The Grouch's Trash Pile [Baldur's Gate 3]

Ah, yeah, that's probably what this is, isn't it...

The general atmosphere the internet since like... 2016... has had a chilling effect on me, but yeah, this is even worse than usual, and my usual is not great. I had my T shot today though, so I'll probably perk up a little in the next few days.

 

I'm starting to feel like an actual person again, instead of a gray blob! Whew. @_@

 

J and I recently culled a bunch of books from our overflowing bookshelves, and took them to a used bookstore (Oranssi Planeetta) to sell. We were expecting maybe 20€ if we were lucky -- we were offered 40€ in cash or 80€ in store credit. Of course we did the sensible thing... and got the complete hardcover edition of The Far Side they had in stock, and filled out the rest with Pratchett books we didn't yet have.

It was kind of a near thing; I was pretty hungry and Oranssi Planeetta is one of those used bookstores where everything is only loosely grouped but not organized any further, so actually finding anything is a matter of complete luck. I was very prepared to say fuck it and take the money, but I'm really glad J spotted those books... even though I have no idea where we're going to put any of this. :'D

 

I had to look up how heavy those books are, because two 14" x 10" x 2" hardcovers are huge -- 19.88 lbs, or a little over 9 kilos. Which explains why my back is sore :'D

 

Extremely tired of conversation-by-'witty'-comments. EXTREMELY.

 

Like it seems like every time I'm talking to someone about a thing or bring up a thing in general, some asshole has to burst in with some witty remark like they're a character in one of those crapsack Marvel movies and I am so fucking tired of that behavior. It's goddamn tedious. HEY LOOK AT MY WITTY COMMENT no I don't think I shall, now piss off and learn some fucking social graces. Christ.

 

Changing the subject entirely, I've been really not feeling it with Peaches again and I think I'm going to have to cough up 7€ for a name change. I knew going in that people would call me by his name whether I liked it or not, but I didn't realize how very much I really don't like being called that. Which is a shame because a big pink fuzzy guy having a fruit nickname is a fun concept, but having to live in that concept? Not so much, it turns out!

 

Welp, I did the thing -- Peaches Azora is now Phaedrus Astrophel, and looks a little different...

Spoiler

7€ and one of my spare fantasias were worth it, I feel so much more comfortable playing him now.

 

Somehow my stamina for walking shot up, and I've been able to take a walk for four days in a row without feeling too tired or sore. Today J and I walked the 3.2 km to his mom's to spend the afternoon and early evening there, then I was still feeling good so I suggested we walk back, and it was fine. My left leg was starting to hitch and the bottoms of my feet are sore, but I'm not one big ache barely able to hobble around like I was last summer after a long walk.

It's weird to me because I'd gone for walks a little more consistently this winter than previous ones, but i've been completely out of commission for two weeks twice in the last six months and haven't exactly been training hard. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

Actually... *thinking* This can't possibly be all of it, but I did adjust my cane to be longer recently because I noticed that when I use a backpack the right strap always, always keeps sliding off no matter how I adjust it, and then it FINALLY occured to me that that'd happen if my shoulders were always uneven, which would happen if my cane was too short. So I made the easy little adjustment that raised up the handle a bit and now I don't have so much trouble with backpacks, and I don't feel like I'm struggling to not still put most of my weight on my right leg...

 

My random "this looks neat" used bookstore buy has turned out to have been an amazing find; I'm halfway through the (rather enormous) book and it's been amazing so far. The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern; it's a story about stories and has stories within stories, and while it's intricately interwoven it is not convoluted, and I really appreciate that. It's a book that wants to be read, that wants to take you on a journey, not make you dig and hold information just out of your reach, unlike some circular/spiraling stories.

*looks disparagingly at Hal Duncan's Vellum.*

Anyway. The author has an allergy to commas and a lot of the passages read as rushed and breathless when they aren't supposed to be, but other than that and a 'person knocked out with a hit to the back of the head suffers only minor short-term damage' scene, I have no complaints. The prose is lovely, the characters are interesting, and I'm having a good time.

 

Finished it. I'm overwhelmed and teary.

 

I was having a good evening and then I knocked my full water glass over. Water, all over my desk. =_= It got a book, but at least I didn't knock it over onto my keyboard this time...

 

Dried out the book successfully so the pages don't stick together, but boy it looks like a mess. I'll have to make use of the Far Side hardcovers and squish it back to something resembling flatness again.

Finally ordered blackout curtains last week. Been meaning to because our very light curtains in the main room didn't keep out the heat worth shit, and the more opaque ones in the bedroom didn't keep out anywhere near enough heat or light during the summer, when it's light enough to read by outside by 3 am. With how miserable and sick I was last summer from how hot it got in here, we had to do something.

The 90€ for six of them hurt, but it would have hurt worse if we hadn't caught a 50% sale (then it would have been the Ikea type with the fuck-ugly black plastic backing). Don't love the desaturated dark blue, but it was either that or black or beige and neither J nor I will will put anything beige in our living space if we can possibly help it (although I recognize that that would be better for reflecting heat). Put them through the wash and finished hanging the last of them a little while ago, just in time for the worst of the sun to start hitting the kitchen window, and it's already helping a lot.

Our more sheer curtains will go behind those and closer to the window to pretty it up a bit and provide a little coverage on days we want to block some of the sun but not quite so much, and our nice looking but ineffective bedroom curtains now live in front of the back door, since the blind in that window broke. They don't block a lot of light even doubled up, but that window doesn't get much direct sunlight so it shouldn't be too much of a problem. Our bedroom is now nice and dark, although I might have to fiddle with the clips on the curtains so the edges can curl toward the wall more so less light leaks through.

 

On day 3 of a migraine, although I'm not sure how much today is having slept poorly and awkwardly. At least the intense nausea I've been suffering has gone away.

 

Turns out migraine has persisted. Really, really hope it goes away tomorrow, this sucks so bad T_T

 

IT PERSISTS

;_;

 

I think it's finally passed

I still have some pain but it's along the lines of 'I've been sleeping awkwardly so now my shoulders are tense and it's pulling everything out of whack' pain and not the piercing pain of a migraine. This I can live with... although I should adjust my pillow, just in case.

 

... just in time to have to deal with something stressful and headache-inducing.

 

Feeling some kind of way right now.

My mom sent me a 3-ring binder of some of my granny's accomplishments (newspaper clippings and the like), as compiled by one of my uncles. I'm glad to have it, even as I'm annoyed, because he curated it to be 'relevant' to my mom because there was 'too much' to copy, so I'm missing who knows how much that I don't know about, and mostly only got stuff that I did know about because it was from a section of my own childhood. I'm glad to know the details of some things (like what the national award her radio work was and why; she worked on a show about remarkable women in her little rural county, and this tiny station was up against stations with 50,000 listeners minimum -- and they won! Her and the producer went to NYC and were interviewed by Barbara Walters and appeared on the Donahue show), disappointed about others (her trip to India that she brought remarkable photographs from was, unfortunately, missionary work). There's boring churchy bullshit that I'm pretty sure he included to pressure my mom back into Christianity.

Then there's this article she wrote for some church newsletter thing (I'm guessing; it might have been for a bigger church organization) about 'parenting again' after having taken me in for a year while my mom was in detox. It felt... very strange to read. I've unfortunately forgotten a lot about my life prior to the brain crash I had in my 20s (before that, my memories were very crisp, while now vast swathes of my life are a gray smudge), so it gave me an eerie feeling of reading about someone little girl's life that was strangely similar to my own, but not quite the same. I know, memories are unreliable -- especially mine -- and a child's perspective is going to be different from an adult's, but there were a few things I found myself thinking, "It did not happen like that." But I also feel weirded out because she used my (now dead) name throughout and talked at length about what a bad state my mom was in, so it feels like a privacy violation for all it was 37 years ago. Guess it goes to show that oversharing isn't just an internet phenomenon.