Category: Here and There

You’re Getting on My Last Nerve!

Gah!! It finally happened. I broke my very last Microsoft Natural Ergonomic 4000 keyboard. Definitely Microsoft’s best ergonomic keyboard, and loved by many, especially those in my line of work, which is how I found out about it nearly 20 years ago. Like most out-of-touch companies, i.e., the majority of them, Microsoft took something that worked and was well-loved and made it disappear. Used ones can be found online for $400 to $700 (new ones were originally $76; got down to $39) God Bless Greed 🙄🙄. I’ve owned way more than my fair share of the 4000s because I kept breaking them. They are 100% not waterproof or liquid resistant, btw.

I bought two replacement keyboards a while back, which are the “upgraded” Microsoft ergonomic keyboards, hoping I wouldn’t have to use them. It is awful to type on. The only thing I like about it is the emoji key they added. They stuck a stupid Office key by the Alt key, and it brings up Office 365, which I can’t even use for work as I have to have Office 2019/non-subscription versions. This new addition made the Alt key smaller, which I use for work all the time, and I keep hitting that darn Office key 😡😡. Adam figured out how to disable it so Office doesn’t pop up each time, but I am still hitting the key. I’m slowly adding things in my text expander so the stupid key works like the Alt key. The amazing reverse tilt that made the 4000 awesome is minimal on the new one, so I added little rubber pads to elevate it. Every company keeps making the tilt in the back and it’s not good for your wrists because they are supposed to be straight when typing, not with your knuckles pointing toward your chest!! Do better, companies!

This whole significant change has been very hard on me, and I have developed a new, fun symptom of stress and overload over the past few weeks. Instead of sore, tense shoulders, I now get occipital neuralgia flares, which are super painful. It’s nerve pain at the base of the skull that basically follows the hairline up over the ears and into the temples. I tried to describe the location to Adam as where the cotton goes when getting a perm, but he had no idea what I was talking about. It’s a shooting, shocking pain and not an ache, and the shooting part happens when I turn my head too far/fast or bend over with my head pointing down. I always get a bit worried when I have unusual head pain since I have Dandy Walker and hydrocephalus is common with that. I’ve had some CT scans and have been told there is some fluid but not enough for a shunt. I haven’t had a head CT in a couple of years, though.

I was in the kitchen the other day and thought I was having a stroke. Adam was sleeping, and all of a sudden while I was getting something out of the cupboard above my head, my neck started hurting on either side of my trachea. I grabbed my neck with one hand like the bad guys do in the movies when they pick someone up by the neck, and squeezing my neck helped, but it happened twice more right after it briefly went away. I googled the symptom and pretty much came up with tension and stress. I’ve been having trouble breathing for the past few weeks, and I am wondering if the new non-stimulant ADHD medications are causing increased stress and anxiety. I’m not lacking in that department; I don’t need more. I was on Strattera and then switched to Intuniv. Otherwise, I’m hunky dory.

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The Last Tunnel on the Right

I had an EMG on my arms yesterday and I didn’t really like the people who saw me. The woman who shocked me was all right; not exactly pleasant, but not rude, either. The doctor came in and was very cold and to the point, which makes me uncomfortable. He told me he was going to insert “just the tip” and record it or listen or whatever, and before I could ask, “The tip of what?”, he started poking me with a needle up and down my arms. It did not feel good. We could see and hear my nerves talking on the computer, which was pretty cool. Some spots he poked were loud and some were quiet. Afterward, he typed some stuff in a pre-drafted letter that was on the computer screen and said he would send it to my doctor, then left. I don’t know which doctor he’s sending it to; I don’t know what the letter said; I don’t know what the results were.

In the hallway, I googled him, and his reviews were less than stellar, as in 1 star. He allegedly has a bad habit of not communicating with his patients 😒. Adam, who read over the doctor’s shoulder while he was typing (yay for being nosy!), said he mentioned median nerve neuropathy, which isn’t surprising. The doctor reminded me of Mom’s first GYN oncologist, whom we totally should have sued for malpractice and I hate that we didn’t. By the time she switched doctors, it was too late for her. Her second doctor said he always does at least one round of chemo after any cancer-removing surgery.

I already knew I have carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) because of the symptoms and how much I type and work at the computer, plus they told me; I just need some treatment for the pain since it’s been getting worse. I have a hard time braiding my hair now because of my hands cramping up, but I do have very long hair. Fortunately, the CTS is not too bad yet. I have tiny bone fragments at the base of my thumb and degenerative changes to the outer wrist of my right hand, which the other orthopedic guy actually told me before setting up the EMG appointment. He, I liked, except for when he hurt me.

“Looking” at the door

For some reason, Phin, my little boy who can’t see, wants to be in the bathroom with Adam or me every chance he gets. Whenever we stand up to go somewhere, he gets all excited and starts pinballing toward the bathroom; running into objects, cabinets, boxes, whatever is on or near the floor. A lot of the time, he gets confused and goes to the utility room and both spare rooms before finally making it to the bathroom. Once in the bathroom, he gets up on the sink to get pets and/or get a drink from the faucet. He gets so excited and rattlesnakes his tail, which is just adorable. He doesn’t always get a drink, so that’s not his primary reason for going in there, but we don’t know what is. I thought he would not like the bathroom since it’s the one where he lost his little teeth while trying to jump up on the sink. Before I started using Mom’s bathroom exclusively, he would go to the main(?) bathroom with me and I would put him up on the sink since he’s afraid of jumping up there after his teeth accident. If he made it to the bathroom before me, he would jump onto the toilet seat, then up on the sink and wait for me.

A couple years ago, I bought a bidet seat and had it in the main bathroom. This seat is fairly big and it slopes downward, which I didn’t even think about when I bought it. When I went to the bathroom, Phin tried jumping up on the seat without knowing it was different and slid back onto the floor. He tried it a couple of times and then gave up. Adam spent a good chunk of time one day teaching Phin to jump onto the side of the tub, get on the toilet tank, walk across it, then get onto the sink. This was the cutest thing ever, with Adam crouching on the floor and Phin standing with his front paws on the tub looking toward him. The bidet seat was in that bathroom for a couple of months, then Adam put it in Mom’s bathroom for me, where it’s been since. However, Phin still gets onto the sink in the main bathroom by way of the tub and toilet tank even though I’ve helped him feel that the regular toilet seat was back.

One time while I was showering in Mom’s bathroom, I kept hearing this clunk, clunk, clunk, so I opened the shower door and there was Phin on the toilet tank, thinking the sink was beside the toilet like in the other bathroom, which it is not. He never spent much time in Mom’s bathroom since Adam and I never used it. He was trying to get down off the tank and kept rocking the lid. I don’t know how he managed to get on the tank with the bidet seat there. He breaks my heart every day but I don’t know what else I can do for him. I don’t get how he can remember how to get on the sink from the tub, which he hasn’t been doing long, but not remember his way through the house. He has been here since he was six weeks old.

Last night, instead of climbing from the hamper onto my desk in front of my TV/monitor, he got mixed up and went behind the TV and fell off the desk 😞. A week or so ago, Gandi broke the glass of one of my 8″ x 10″ photo collages and I had the collage lying on the kitchen bar with one side hanging slightly off the bar as it was wider than the bar itself. Phin was trying to get to me and stepped on the part of the collage that was hanging off and fell off the bar into metal folding chairs, hitting the garbage can and a roasting pan that was to be thrown away 😿😿. I don’t know how to protect him more.

My little furry heart 💗
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Hither, Dither, and Dot

I finally got around to buying superglue and Adam put my sconces up above the shower. They are so cute! They used to be in the living room on either side of the fireplace mantel, but since the bathroom is so dark now because it’s black, I wanted something near the shower. Truth be told, I wanted this dragon head or this dragon for each side, but those are expensive. I think I would use the heck out of a 3D printer if they were affordable for me and I knew how to use one.

I’m a big Amazon shopper because our physical address isn’t valid according to most companies, and our items never show up when I try ordering from somewhere else. Amazon knows what’s up, but that does limit my options. The best part about these sconces is I bought six battery-operated puck lights that came with two remotes, so I just point the remote at each light to turn them on, which is great since I can’t reach them and it would be a pain climbing up there and removing the globes and flipping each light on each time I showered. I am now irrationally excited to take a shower 😂.

The uneven look from the ceiling slant is driving me bonkers…

I really want something like this hand for holding my hair things and other small stuff that I tend to lose otherwise. It’d be cool as a towel holder as well, but it doesn’t look all that capable and doesn’t have the greatest reviews. We talked about getting one of those mold kit things and resin and some press-on witchy nails and using Adam’s hands to make our own, but I don’t know how that would go, and it could be a waste of money.

I’m a collector of…things, I guess you could say. My darling mother really tried to keep up, which resulted in me having so many different things. I have collected unicorns, pandas, tigers, bears, (e)books, rocks, movies, and stuffed animals. Some unconventional things are underwear, socks, and music. It’s weird how much I love cute socks because I’m barefoot 99% of the time. Diabetic socks are awesome because there are no seams, but they stretch out after one time of wearing. I’m currently collecting ebooks again. I will never read all of them but there’s that niggling “just in case” in the back of my mind. Just in case of what? The apocalypse? Massive author strike? I don’t know. I won’t tell me. It sounds hoarderish but I actually get rid of stuff all the time and, unfortunately, I wind up needing stuff I’ve gotten rid of and have to buy it again. I’ve gotten rid of almost all my stuffed animals. I love them and hated getting rid of them but they just take up so much space. I keep worrying about the mess I’ll leave behind when Adam and I die. I don’t want family to have to figure out what to do with so much stuff. Since we don’t have kids, a lot of my items won’t be passed down.

How about that Titanic stuff!!? The Titanic is a special interest of mine, and I have mentioned how I would love to see it for real, but come on! There were so many warnings and safety issues, and the guy(s) just totally ignored them. Money can buy you nearly everything, but brains isn’t one of them. I saw a video on Reddit of an enactment of what it would look like when the Titan imploded, and it is so crazy. People in the know were saying how it would be milliseconds and the bodies would pretty much liquefy, and I just can’t wrap my head around that. Their deaths would have been quick and painless, at least. I’ve been glued to the Titanic subreddit for the past week. I bombarded Adam with a few texts before he was awake since I always forget what I want to tell him when he wakes up. That way, we can discuss what I sent him 😊.

People are really showing their true colors (they never disappoint) and have chosen to mock and meme the five passengers of the Titan. They either forget or don’t care that a 19-year-old boy was in there and he allegedly was terrified and did not want to go in the first place. From what I’ve seen, mostly on Reddit, which is a dumpster fire in itself 24/7, they all deserved to die because they had/came from money. These sentiments were laid bare before information about the glaring unsafety of the vessel and the blatant negligence ever came out, so it’s not all a case of “fox around and find out.” People are just so filled with hate over what they don’t have, whether it be money, wealth, privilege, talent, etc. The thing they don’t get, or completely ignore altogether, is that they would be the same way. If all they knew in their life were wealth and privilege, they would not be concerning themselves with those who have neither of those. They would throw money at some charities as tax write-offs and go about their lives.

Of course, I would not mind being wealthy, and I think I would be more charitable if I became wealthy at my age (mainly because I’m charitable now with what I do have or when I have something to give), but I would be a completely different person if I was born or grew up wanting for nothing. Wealth and poverty skew one’s view of the world. I certainly changed going from poverty to middle-class living with Mom after she switched careers. My food choices changed – I don’t know how I ever ate fried bologna and fake ketchup. I can’t handle being without central air conditioning at all. Obviously, I’m broke again since Mom died, but I am incredibly lucky that I inherited her house and paid it off with what she worked so hard to leave me. I could be homeless at any given moment, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to laugh and celebrate that five people who had it better than me financially are dead.

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Smoothie Criminal

I made the world’s-according-to-me worst smoothie ever and drank two 16-ounce glasses of it. It sounded good in theory; a berry smoothie with a splash of yummy sugar-free fruit juices. I started out with a keto berry smoothie recipe as a guide for measurements. First, were a frozen triple-berry mix of blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries from Sam’s; unsweetened vanilla almond milk; chia seeds; and unflavored collagen powder. I bought some new Tropicana Zero Sugar Summer Splash Punch and Zero Sugar Mango Passion juices and threw those in there as well, hoping for a concoction as tasty as Outback Steakhouse’s Huckleberry Hooch (which is uh-mazing!).

Adam gave me a taste before adding sweetener, which I realized after tasting it. It was horrid and bitter! How in the world are berries and other naturally sugary fruits so bitter in drinks?? I added the Splenda Monk Fruit sweetener, which doesn’t have sucralose (not good for you), and tasted it again and it was still a big NO. Out of pure desperation, I added a splash of lemon juice and vanilla extract. My “recipe” started out making 16 ounces and was now 64 ounces 😒. The same thing happens when I make loaded baked potato soup, so I wasn’t terribly surprised. I grudgingly claimed it drinkable out of sheer frustration and poured myself a tumblerful.

It wasn’t too bad. I could taste the fruit juices and berries. I got way too many chia seeds, which didn’t absorb and expand, so I was spitting seeds out all over the place all evening and accidentally spit one on Adam’s arm (oops). There was something I didn’t like, and it became more and more apparent with each drink. The next day, I poured another glass because I didn’t want to waste all the ingredients. I drank the whole glassful (16 ounces!!), but it made me nauseated, so I finally admitted defeat and dumped the rest. Adam and I concluded it must have been the almond milk, which I’ve been using since early April, but only in chocolate shake-type drinks.

I hate milk; it’s just too milky tasting. I eat cereal with a slotted spoon. I hate yogurt and cottage cheese. Like, I really hate it. Unfortunately, most keto smoothie recipes call for some type of milk or bananas (don’t like those, either), but it’s cool as long as I can’t taste it. I don’t like avocados, either, but have had success with making smoothies with them and not tasting them. I won’t try bananas because they are way too sugary, and I detest them. I pretty much hate everything that is keto-friendly, like broccoli, cauliflower, coconut, brussels sprout, okra, fish, etc. Anything healthy, I guess 😂.

How about some healthy fruits and vegetables?

Today, I tried smoothie-making again, determined to use my new blender for good and not evil, and I had success! I stuck to a simpler recipe consisting of frozen sliced strawberries, unsweetened vanilla almond milk, avocado, vanilla extract, and collagen powder. Just an FYI, vanilla extract smells so good, but don’t try it by itself! This time, I wanted to add more “zero” things to reach 64 ounces to lower the carbs and calories for each serving, so I topped the blender off with water, around 14 ounces, maybe?, and added a dram of LorAnn Oil’s Super Strength Strawberry flavoring. Drams are the cutest little bottles I’ve ever seen and I want to hug them all; kind of like Funko Pop! It needed a little oomph, so I poured in some Torani sugar-free French vanilla syrup. It was so yummy, and only 1 net carb! I’ll save the chia seeds for when my grinder gets here. I’m definitely buying some chia seeds to put in my sensory room because they are so calming for me, which I didn’t even know until after I bought them and stuck my hand in the bag 😳😊.

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What’s the Name of the Game?

Daily writing prompt
If you had to change your name, what would your new name be?
View all responses

I have actually thought about changing my name. My dad chose my first name, the title of a popular country song, and he was a loser. I was in the same grade as 6 other girls with my name, with my graduating class being just over 55 students. If I had to change my name, I would choose Cari Esta. My mom wanted to name me Samantha or Carrie Esta, and I like the latter (with a small spelling change). If I ever wrote a book, that would be my pseudonym. My name’s not bad; I’ve just never cared for it, personally. Better than Hashtag, though.

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Bookworm, Dood-Li-Doo

List three books that have had an impact on you. Why?

I’m sure I can think of three, most likely more, but I wanted to do this prompt because of one in particular. I’m an avid reader with severe ADHD, so I don’t remember much about a book upon finishing it, sadly. The good side of that is most books are always new to me! Speaking of books, feel free to follow or friend me on Goodreads! I’m an active logger and rater, but not big on reviews because of my terrible memory.

Because I want to, I’ll be listing my three picks counting down.

The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini

I read The Kite Runner years and years ago, probably around the time it came out, and I still think of it often. It and A Thousand Splendid Suns, another book by the same author, really jolted me out of my young adult and mystery/thriller/horror genres rut and introduced me to the terribly-named (assigned?), general “fiction” genre. I mean, all fiction is fiction, so why not give wonderful reads a worthy subgenre? That vague categorization makes it hard for me to find books similar to Hosseini’s. “Contemporary” is just as confusing because, after time, those books are no longer considered to be contemporary. But I digress.

Hosseini is a phenomenal writer and sure knows how to evoke feelings. I cried, I gasped, I laughed, I cried some more, and actually took a few days off reading after finishing this book, which is something I never do. This book made me think of how others live in other parts of the world and how different we all are, which is a great thing but can also be so disheartening and feel so unfair. Since reading The Kite Runner, I’ve not thought of theft in the same way.

My favorite quote (paraphrased) from The Kite Runner is:

“…there is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft.

“Do you understand that?”

“No, Baba jan,” I said, desperately wishing I did. I didn’t want to disappoint him again.

. . .

“When you kill a man, you steal a life,” Baba said. “You steal his wife’s right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. Do you see?”

Hosseini, K. (2003). The kite runner. Bloomsbury Publishing PLC.

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas – John Boyne

Another book that stays rent-free in my mind is The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. This story takes place in Nazi Germany and is about a young German boy who befriends a frail Polish boy who is always in striped pajamas. The two strike up a friendship while on opposite sides of a fence. I flew through this book and was ugly crying by the end. When the movie came out, I immediately rented it and watched it with my mom and Adam, though I must say the book made a bigger impact on me than the movie, which is almost always the case. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is a wonderful read but it is a hard one.

My favorite quotes from The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas are:

“And then the room went very dark and somehow, despite the chaos that followed, Bruno found that he was still holding Shmuel’s hand in his own and nothing in the world would have persuaded him to let it go.”

“And who decided which people wore the striped pajamas and which people wore the uniforms?”

Boyne, J. (2006). The boy in the striped pyjamas.

Lastly, or firstly, I guess, the book that has made the biggest impact on me.

A Monster Calls – Patrick Ness

I watched A Monster Calls before knowing it was based on a book. I went in blind, merely choosing it because it sounded like a horror movie and because Liam Neeson was in it. (If this reads familiar, I’ve mentioned it before in another post.) Whenever I find out a book or movie I like has a book or movie, I must read or watch it, depending on if I saw the movie first or read the book first, obviously. I don’t want to say too much about these books so I won’t spoil anything, but sometimes that is difficult.

A Monster Calls is considered a children’s/young adult book but I was in my early 30s when I saw the movie and then read the book. The story, which was inspired by Siobhan Dowd, is about a young boy, Conor, whose mother is dying from cancer and he keeps having a recurring dream involving a tree “monster.” I quite enjoyed Patrick Ness’ storytelling and could very much relate to Conor and his situation. Like the movie, the book had me crying my eyes out and finally feeling heard and seen. I own the book and the movie but I don’t think I could reread or rewatch for a very, very long time, if ever.

My favorite quotes from A Monster Calls are:

“You really aren’t afraid, are you?”

“No,” Conor said. “Not of you, anyway.”

. . .

“I’ve known forever she wasn’t going to make it, almost from the beginning. She said she was getting better because that’s what I wanted to hear. And I believed her. Except I didn’t.”

Ness, Patrick (2011). A Monster Calls.

With that, I’m done 😭😭.

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The Call is Coming From Inside the House

I’ve never been a horror fan and actually have some nightmarish memories from growing up. My brother was into them way before he should have been, and I spied on him and our cousin watching a Friday the 13th; I don’t know the number, but a guy killed another guy over a candy bar. That’s all I needed to see to send me scampering back up the stairs. When our aunt would babysit, her son, who was much older than us, would watch horror movies, anthologies, and shows while we were there. He thought it was quite funny to scare the bejesus out of us. My brother, as an adult, conveniently forgot that Child’s Play scared him so badly when he was little that his My Buddy doll kept winding up in my closet (my safety be damned). If I remember the story correctly, our cousin told Bub that My Buddy would come to life at night like Chucky. This cousin was kind of a jerk when he was younger.

One anthology I remember seeing at my aunt’s had a story about a ventriloquist dummy chasing a woman with a knife. When she ran into a room and closed the door, the dummy slid the knife under the door or stabbed through it (I can’t remember which as I was very young). I absolutely hated using the bathroom at church because of this episode. The church bathrooms were in the basement past the kitchen and were a bit secluded. Every time I had to go down there, I used the bathroom with both feet on the toilet seat so a dummy couldn’t cut my feet or legs. This lasted for years until they finally added a bathroom upstairs for the elderly and disabled. I also watched Arachnophobia and The Birds, probably at my aunt’s or dad’s, and have had a lifelong, paralyzing fear of spiders and birds.

Well, the bird thing could also be due to the fact that birds would somehow wiggle through some pipe in the back of the stove and get stuck in the kitchen, usually when I was home alone. They would panic, I would panic. I would call Mom at work and scream and cry to her each time. She was home one time and we used a mop, a broom, and a sheet to get the bird to leave. Just not fun. I would love to have a bird, like an African Grey or something, as long as it never flew at me.

I was in Pigeon Forge for a week with my aunt a few years ago. A bird made itself at home in the Me Tarzan, You Jane cabin, which has a huuuuge fake tree going from the main floor to the second floor. Not gonna lie, it’s super cool. I discovered the bird when I was on the second floor working right by the tree, and went nuts. Mom would have known how I would react and I would have run to her, but she was no longer here.

Top floor where I slept
Orangutan on the first floor
More tree, top floor

I enjoyed a lot of the same types of movies Mom liked, and she did well keeping me away from adult movies growing up (Bub, not so much). Considering fart, crap, and heck were curse words in our house, one can imagine what I wasn’t allowed to see until I was older. I remember that I couldn’t watch Scent of a Woman, Rudy, and Jerry MacGuire, the last of which I can’t remember if it was because of the content or because I was grounded at the time. She softened as she got older — after we moved, if that had anything to do with it — and watched some horrorish movies, but she wasn’t a fan of gore. I liked talking to her about movies I think she would like. When I was OTR (over the road) with my ex, we had a TV in the truck and could get cable at the truck stops. Mom and I would talk movies and music and shows. She absolutely refused to watch Harry Potter movies because they dealt with magic, but she watched several episodes of Charmed with me over the years, so I don’t know what that was all about. We talked about American Idol when I was able to watch it.

Since Mom died, I watch only horror movies and shows, and Disney movies. I bought the Pitch Perfect movies because they were on sale but I haven’t been able to watch them without her since Mom and I loved dancing and singing movies. She wanted to see that playbook movie with Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper, too, so I bought it but haven’t watched it. I made the huge mistake of watching The Fault in Our Stars a few months after her death and Willem Dafoe’s character infuriated me and I bawled through most of the movie. I hadn’t read the book. Likewise, I watched A Monster Calls without knowing anything about it except it sounded scary and had Liam Neeson in it. I cried so hard, Adam could hear me from the next room. I read the book after finding out there was a book and it had the same impact. The last story in that movie resonated with me so much that I got a tattoo inspired by it. I got three or four tattoos for Mom, which she would totally give me her License Look over. My multiple tattoos might be a post topic someday.

Not the easiest picture to take!

The odd thing is, nothing scares me anymore, movie, show, or book-wise. My worst fear has come true and that is scarier than anything people can come up with. I bought all the Friday the 13th movies for $20(!) in honor of my brother but haven’t made it through them. I missed the boat on the ’80s and ’90s cheesy, campy horror craze. I can’t tolerate A Nightmare on Elm Street, either, although I am a big Robert Englund fan. Halloween bores me to tears (I like Rob Zombie’s adaptation), as does The Shining (never cared for the book). The original Evil Dead was just a disappointment. To many horror buffs’ dismay, I like the Friday the 13th remake as well as the A Nightmare on Elm Street reboot. I loved the Evil Dead remake and liked the new sequel all right. I’m not into “elevated” horror, but totally not into the terrible “classics,” either. Sleepaway Camp might have been okay if not for the terrible quality of the reveal. Um, I don’t know if I like any old horror movies. Never liked Psycho. Not a Hitchcock fan at all, except for Strangers on a Train and Rope (is the latter even Hitchcock?). Well, as far as classics, I do like Jaws, The Exorcist, Carrie, Killer Klowns From Outer Space, Strait-jacket, and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, the last of which I watched with Mom.

Speaking of, the reason I watch only scary movies and Disney now is that I’ve seen the Disney movies enough to not want to talk to Mom about them, except the new ones, of course, and since she wasn’t a horror fan, I don’t want to tell her about them/she wouldn’t want to hear about them. That’s the same reason I won’t listen to Katy Perry and Rihanna anymore. My sweet, innocent, country-song-loving mother would come home singing Rude Boy and S&M a lot 🤣. I’m starting to see why my therapist diagnosed me with complex grief.

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It’s Not Syrup, It’s Motor Oil

Like with all of my hyperfixations, I dove into keto whole hog, and Adam’s complete willingness to try it with me has made the transition so much easier, although he got over the sugar cravings faster than I did, and lost 30 pounds in the first week. Getting rid of carbs is no small feat, and the price gouging is infuriating. I know this isn’t a new thing, but it is new to me, and extreme inflation and sole financial responsibility just exacerbate the fact. Here, all-purpose white flour is $2.24 for a 5-pound bag. Everyone knows how versatile flour is. Almond flour, which is recommended for a lot of recipes, is $9.84 for a 2-pound bag. It doesn’t taste very good since it tastes overwhelmingly like almonds, at least in keto bread, so I found Carbquik (like Bisquick. Get it?), which is $12.38 for a 2-pound bag. The price difference between “real” cane sugar and sugar substitutes is just as bad, if not worse. All pantry essentials go the same way. Then, everyone wonders why the US is so obese. When you can buy 1 or 2 pounds of pasta for $1 or a 14-ounce can of “fake” pasta made from hearts of palm for $9.84, which item are you going to choose? For the record, hearts of palm is edible but not the greatest, and I much prefer zoodles (spiralized zucchini). Right now, zucchini is over $1 each, and spaghetti squash is $7+.

I bought Recipe Keeper a while back to transfer Mom’s handwritten recipes, church and work cookbooks into, and I absolutely love it, even though I think there should be a pink option. It has the neatest features, including one where you copy an online recipe’s site address and paste it into the app’s address bar and it imports all the information automatically in the correct sections and includes the address so you can revisit the site. It can also scan pictures of recipes in cookbooks and is just an awesome app, aside from not being pink. I think I had a point with this but I can’t remember what it was. Stick with me and it may come back.

Oh, yeah…While searching for recipes online, I started thinking how everyday food influencers (yeah? no?) are getting just as bad as large companies and social media influencers in terms of aesthetics. You don’t get a list of ingredients and directions like recipes of old. Now, there are pictures with more color than Gone with the Wind, pristine backdrops, Mason jars with ribbons, and more stage presence than Elton John.

My food pictures include the time I made 10 quarts of loaded baked potato soup and tipped it all over my new stove, and the other time I made ranch dressing and turned the mixer on without holding onto the bowl, spirographing dressing over half of the kitchen. The ranch was cleanupable, but my poor souped stove never fully recovered 😒. I shall demonstrate below because I just made some beef jerky today and took a picture.

Above is my freshly made beef jerky in a Rubbermaid bowl that has seen better days and seems to have some rough edges around the top, probably from being put in the microwave for too long and too many times. It’s sitting on my desk, which is still part wood color and part black because I got tired of painting it and moved on to the bathroom an embarrassing amount of weeks ago. To top it off, I took the picture in terrible lighting and it’s all grainy. The jerky, however, looks good and tastes great.

Click on the picture for the recipe.

Then, there is this dude with the smooth-looking jerky, and they literally tied it all up in a neat little bow on a table that is one intended color. Extra points for knowing how to do that focus thing for the object closest to the lens while everything behind it is pleasantly blurred.

Of course, it’s not just food, but beverages, too! Most impressive are the smoothies with multiple pictures including fruit that never saw the inside of a Walmart. The gorgeous royal purple smoothie below is the expectation, with the reality (at least my reality) coming out more of a muddy eggplant, and a sink full of dirty measuring containers and mixing utensils.

Click on the picture for more pictures and the recipe.

To go one further, the madness extends past food and drink and into family member territory. Feast your eyes on the Angelina Jolie of cats below. Coby comes complete with permanent eyeliner (and noseliner!) and eyes so blue that one wouldn’t believe them to be real if they didn’t belong to a feline. His photos are exquisitely flawless with him always the focus, and deservedly so. Even the “candids” are shots you wouldn’t think twice about making into a calendar! I admit, I’m a little (lot) bit in love with Coby, but what cat lover wouldn’t be?

Click for Coby’s Instagram account.

And then we have my very own Theodore Corduroy. I mean, what more can I say?

I mainly jest, but, honestly, who has the patience, skill, time, and money to churn out commercial-worthy pictures and videos of food during/after spending the time actually making the food and ensuring it’s Getty-ready? More importantly, why do these sites, pictures, and videos make me feel so inadequate?

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I’m a Hooker with a Heart of Gold

My mom used to crochet. My aunt was the arts and crafts gal, but Mom dabbled. Like any kid, I wanted to do what she was doing and, boy, did she try to teach me! Having a right-hander teach a left-hander something isn’t the easiest!

First, Mom had the brilliant idea to have me watch her crochet in the mirror. That didn’t work. Then, she had me watch her crochet for a few minutes and told me to do what she did backward. Nah, that didn’t work, either. So I said screw it and dug through her yarn books until I found a crochet book with a (very short) chapter on left-handed crocheting, with pictures!

My “project” was a pale yellow tie. It wasn’t meant to be a tie; it was supposed to be a scarf, but dropping and adding stitches is something I’m really good at without even trying. I quickly lost interest in crocheting. Knitting went the same way.

Now, in my 30s, I find crocheting to be very relaxing. I picked it up again after a Bob’s Burgers episode, along with knitting, but knitting takes too much of my focus and is aggravating for me. I had all kinds of ideas in mind for crocheting!

I was going to make hats, gloves, scarves, mittens, cardigans, animals, Baby Yoda, couches for the cats, and so much more! Then I looked up some patterns. Did you know knitters and crocheters have their own language?! It’s true, and it’s super confusing, especially for someone like me.

My dream was to make a too-big cardigan like the one Demi Moore’s character in Ghost made. It looks so comfy and warm! But that wasn’t happening since I couldn’t read and understand the patterns. Of course, something as menial as instructions and directions has never deterred me, so I came up with my own “pattern.”

My wonderful husband came home with 6 crochet hooks (I totally want these!) because he didn’t know what size I needed or wanted, and I set to work. I made the back of the cardigan, then most of the front using a slightly bigger hook, then bell sleeves with the biggest hook. My plan was to “sew” it together when I was done. Then I ran out of yarn with about three inches to go on the last front panel. It was very upsetting because my bell sleeves were awesome! *Sigh*

To make a very long story short, I have crocheted and unraveled about ten cardigans. As I said, crocheting is very relaxing for me, and I have anxiety, so I don’t mind all the undoing. I have about six balls of pink yarn of various sizes around the house and a completed cardigan. Until I unravel it and start over again.

Maybe I’ll wait until winter comes and goes before undoing it. Maybe I’ll buy more yarn. Who knows? Amazon has great deals on their yarn (my favorite brand is Red Heart Super Saver, like this one in Cherry Red) and there are so many available colors.  Hobii has some super cute yarn for cheap, too. I love the Space Walk and Outer Space yarn they have.

Update

I ended up buying four skeins of Outer Space Hobii yarn. It’s gorgeous, but as thin as thread! I guess I need to pay more attention to weights and such. Now I’m stuck with yarn I can’t work with because it’s too thin. It’s ideal for knitting socks; however, I don’t know how to knit socks. It may come in handy someday. Hobii sent a piece of cherry candy with their order and it was SO good! If I ever figure out the Magic Circle, I may even attempt to make a turtle someday, or a hot pad.

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The Costly Shenanigans of Wally World

I seriously despise Walmart (I feel they are monopolizing), and I hate that my financial situation forces me to shop there. I’m all for supporting small businesses, and I can find things I like at Target and Kroger, but Walmart is almost always cheaper than any competitor, big or small. Unfortunately, they are a soulless corporation and can afford to screw their customers over. Since we don’t have a car, I use Instacart, DoorDash, or Walmart to get groceries. Walmart is the cheapest, of course, as we have Walmart+, and there are no added fees like with Instacart+. A week or two ago, I was doing my thing and getting groceries and when I placed the order, it didn’t go through for some reason. I tried again and it told me I had insufficient funds to place the order, which would have been true if the order had actually gone through the first time but it hadn’t. I checked the bank, and there was my Walmart order amount pending, holding the only money I had for groceries.

I contact Walmart through the chat and tell them the problem. They tell me that the pre-auth (pending) amount will drop off in 7-10 days and I just need to reorder, but I don’t have the funds to do that. So, Adam gets involved because I’m flipping out, per usual, and he calls them. They tell him there was a glitch which is why my order didn’t go through, then tell him the same thing about reordering. He tells them we don’t have the money to reorder, and they tell him it’s on my bank’s end, not theirs, blah, blah, blah. He calls the bank, and they tell him it’s on the merchant’s side, not theirs. They even do a 3-way conference with Adam, Walmart, and the bank, and there’s nothing anyone can do. I read my bank’s policy on pre-authorizations, then contacted Walmart through chat again and asked them to remove the pre-auth, and the dude just leaves the chat!

Walmart can remove/cancel the pre-auth charges at their discretion, and I know this because Instacart and DoorDash do it all the time with my bank without issue. They authorize a certain amount in case substitutions cost more, a product is out of stock, or if something is weight-based. The final cost is reflected in the bank before the order even gets here on most occasions and if not then, always on the same day. Walmart is just a lying liar.

So, I’m shopping at Walmart yesterday, which is a chore in itself because I submit my order, then start thinking about finances and go back and remove stuff that we don’t really need. Then, I add stuff. Then, I remove stuff again. With Walmart’s crap policy and money handling, they tack on any additions as separate purchases and stack them up without subtracting the cost of items I remove (which I wasn’t aware of at the time). At the end of it all, I had around a $100 order and the pending charges/temporary hold were over $400. That is important information for my story. One item that I needed was a certain acid reducer, but it’s $23-something, so I chose the equate brand, which is $14-something (thus, why I shop at Walmart). Even the name-brand medicine was $5 to $7 cheaper at Walmart than the other stores around here. Order placed. No issue. Yay!

I go about my business and eventually get an email stating the equate acid reducer is unavailable, so they replaced it with the name brand, per my instructions. When I go to the site to approve these changes, I see they replaced my one 42-count box of equate with four 42-count boxes of the name brand, for a total of $96 for medicine! This does not raise any flags on their end because of that temporary hold being over $400, as mentioned above. I’m flipping out again because I’m very well versed in their policy by now and Gandi has a doctor’s appointment tomorrow and I have no intention of spending $96 on medicine at the moment. Adam does his thing and talks to several people, one of whom says that they will fix it and we can keep “or donate” the three extra boxes that are going to be delivered for no charge. Obviously, I don’t believe them at all and know they will say anything to get the customer off the phone. There is no way Walmart would agree to doing what the customer service rep said would happen. That’s just losing them money.

I have a light bulb moment and go in the app and start a return so I can get refunded, hoping that would be quicker and more reliable than customer service’s word. I do the whole return process, choose that 3/4 items were missing since there is no choice that matches my circumstance, and that just brings up the message that I need to call Customer Care. I cancel, go through the process again and choose 3/4 items were damaged, and lo and behold, a $76 refund is issued and shows up as such in my bank app before I even close the Walmart app. I was pretty proud of myself for getting this taken care of, although I must admit I was shaking from anger and frustration while Adam was on the phone with different reps giving him the run-around.

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