So it's nice to have some external observation.
The other stuff I've been meaning to write about is gonna have to wait; I'm too tired now apparently.
This is the season when Rosa multiflora, the indomitable conqueror of roadsides and wastelands, the one who can render a pleasant meadow into an impassable, laceration-producing wall of arching, spreading, canes, puts out its flowers. Everywhere there are curtains and drifts of small, white-and-yellow blossoms, with a fragrance so intense that you breathe it in and begin to float. The whole rest of the year it's thorns and You Shall Not Pass, but right now it's Come To Me And Stay Awhile My Love.
"It's worth a little blood, isn't it? You can cede a little ground, can't you? To enjoy this moment with me now?" says the rambling rose.
the cosmolinguist (cosmolinguist) wrote2025-06-0807:58 pm
I went to the park with haggis and her kid this morning.
There was one point where I was pushing said kid on the swings (a lot of the morning was haggis, D and I doing as we were directed and I'd been specifically told to push her at this point) next to a nice young man doing the same with his own toddler.
He said hello by asking me "How old is she?" to which I of course panicked because I'm not sure these days. "...Four??" I said eventually. haggis came over and saved me from more of this peril by making normal parent conversation herself.
Then the guy said "Is she the only one you guys have?" and my thoughts hadn't gotten any further than what, here with us today?
haggis said the kid is hers, and her husband's but I'm not her husband, and meanwhile I was like oh shit he thinks I'm the husband! or the new dad! Oh no! So I joked about being a gay uncle.
I don't think I've ever been mistaken for a husband before! I probably would've thought it was fun, if I wasn't too confused at the time to know that it was happening...
To nobody's surprise, I once again had the best grades in my apprentice cohort. (More entertaining: first/second/third for my year was the exact same people in the exact same order, and the other two were fighting over second place because they figured I'd get first again.) Apparently this means I'll get to go to the regional competition again next year, since the way that's structured is "the people who do best each year get to go and we figure out what category each of you is in along the way (and also the one TAB guy goes)". We'll see! (This means two of us will need to do something we don't do for work. Curious to see if the guy who did architectural last year will do it again this year. Very curious who gets asked to do welding.) It'll be in Boston next year, so that's an easy drive, something to look forward to.
The last day of school, where they announce this, is also a potluck provided by the instructional staff. There was. Functionally nothing I could eat, between "cannot eat cheese/dairy" and "does not eat pork/beef". I know why I expect better in general even if my reaction is weary disappointment and "yeah, of course". (I have explained these food restrictions multiple times and nobody thinks about them anyway.) (they are not hard to avoid)
Work is work. It continues. It's very funny any day that everyone's just sort of like... "we are doing obnoxious things that are not hard but are time-consuming and make us wonder what the people who told us to do this were thinking, and also it is hot, how much time can we spend talking instead".
Obligate Diurnalism continues to rear its head as we approach the solstice. Probably I am not getting as much sleep as I should most nights! Oh well. I am getting enough sleep, overall, and my body will force me to bed earlier if I actually need it.
in non-irl things:
Murderbot show continues to be good! Very fun to watch! Has some divergences from the book, in large part because of being a different medium I suspect, but that's not making it any less fun to watch. Everyone's facial expressions are fantastic. The in-universe media is a joy. They made a theme song for Sanctuary Moon and it's so cheesy and good.
I have been spending a truly impressive amount of time talking to hafnia about a specific AU for our D&D blorbos (which started out as iddy kink nonsense but then GREW PLOT), which is so canon-divergent we're just like "this is basically original work with D&D filling in the worldbuilding that's not important". It is such a joy to wake up in the morning to see more of it turned into prose and be like "oooh YES :eyes:" and have feelings about things that I already knew were going to happen because we've talked out like the vast majority of what's going to happen. xD But it's DIFFERENT when it's in narrative prose instead of flowing between rp and brainstorming, y'know?
However also I need to write more things that are not about the D&D campaign that is my primary fandom brain thing right now, due to having exchanges etc that uh I did agree to do and do care a lot about but also I did most of those sign ups before (*checks*) the beginning of the month (50k later and we are at "gotta clear up the curse before we can get to the really iddy kink nonsense, but that shouldn't take too much longer!"). So. Can't plan for "I have been CONSUMED"?
...it's fine I can write enough words in the time available, I just need to drag myself away from going "HEY SO WHAT IF" or "OH NO: A THOUGHT" all the time. xD
(I am having SUCH a good time with this though <3)
I got the standards and brackets for that shelf system, and we are currently at Home Depot, after buying what I sincerely hope is the right configuration of board feet for eight shelves. It's secured to the roof and we're using surface streets.
It's too close to bedtime to start on repair plating the 8 foot boards to the 2 foot boards, probably.
Click through to see the video. You really, really should. Sound is irrelevant.
Text: "Tanks, fighting vehicles and howitzers arrive in Washington, D.C. ahead of next week's military parade. They departed from Texas on June 2." Two minutes and forty seconds.
Allegedly that train is a mile long and is transporting:
I dunno, maybe it's just me, but I'm thinking that maybe the guy who attempted one coup already bringing a well-armed military force into our capitol city and, crucially, within artillery-range of the Pentagon, is just throwing himself a birthday party, but also maybe not.
ETA: For those of you confused by this, thinking, but doesn't he already control the military? You might want to watch this video about the rise of Xi Jinping.
Now, obviously, Trump would never play a long game like Xi did. But, 1) there are other ways to achieve the same end and 2) he doesn't have to, because his buddies, the Dominionists, did.
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