mousme: The nib of a fountain pen resting on a paper with a dotted line, captioned Write (Write)
I know if's not malicious, but dear God I am so tired of KK breaking my stuff. So far the tally is three (3!) of my antique dining room chairs, a hole in the wall of the old house, and today she shattered the glass of one of my framed art pieces. The chairs are the most expensive part of it, since I'm going to have to find someone who can repair them with the proper technique and materials. I have eight chairs in total, and most of them are in kind of rough shape anyway (the legs are loose on most of them), but we're running out of places for guests to sit when they visit, goddamn.

Like I said, it's not malicious, but I can't help but notice she never breaks any of her own stuff, it's always something of mine, and it's getting under my skin a little bit these days. Again, it's one of those things that probably wouldn't bother me under normal circumstances, but my emotional resilience is at an all-time low and so it's hard not to take everything personally. I can't even be truly angry about the art frame, because it was propped up against a wall in my bedroom, and she knocked it over while helping to build the desk portion of my Murphy bed, so I can't get mad about it because she was under no obligation to help me in the first place.

*lies on the floor*

The good news is that the Murphy bed and desk are about 90% done. There are two sets of doors left to attach (one to the bottom of the desk, one to one of the shelves), and then I will be all set! The desk is finicky to put back in because that part of the unit isn't secured to the wall the way the bed is, and I have to give it a bit of a hard yank in order to engage the mechanism properly to push it into the unit, but that pulls the whole thing away from the wall. KK is thinking we may need to improvise and anchor it either into the wall (we have a few anchoring pins) or to the bed portion, which is itself already anchored to the wall. Otherwise, apart from having to figure out how to access the electrical outlet (it's a tiny bit of a narrow space), I am almost ready to unpack all my computer stuff and work out the best configuration for it all. I am low-key pretty excited to get my room fully unpacked and functional so that I'm not surrounded by a sea of boxes all the time.

The bed itself is surprisingly comfortable, and although adding the fake doors to it has made it a lot heavier, it's still pretty easy to put up and pull down. The only hassle is that I have to strip the pillows and bedclothes off each time I want to put it up, because it won't fit otherwise, and then I need to remake the bed afterward. It's annoying, but I remember doing this for a year or so when I first started working in Ottawa when I was renting a room that was almost the same size. Long-time readers may remember the fun fact that the Murphy bed in that room actually blocked the access to the door in the room, effectively locking me in every time I wanted to sleep. It was twelve-ish years ago, but I remember that, while it was a bit annoying to have to strip the bed every day, it also wasn't the end of the world. 

My goal now is to get the house fully functional by July 23rd, which is when KK is scheduled to have her surgery and her aunt will be coming to stay with us. I don't want to have an older woman (and a guest!) being forced to navigate around boxes and other chaos the whole time. It will just make everything much easier if I have everything unpacked and in its place by then.

So that's it for the lengthy and very boring update about the bed/house.

Outside of my tiny sphere of influence, the world has been getting progressively more... I can't think of a good adjective for it. But yeah, everything continues to be on fire, both literally and metaphorically. The US appears to have gone to war with Iran, except maybe not, except probably yes? Either way, World War III hasn't quite erupted yet. Climate change continues to wreak havoc on everything from wildfires to wild swings in temperature locally. Ukraine is still embattled and the US appears to be withdrawing the support it had promised in exchange for mineral rights. The current Liberal government in Canada has decided to focus more on defense spending rather than, say, I don't know, investing in ANY of the current crises we're facing (housing, cost of living, collapsing health care, collapsing education, neglected indigenous communities, etc.), which is super fucking dandy. That's what we get for voting for a Conservative in Liberal clothing, I guess. Better than Poilievre, but my God, we had some better progressive alternatives and we STILL couldn't bring ourselves to vote outside of the binary. For fuck's sake.

*sigh*

I may try to write a longer post about external events. I know that everyone is dying to hear the next installment of the Murphy Bed Saga, but I also use this space as a way to document things for myself, so I think it's important for me to write down at least some impressions of what's happening in the wider world so that when I read back in a few years, I'll have some idea of what the fuck was happening during this time.


mousme: A text icon, dark green text on pale green, that reads There is no normal life. There's just life. (No Normal Life)
Happy post-Canada Day! I had to go to work in the midst of the craziness that is downtown Ottawa just as the fireworks were ending. Absolute madness, but I was able to get through thanks to a letter from my manager explaining that I'm an essential worker and a (mostly) understanding police officer. Now I just have to get through this night shift without falling asleep at my desk.

The building of the Murphy bed is an ongoing saga. It is a huge undertaking for people who aren't accustomed to doing such things on the regular. My friends Dylan and Sarah came over on Saturday to help me build it, and by the end of the day only the upright cupboard part of the bed was built and anchored to the wall, so I had to sleep on the cot one more night. Sarah came back on Sunday and we got the bed part built enough that I was able to sleep in it that night, but we still weren't done. She came back today, and we were able to add the "doors" that make the Murphy bed look like a wardrobe when it's folded up (they are not functional doors, for the record), and also put together the shelving portion of the built-in desk part of it. We are still not done.

I'm on nights this week, so I got about two hours of sleep before Sarah came over, and then KK let me take a nap in her room later, so I'm chugging along on about four-ish hours of sleep in total. I haven't been much help in building my own bed, mostly because Sarah kept kicking all of us out of the room, preferring to work on her own for most of the time, but also because I've been trying to get a million things done at once, which is working about as well as you'd expect. 

I'm cautiously optimistic that once the Murphy bed is completely built I'll start getting more on top of things, because I'll be able to fully unpack my bedroom and hopefully get it set up for maximum efficiency, and from there I'll be able to keep going in the rest of the house. The kitchen and living room are a bit more unpacked now, but we're nowhere near done.

I also need to take several days to go back to the old house to clear out the remaining stuff from there, clean the place from top to bottom, and then hopefully find someone relatively inexpensive to repair the basement walls. Longtime readers will remember that my cats did not react well to the stress of moving many years ago and had peed extensively in the basement, damaging the walls to the point where the bottom of the drywall had to be cut away in many places. I may try repairing it myself, since it's just a question of getting drywall cut to the correct dimensions, screwing it in place, and then screwing some shiplap over it (I think it's called shiplap, it's basically cheap white wooden slats). It doesn't have to be done well, it just needs to be done.

All right, time to get back to work. Catch you on the flip side, friends!
mousme: A picture of Wol from Winnie the Pooh, holding a note that reads "Gon Out. Backson. Bizy. Backson." (Back Soon)
Welp, I fell off the face of the planet, at least posting-wise. It has been A Time, friends. I still don't have a fully functional bed, all my computer gear and office stuff is still in boxes, and the old house still needs me to go back and do a whole lot of tidying and cleaning. I am not excited about that at all.

The new house is great, but we are still awash in a sea of boxes, and it's been very slow going to unpack it all. It would probably have gone faster if I were better rested, but until last night I was sleeping on a very uncomfortable camping cot. KK keeps insisting the cot is comfortable, because she slept on it for one night last year, but that has honestly not been my experience.

KK is scheduled for her bariatric surgery on July 23rd. Her aunt is coming to stay with us for two or three weeks to help out, since I can't get enough time off work to help her post-surgery. Since we don't have a guest room, her aunt will have to stay in my room, and I'll be relegated back to the godawful cot again for the duration, and in the living room to boot, meaning I won't have access to any of my stuff and will likely have to live out of a suitcase or a box of some kind. I can't say I'm looking forward to that, since three weeks of terrible sleep and constant body pain is really going to put a crimp in my ability to function, especially since I'll still have to go to work during that time.

I really, really hope that the surgery is successful and that KK starts being more functional soonish. She's been doing progressively less and less around the house while producing more and more work for me, and I don't think I can go on like this indefinitely. I can manage myself pretty well, but I can't manage the both of us on my own.

On the plus side, our property is filled with fireflies, and the frogs in our small pond sing to us all night. The dogs are thrilled to bits to have so much room to romp around, too. It's pretty sweet. :)


mousme: A turquoise twenty-sided die that has landed on "1." The caption reads: "Shit." (Natural One)
I am taking solace in a quote from Charles Darwin's diary:  'But I am very poorly today & very stupid & I hate everybody & everything. One lives only to make blunders.'

So even brilliant naturalists were prone to having horrible depression days. I'm not actually depressed, I don't think, or at least not as badly as I remember it being back when I was actually depressed (a quarter of a century ago now, wow!). Or maybe I am situationally depressed as opposed to chemically imbalanced depressed, and maybe that feels different? I don't know.

Anyway, I am being a major bummer to be around for everyone, including myself. If I could get away with it, I'd hide in my bedroom in my bed for the next six months or so until the universe decides to turn things around. Unfortunately, I still have to interact with the world. 

On that note, I have to get back to work. Catch you on the flip side, friends!
mousme: A text icon that reads: "When the sun has set, no candle can replace it." (Sun has set)
My weekend didn't get any better. I didn't even want to post yesterday so I kind of skipped it and am back-dating this entry. Normally that only happens when I get super busy or when a day gets ahead of me, but yesterday I just couldn't bring myself to sit at a keyboard and write about everything that's going wrong.

It would be nice to have good news to share again, but these days it's all mostly just me complaining about everything that's going wrong, which isn't nice for anyone, even me. So I guess I'll be sticking to short updates until I get less depressing. ;)

Catch you on the flip side, friends!
mousme: A text icon in pale blue that reads Winter is Coming (Winter is Coming)
I don't have a long post in me today. The home visit with American Brittany Rescue went really well, and if Odin gets along well with the other dogs I will have the green light to bring him home, which is great.

That was the only good part of the day, because I received a notice in the mail that H&R Block made a mistake (?) with my taxes, to the tune of nearly $13,000 (I owe about $3.5K to H&R Block because they advanced me my supposed tax refund, and $9.5k to CRA). I don't know where I am supposed to find any of this money. I have never in my life owed this much money on taxes, and I am honestly at a loss as to how this happened. I need to dig out my tax paperwork and have someone at H&R Block walk me through step by step how this happened, and why the fuck their mistake is now suddenly my problem.

I honestly feels like, because I got a house and this is a nice thing, the universe has felt the need to balance this out by doing nothing but shit on me for the past two months or so. Like, can I get a fucking break, please? My parents were hospitalized, I got Covid, I had to work extra hours, there were problems with the mortgage and the closing and the insurance for the new place, KK got sick the day of the move and we had to postpone (which means I had to spend money on the cancellation, another month's rent and utilities mostly at my own expense because KK has no spare money), both cats needed $3k worth of dental surgery, I need to buy a CPAP next week (more money) my car needs repairs that are getting done this weekend (more money), and now this (the epitome of more fucking money).

Honestly, it's enough to make me want to throw myself off the closest high bridge. At least my life insurance might pay off some of the debt.
mousme: A view of a woman's legs from behind, wearing knee-high rainbow socks. The rest of the picture is black and white. (Default)

I was going to make a joke about making a sacrifice (or perhaps an offering) to the god(s) of wakefulness, but it turns out that there are only gods of sleep and dreaming and they just happen to also have wakefulness as part of their domain or sphere of influence.  Either way, I made choices yesterday that resulted in my getting to sleep a lot later than my good intentions. I don't think these fall into the category of poor life choices, though.

I had some errands that I had to run, specifically to pick up more quail feed (I had thought I had enough to last until the weekend, but my calculation was off by a couple of days) and more toothpaste for the dogs. Yes, I do brush the dogs' teeth every day. Honestly, if I could manage it, I'd brush the cats' teeth too, and that would have spared me the nearly $3,000 vet bill from a couple of weeks ago, but the cats do NOT take kindly to having their mouths messed with. The dogs are wriggly about it, but otherwise they let me brush their teeth without too much fuss. Anyway, we always have a backup tube of toothpaste, but of course the backup tube is packed in a box somewhere, so I had to buy another one. I suppose we could have let the dogs go for a week either without brushing at all or just brushing without toothpaste (I am quite sure KK doesn't brush their teeth when I'm not home in the evenings because I'm at work), but it wasn't that much of a hardship to detour for 15 minutes to go pick some up at one of the local pet stores.

I got home at 6:30pm and allowed KK to persuade me to watch TV with her, although I probably should have taken that time to do something useful. I put the dogs to bed just after 8pm, then went to the basement to put the quail to bed and put away the quail feed into 5-gallon buckets. Fun facts I have discovered: 1) 1 bag of quail feed fits almost perfectly into 3 5-gallon buckets; 2) 6 quail will go through one bag of feed in about 9 weeks (I forget how much the bag weighs, but I think it's 25kg), which means each bird goes through about 600 grams of feed a day, which is 3 times their average body weight; 3) quail feed is dusty AF.

Since I was now coated in quail feed dust, taking a shower seemed like a non-negotiable, so that's what I did.

As an aside, hot showers are pretty glorious things, and honestly having continuous access to fresh running water on demand at temperatures I can regulate according to my whims is going to be one of the things I miss the most if society collapses (even partially) and the grid no longer supports us. There's a lot of stuff we take for granted in our modern society that is kind of hanging by a thread these days, not least of which is clean, potable water and pretty excellent waste management. I'm moving to a place which doesn't have access to a municipal sewage system, but it still has a septic holding tank (not a full septic system with a septic field, interestingly enough) which requires regular emptying by a company that knows what it's doing when it comes to disposing of waste in a safe and sanitary fashion. We eliminated so many illnesses and premature deaths just by figuring out how to dispose of human excrement that I don't think many of us (myself included, if I'm perfectly honest) truly understand how bad things will get once we no longer have access to good sanitation.

Anyway, all that aside, after my shower and general pre-bedtime ablutions, I ended up only getting to bed well after 10:30pm and fell asleep shortly after 11:00pm. Given that I was working the "early" 7am shift today, that made for a shorter night of sleep than I would have liked, but it was all for a good cause. As of next week, since we'll be living much further away, I am going to have to become much more regimented about going to bed at a reasonable hour, because I'm going to need to leave on average 30 minutes earlier than I have been for the last year or so. I'm probably going to have to forgo watching TV with KK in the evenings. That seems like the best way to save a couple of hours in which to get things done. I didn't sit down and watch TV per se before she moved in: often I'll have a TV show or a podcast on kind of in the background as I move around and do things like chores.

I find it weirdly hard to do any kind of chores when KK is in the house, which unfortunately is 99% of the time these days (or else it's during work hours, when I can't do chores anyway because I'm either working or physically at my office). This is entirely a me problem, a weird hangup that I have about getting stuff done where I can be Perceived(TM), especially when she's just sitting and watching TV or playing on her phone or her tablet (or all three at once, as is often the case, which boggles even my ADHD mind). I don't know what it is, exactly, but I just feel weird about cleaning up around her, partly because it kind of feels like I am cleaning up AT her, which is not my intention (although maybe I am subconsciously doing that? It's possible.). Anyway, I am probably overthinking this.

My shift is nearly over, thank goodness, because today has been nothing but a long list of frustrations because of our automated SOPs. When they work, they are great. However, today a supervisor decided to take them offline without warning (our manager gave the instructions but apparently it wasn't meant to happen until next week), and I lost all of the work I had done on a rather complicated file, which was just maddening. And then I went around in circles with said supervisor about it for a while, and finally had to start my file over from scratch using an older version.

Whoops, shit is hitting the fan. I will leave this here for now. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

mousme: A picture of Darth Vader, captioned My Fandom Destroys Planets. (My Fandom Destroys Planets)
 I lined up all my dominoes yesterday to guarantee an early bedtime. I wrote my posts early, fed the dogs and brushed their teeth early, put the quail to bed early, and had myself in bed winding down before 8pm. My plan was foolproof, or so I thought. I was about to turn out the lights and go to bed when my phone rang. I almost didn't answer because the call was from a Montreal number I didn't recognize. I only ever get calls from either my parents or my friend Lu, and all other calls originating from Montreal are usually wrong numbers trying to reach someone with my number but a different area code.

Then I figured, since it was likely a wrong number, I'd answer and just let them know, and then I could go to bed. NOPE. It was a volunteer from American Brittany Rescue calling to schedule my home visit. Oops. So she and I had a very nice chat and scheduled said home visit for ridiculously early this Saturday, and the very nice lady just. kept. talking. for over an hour. I still got to bed earlier than usual, but it was still 9:30pm, an hour and a half after I was ready to turn in. I am deeply frustrated and not a little cranky about the whole business. I'm going to try for an early night again tonight and hope it works better than last night.

*kicks rocks petulantly*

I am unreasonably annoyed by this specific loss of sleep, probably because A) I am bad at adapting to last-minute changes in my plans, and B) I had lined up everything perfectly in order to get to bed at the time I wanted, and if I just hadn't answered my phone, I could have done just that. Of course, if I'd done that I wouldn't have been able to set up the home visit or talk to the volunteer, so there's that, but I am still unreasonably annoyed.

I am tired of constantly being either in a bad mood, or a hair's breadth away from being in a bad mood after even the tiniest setback. Hopefully my attempts at getting more sleep will pay off in that regard. I don't have the luxury of taking time off work (not more than a day here or there, anyway), and psychiatric medication doesn't seem to be terribly effective for me (although I am being nice and compliant about taking my pills). So I'm going to have to trust that focusing on getting more and hopefully better sleep will have a salutary effect. Maybe not living surrounded by precariously teetering boxes and whatever trash KK has left around for me to pick up will help with my (perceived) stress levels as well. We shall see in a few weeks, I guess.
mousme: A view of a woman's legs from behind, wearing knee-high rainbow socks. The rest of the picture is black and white. (Default)
 It's been long enough (nearly four weeks) since I worked the AvSec Desk at my job, and I forgot how busy it can get. There's a lull right now, but even though everything else has been pretty quiet, I have basically been going steady since I got in at 08:00. It does have the advantage of making the time go by much faster.

I drove in with KK this morning since we're both in-office today. She had originally wanted to park near her office because the parking is cheaper there, but she got up late and therefore asked that I drive and drop her off and park at my office (conveniently making me pay for parking). It makes more sense to carpool on days when we're both in-office, but she tends to pull these last-minute bait-and-switches on me, and so I think from here on out I'll be making my own way to the office on those days anyway, especially now that we aren't paying for a monthly parking pass anymore. We had one before she got her medical exemption from the three days a week in-office, but now that she only has to go in two days a week or less, and I have only nine to ten in-office days every two months, it's not worth the monthly cost.

I have been a lot less patient with KK lately, and I think it's because I've worn through a lot of my resilience in the past couple of months, between my parents being ill, my getting Covid, the stress of working a bunch of extra hours, all the last-minute legal and financial shenanigans about buying the house, packing up the house, and then having to pull an extra few thousand dollars out of my ass because the move had to be postponed. Each of these things I probably could have handled just fine, even two of them would probably have been stressful but fine, but all of it within a six-week period appears to have taken a toll. Objectively I understand that KK is unable to share the load equally, because she is more physically disabled than I am, and she also doesn't have much money due to having to pay down some considerable amounts of debt (she actually makes about $16k a year more than I do, but I am in much better financial shape than she is). On my good days, I totally get it and have no trouble with it. I knew this going in when she moved in four years ago, so this isn't a surprise or a deal-breaker. On my bad days, however, when I've come home to find that she's left more garbage in the sink for me to clean up instead of throwing it in the garbage can that is *literally right there* and then she makes some sort of snide comment about something I've done that she doesn't like, it takes all my self-control not to snap at her. 

Anyway, I think my first order of business will be to go to bed as early as possible tonight in an attempt to be better rested for the next couple of days. I'm working in-office and KK is working from home, which will spare us some of the logistical issues at least. I would also like to finish all of the packing by Sunday. I think it's all pretty doable, but I definitely need to be less of a zombie for all the dominoes to fall just right.

I think I'll leave it there for now. Work is so busy I may not have time to post before my shift is over otherwise. Catch you on the flip side, friends!
mousme: A picture of the muppet Forgetful Jones from Sesame Street (Forgetful Jones)
I don't understand how I can have spent all of today doing next to nothing during my work from home day and yet be absolutely fucking exhausted anyway. (This is a back-dated post, because I collapsed in an exhausted heap into my bed instead of updating) I spent most of the day cleaning out my long-neglected inbox. For the record, my job involves sorting through emails in a separate, shared inbox all day long, so I don't pay attention to my personal inbox most of the time except to quickly read through the new emails in case something important has cropped up. In the past I was more diligent about sorting through my emails and filing them away into various folders, but somewhere around last November I stopped doing that and just let them kind of pile up. I kept meaning to get around to cleaning everything up in there, but I never did, so yesterday I bit the bullet and spent several hours doing that.

There were just shy of 800 emails to sort through, so it took a while, and I am glad that I had a day without having to write SitReps or work on other projects so that I could concentrate on that. I got it down to just 3 emails and today it's down to two because I was able to "action" one of the items (I do hate that it has become a verb, even though in principle I agree that language is fluid and that we should not be prescriptivist about it). One of the emails is something I only want to do sometime next month at the earliest. I am being sent on a course to learn about railway operations, which is super cool, but because part of it will be on-site I am required to wear safety gear (specifically work gloves and steel-toed boots), which I have to purchase myself and then submit my receipts for reimbursement. These days I am hemorrhaging money thanks to the new house and the moving shenanigans, so having to spend another $200 on gear (even if I get reimbursed eventually) is not a prospect I particularly relish. Ugh.

I am probably paying for several late nights over the past few days. I haven't even been going to bed late for a "good" reason, I've just been messing around and putting off going to bed. That has resulted in my dragging myself a little through my days, and the minute I actually get into bed I can't keep my eyes open at all and am always at risk of dropping off to sleep over whatever I'm reading and not getting my CPAP mask on. I shudder to think what sort of condition I'd be in without the CPAP, given that I now know it's making a difference in the quality of my sleep, even if it hasn't resulted in noticeable improvements in energy levels. 

All right, that's it for now. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

mousme: A text icon, dark green text on pale green, that reads There is no normal life. There's just life. (No Normal Life)
It is SO nice not to have to be the SitRep writer anymore! I spent a small chunk of today holding the hand of the new SitRep writer as she navigated her first day of writing SitReps, just as the previous SitRep writer did for me last week. It is a job and a half, and honestly the instructions we were given are, uh, not very clear. I am sort of tempted to re-write them and submit the proposal to the "Core" team of supervisors/managers so that future SitRep writers don't find themselves navigating a sea of practically indecipherable text. Okay, it's not that bad, but whoever wrote the instructions did so with no regard for brevity or clarity, nor is it particularly well ordered. Technical writing is a skill, after all.

I'm working from home tomorrow, which is a blessing. It's the only WFH day I have this week, so I plan to take full advantage of that. I have to get up early enough to take out the recycling and the green bin, but at least I don't have to get up at the ass-crack of dawn. Also, since I'm not the SitRep writer this week, it ought to make for a much more chill day. If that turns out to be the case, I am going to try to take advantage of the "extra" time to keep packing up the house.

KK is finally home after being out with H most of the weekend. We drove to the new house this evening and took the dogs out for a run, checked the mail, and picked up the cat food that had been delivered there (we didn't want to leave it outside in case the smell was too enticing for the local wildlife). I also wandered over to the road that leads to the neighbour's farm and said a respectful hello to some of the dairy cows that were hanging out nearby. They were pretty nonplussed at my presence, but they didn't seem overly concerned otherwise. I quite like cows, so I'm hoping we will be on good terms with our neighbours in general. I also spotted the same cat I'd seen over the weekend (I think) trotting down the path in the direction of the farm, so I am reasonably confident that the cat must belong to them.

Okay, time for bed. Catch you on the flip side, friends!
mousme: A view of a woman's legs from behind, wearing knee-high rainbow socks. The rest of the picture is black and white. (Default)
I feel like today was a bit of a wash. I was the Greeter at Meeting online today, but someone in the Meeting House (the same person who is constantly complaining about the "technology" in the Meeting House) took it upon herself to, as another Friend put it, "cosplay as Ministry & Counsel." I am trying and failing to not be annoyed by it. It honestly doesn't matter who says the things as long as the Meeting unfolds the way it should, and it did, but I have a red trigger button that revolves around people thinking I'm incompetent/can't do my job or telling me how to do my job, and apparently this hit the same button. In conclusion, I am MIFFED.

Otherwise I packed more boxes in the basement, which took more time than I anticipated. What's left in the basement is all stuff that's weirdly shaped or a bit too big to fit in most boxes, and a lot of it is really random shit that belongs to KK that I can't even identify, which makes labelling the boxes a bit of a challenge. Still, I made some headway, which is something.

KK is spending tonight at her friend H's hotel again, and so I have to medicate Rika the Chihuahua and feed Libby (the long-haired tabby) her special kidney food on top of the regular bedtime routine stuff. I'll be doing that in a few minutes, as soon as I've put the quail to bed.

I have also, because I am a special kind of crazy, applied to adopt a senior Brittany from a rescue group. His name is Odin, and he's 10 years old, and he looks like an absolute sweetheart, albeit with the same escape artist and counter surfing tendencies as my current set of hooligans. So, you know, he'll fit right in! Of course, there's no guarantee my application will be accepted. Rescues are notoriously finicky about placing animals, so they may find something wrong with either the new house, the new property, or my general attitude and philosophy with regards to owning dogs and the care and treatment thereof. I don't have a fence yet, although we do definitely plan on building a six-foot fence to keep the current set of hooligans from haring off and terrorizing our neighbour's dairy cows. I don't want to constantly be worried that my dogs are being a nuisance to the neighbours. Anyway, we shall see.

Now, I am off to medicate the dog, feed the cat, take a quick shower, and then lapse into a hopefully at least slightly restorative slumber. I don't recall if I mentioned it, but last week I fell asleep one night before putting on my CPAP mask, and I felt like absolute garbage the next day. So while I hadn't noticed the night-and-day difference in energy levels that other people have said come with using a CPAP, I can report with full confidence that it is, in fact, doing something.
mousme: A picture of Darth Vader, captioned My Fandom Destroys Planets. (My Fandom Destroys Planets)
Not in the sense of fewer daylight hours, but rather in the sense of "this was a very long day." I'm so flipping tired.

I was up at 5:30 in order to be up and dressed and with everything sorted out so I could go to U-Haul and get the van I reserved to bring garbage to the dump. I had actually reserved a pick-up truck, but it turns out U-Haul doesn't have those in Ottawa anymore. So instead I was given a van, and that actually turned out to be something of a blessing in disguise, since I'm not sure the pick-up truck would have had enough room in the bed for everything I tossed in there.

There was so. much. garbage, friends. I tossed a ton of KK's junk (mostly broken shit from her past two or possibly three cars that she apparently just tossed in the garage rather than throwing out), and a bunch of stuff that had just been sitting in the basement for a remarkably long time, plus two broken office chairs that KK has been hanging onto this entire time. I drove to the local dump, got the van weighed, tossed everything into the container that was there, and was paid up and out of there all inside of about twenty minutes. I was actually really impressed with how efficient it all was.

KK and H surprised me by actually showing up to the house at 10:00. KK had said in a message the night before that they'd aim for 9:00, so I wasn't expecting them until the afternoon, but they showed up a lot earlier than I thought! H was actually pretty great and helped KK pack up about 90% of the books in the cat room as well as breaking down the mini greenhouse full of dead plants KK had in there. They managed to get most of it done while I was cleaning out part of the basement and then dragging stuff to the dump. 

I am not entirely sure what bug crawled up KK's butt today, but she was snide and snippy to me both verbally and via Signal messages all day, accusing me of "rushing" to get out of the house, among other things. I don't know if she's feeling self-conscious because her friend is visiting and suddenly thinks I am making her look bad (this has happened to me with friends in the past, where I am acceptable as long as I am not in public view of others), or if she was just having an off day, but if she continues to be like that tomorrow I am going to have to talk to her about it. I am not here to be anyone's verbal punching bag anymore. I've had that in enough relationships, thank you.

We took the dogs and H to the new house in the late afternoon and evening, and the dogs had an absolute blast zooming around the property again while I got eaten alive by mosquitoes. I also spotted a black and white cat prowling around the property, and I'm really hoping that it's a barn cat from the farm next door and that the previous owners didn't abandon their cat on the property. If they have we'll take the poor thing in, of course, but I really hope that's not the case. 

KK and H drove to Rockin' Rhonda's diner, which is about 15 minutes away. It's a 50s-themed diner that's right across the street from another house on which we made an offer last year, and we were pretty sad that we didn't get that house because the diner has really good food. They have garlic bread that is absolutely to die for, it's so good. Once we were stuffed full of food I loaded up all the dogs in my car again, came home, got them fed and medicated and crated as needed, and now all that's left is to send out the announcements for Quaker Meeting tomorrow and prepare to be the online greeter. It's already very late, so I need to get right on that.

Catch you on the flip side, friends!
mousme: An RCMP officer in ceremonial uniform swinging around a horizontal bar. (Maintain the Right)
I spent today in a haze of frustration about work. First my work tablet/computer refused to recognize that it was, in fact, connected to the internet. It did this for the better part of half an hour. I informed my supervisor, who only had "Contact IT, please," as if I was too stupid to come up with that on my own. I thought it was a well-known best practice to first do all the troubleshooting you can on your own before contacting IT, but apparently not in her world. Anyway, just the threat of dialing the number for the Help Desk made my computer decide to behave itself, and it spontaneously decided that Oh, did, I mean THAT internet? Why didn't I SAY SO? *rolls eyes*

Then I spent the rest of the day chasing my tail trying to get the wildfire SitRep written, then I had information for a different SitRep come in, but when I tried to run it by my supervisor she didn't even know what it was, so I had to explain it to her. Then she gave me the green light to send the information, and then five minutes after I'd hit "send" on my email she messaged me to tell me that I shouldn't send it because the information was for "internal distribution only." *screams into a pillow*

I ended up working 30 minutes late, which is NOT my idea of fun on a Friday, I won't lie. 

By that point I was so tired I couldn't see straight, so I fed the dogs and opted for an early night. The early night was then curtailed by KK, who kept messaging me on Signal with blow-by-blow updates of her night with H at the hotel. It turns out their first room had no working A/C (the irony is rich, since the lack of A/C is why she decided to let me take care of the house on my own this weekend), and when the hotel gave them another room it also had no A/C. When the bar across the street started blaring music they opted for a different hotel. 

At least I got some stuff done, but there was no progress at all on the packing.
mousme: A picture of Wol from Winnie the Pooh, holding a note that reads "Gon Out. Backson. Bizy. Backson." (Back Soon)
I really do not like being the SitRep writer at work. It's so much more work than just doing my regular job, and none of it can be done on "autopilot" the way a lot of my regular work can. I have one more day left of this role, and next week I can go back to my little routine and be left alone. Thank goodness.

I could complain more about moving, but I won't. :P

I am not usually a True Crime Girlie, as the youths call it these days, but last year I fell down a very specific rabbit hole in the form of the Karen Read murder case. It's being covered on YouTube by (well, by a million people approximately) a lawyer from Alberta that I started following for a completely unrelated reason, and the whole case is absolutely wild. Like, if it was written as a novel or as an episode of a police procedural you would dismiss it as being too unrealistic. I've had the videos on in the background rather like a podcast, and it has very much helped speed the days along lately. I have reached the end of the videos for now, but the trial is still going on, so I assume there will be more videos. I like the YouTuber I follow for several reasons, but most of all I love the name he picked for himself: Runkle of the Bailey. His actual name is Ian Runkle, and of course it's a nod to Rumpole of the Bailey, which was a favourite of mine when I was growing up. I think he leans far more conservative than I do, but I appreciate his legal analysis and breakdown of what's been going on in the trial.

It is weird to be following a "true crime" case. I was more interested in these things when I was in my late teens and early twenties, but I have grown to mostly find consuming these stories to be distasteful and weirdly prurient. I think it's because this case isn't so much about the horrible thing that happened to the victim, but rather the elaborate "conspiracy" and the extraordinary incompetence and corruption of the police force(s) involved in the case. We are likely never going to know what happened, because the facts have been so thoroughly obfuscated, but on that basis alone it seems to me that the accused, Karen Read, should be acquitted simply due to lack of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. I have my own idea of what may have plausibly happened, but I am watching from Canada and the incident took place in Massachusetts in 2022, so my idea is basically fiction carefully woven around what few "facts" I have picked up from watching YouTube videos, so it is worth precisely nothing. I just like making up stories to help the world make sense, and I have no illusion that I have any great insight into what "really" happened. The only thing I know for sure is that it is a tragedy that has left two kids twice orphaned, and has ruined the life of a young woman who is already struggling with several chronic health conditions. Everything about this case is terrible.

So, yeah, that's been my mental escape for the past few days. I will have to find something else to keep me distracted until new videos get uploaded. 

As of tomorrow after work I will be on my own for the foreseeable future, since KK will be going to pick up H at the airport, and I assume they'll be going directly to H's hotel after that, leaving me alone with the dogs. I am planning to take advantage of her absence to get as much shit done as I can. I actually find it difficult to get chores done when KK is home, because I always feel as though I'm bothering her or in her way or both. With her gone I will hopefully be able to get a bunch more packing done, and I might also bring the dogs to the dog park after work so they can get some of the crazies out.

If I buckle down hard I might be able to get my bedroom completely packed except for the stuff I immediately need for the next two-ish weeks, which will free me up to pack up the basement and the cat room over the weekend. I have rented another U-Haul van (I wanted to rent a pick-up truck, but apparently they don't have those anymore in Ottawa) so that I can take a bunch of stuff to the local dump on Saturday. KK had agreed to help me with this, but I get the feeling she won't be early enough on Saturday to really help with anything. Still, it will be good to get all this garbage out of the house. I have reserved the van for six hours starting at 07:00, and I think that should be plenty of time to get everything loaded up and brought to the dump. That will clear out enough space for me to keep packing without tripping over even more stuff.

In other news, it looks like I may run out of feed for the quail before we move, which is really unfortunate. I really didn't want to have to schlep a large quantity of feed with me the whole way when we finally do move. It's very heavy and therefore very inconvenient. Alas.

Okay. Time for bed.
mousme: A turquoise twenty-sided die that has landed on "1." The caption reads: "Shit." (Natural One)
I am having a bit of a Woe Is Me kind of day (or possibly week, or month), because it feels a little like death by a thousand paper cuts. Or corrugated cardboard cuts, maybe (yes, I have cut myself with corrugated cardboard in the past--it sucked).

The lawyer called me and told me they forgot to bill me for the Title Insurance, so I had to e-transfer them another $415.16. *sigh*

At work the workstation I was assigned had been reset, and so I spent much longer than I wanted to setting up all my accounts all over again, and then Outlook spent the entire day being an absolute pile of shit that refused to update. The only way I could get new emails was to close the application and re-open it, so in order not to miss any crucial updates on the wildfires I had to do that every ten minutes. It was extraordinarily annoying.

I drove to work with KK this morning, since she also had a later start to her day, and we drove home together and stopped by Canadian Tire so I could pick up a small box of kitchen garbage bags and compost bags, since ours are packed away in an unfindable box. *sob* I made another small grocery order which will hopefully see us through to next week, and we tentatively talked about weekend plans.

KK's friend H is coming by this weekend for a visit from Alberta. This has been planned for many months, and originally we were going to be reasonably settled in the new house, so it wasn't as big of a deal. Since we're now not remotely settled, I was hoping to get some help with packing up what's left of the house, but now that's not looking promising. KK and H are going on Sunday to a place called Parc Omega, which is a wildlife preserve/safari park in Québec, about an hour's drive away from here, and although I was originally meant to go with them, it's obvious that if I don't spend the weekend packing the house, we will never be ready in time, so they've given my ticket to a friend instead.

KK has informed me that she has decided to stay in H's hotel room because we don't have air conditioning in our bedrooms and it's too hot for her to sleep here. She says that H has volunteered to help us pack on Saturday, but I am not going to count on them for that, to be honest, because at this point KK's track record speaks for itself. I assume she and H will be sleeping in, so at least half the day will be gone, and then KK has promised to show H the new house, so that's several more hours that will be taken up in the afternoon and maybe the evening. So I think it's a fairly safe bet to say that I will, in fact, be packing up the house on my own. I can only hope that at some point in the next two weeks KK will actually pack up her own room and bathroom, but I am not her mother and I will not be nagging her about it.

I am starting to wonder if KK is secretly resenting me these days. Today I discovered that when she packed away the contents of one of the freezers into the freezing cooler for easier transportation, she didn't check to see whether it was properly plugged in/powered up, so all of the contents melted, mostly meat that I had packaged earlier as well as several packages of stuffed pasta (tortellini, ravioli, etc.). Naturally it was all mush and had to be thrown away, and that was several hundred dollars' worth of food that got wasted right there for no good reason. I also had to clean out the whole thing and disinfect it, because the meat had leaked blood that had pooled in a big puddle of grossness at the bottom of the cooler. KK is usually so careful about things that I'm having trouble seeing how this wasn't at least partly deliberate, or at least some form of weaponized incompetence. It's like everything she does lately is calculated to cost me as much money as possible, or force me to clean up her messes, or both. I probably should have checked the cooler myself to make sure it was properly plugged in, but it never occurred to me that I couldn't trust her to check it herself. She did say "sorry," but that was it, and I won't lie, I was at least hoping she'd help with the cleanup, but no. I had to do all of it by myself.

Anyway, I am frustrated and having a bit of a pity party. I will likely get over it in a day or two, because it's a very ugly side of my personality that I don't like at all. 

It's time to call it a night and go to bed. I have another in-office day tomorrow, and since KK is working from home and I don't want to pay exorbitant parking fees, I'm going to take public transit to work, which means I need to get up early enough to get the bus. 

Catch you on the flip side, friends!
mousme: A picture of the muppet Forgetful Jones from Sesame Street (Forgetful Jones)
I just don't want to lose my streak, and I'm willing to "cheat" just a little bit to accomplish that. ;)

Yesterday got away from me a little bit. Work demanded that I produce two situation reports a day on Monday and Tuesday, and that meant that I basically did not get up from my desk for eight hours. Both days I managed to sneak away for 15 minutes to grab a bite to eat around 2pm, and that was it. So I ended up not having the time and energy to make a post here, alas.

At least I got to bed at a halfway decent time, so that's something.

A more fulsome update will follow eventually, I promise. 
mousme: A picture of Darth Vader, captioned My Fandom Destroys Planets. (My Fandom Destroys Planets)
Tonight is the final boss battle against Cyric (I think that's how it's spelled) the lich, better known to our party as Not-Bob, who has been plaguing us since the very beginnings of our campaign. We are currently getting our asses handed to us, and the battle is a hell of a grind.  We may well TPK (Total Party Kill), but it will have been worth it.

God, I love D&D. I am going to miss Coco, my beloved murder!birb (the Kenku who looks like a budgie), but in a couple of months we will be starting a brand new campaign in the Eberron setting, so I'm excited to see what that brings.

Further updates will come tomorrow. 

Catch you on the flip side, friends!
mousme: A picture of Wol from Winnie the Pooh, holding a note that reads "Gon Out. Backson. Bizy. Backson." (Back Soon)
Well, last week was certainly a fucking gong show.

For a second I thought we were going to make it, albeit highly imperfectly. I had managed to pack up the whole garage, most of the basement and the entire main floor (the latter thanks to the help from our friends), and I was willing to just leave the "cat room" to be a problem for future me, since it just contains mostly books and bookcases. I quite simply ran out of time, even with help, to pack up the house, and I was willing to take that one on the chin and figure it out later.

But then Friday morning came and KK was too sick to move. She was dizzy and seeing double as a result of overextending herself (her words), and couldn't even stand up. I had gone to bed around midnight and had gotten up around 3:30 in order to keep packing and to get the dogs to PetSmart for the day, so I found this out when I got home around 7:30. I mentally debated my options, since KK hadn't even come close to finishing up with packing her room and had decided to ask the movers to finish up her packing for her (which was NOT our initial agreement!), and I decided it was better to just cancel the whole thing and try again. Our moving plan involved her driving the cats and a lot of the food in her car to the new place, so if she was too dizzy to stand, she was obviously in no condition to drive.

I had to pay a cancellation fee, of course, and the moving company was rather put out, but they agreed to reschedule for June 18th. I paid another months' rent, made sure our utilities wouldn't be shut off, and then went to pick up the dogs from PetSmart. We'd moved a bunch of loose stuff (garden equipment, plants, etc.) on Thursday, including the fruit flies that we use to feed the dart frogs, so I had to drive out to the new place to retrieve the bugs so the frogs wouldn't starve. I figured it would be a fun time for the dogs if I brought them with me and allowed them to run around the property and get some of the excess energy out of their systems, and I was absolutely right: they had a BLAST. They zoomed around every single inch of the four acres, found the pond (which I discovered is pretty much completely dried up) and rolled around in some delicious mud and pond scum, and came out reeking of said pond scum. They were thrilled, and slept hard in the car the entire way home.

In the meantime, all the kitchen stuff is packed, so I went to the dollar store yesterday and picked up some cheap dishes and a cheap pot, pan, and a couple of mugs, and some kitchen utensils just to see us through the next two weeks. I am sad to report the dishes did not last a day, because KK accidentally knocked them onto the floor and broke one of the two plates I bought. I have informed her that I am not buying more. If she wants dishes she can fucking buy them herself at this point. This move is already wildly expensive, and I'm having to shoulder the financial burden of the extra month in this house. If she's going to break the shit I just bought, even if it's an accident (and I'm sure it was), she can fucking well replace it. I suspect this just means I'm going to find that plate constantly used and in the sink for me to wash, but whatever, I will take that up with her when it happens. We're pretty much going to be living off frozen dinners and easy to eat/no preparation required foods until we move. I don't particularly have the wherewithal to cook, all my spices, pots, pans, oils, etc. are completely packed, and I refuse to unpack and repack the kitchen. That sounds like an absolute nightmare.

I am trying very hard not to be mad at KK for the things that aren't in her control, but I am annoyed at her for the things that are in her control. She literally only had to pack up her bedroom, bathroom, office, and her china cabinet, while I took on the rest of the house, and she didn't even get that done. Her bathroom is untouched and her bedroom is only halfway packed. Yes, while our friends were here she stayed downstairs and helped with boxes, but she honestly could have used that time to go upstairs and work on her stuff. The main reason she didn't was because it was hot upstairs (we don't have air conditioning), and I will confess that I have less sympathy than usual for that. I did have help with my part of the house and I also ran out of time, but in my defense I worked for two and a half weeks straight after having Covid and after an emergency trip to Montreal to care for my sick parents, so I think maybe I am allowed a tiny bit of slack, here. KK also had Covid, so I totally get that that time was a write-off, but she had all the time before that, the weekends when I was working and she wasn't, and a fair bit more time in general than I did, with a much smaller workload. How hard would it have been to try to pack one box a day in her bedroom? *bangs head on desk*

I really, really hope she doesn't plan on pulling the same bullshit for the next two weeks. If she does, we are going to have fucking words about it, and I am not confident in my ability to keep a civil tongue in my head about it.

At least we were able to dig out our work equipment, so we'll be able to work for the next couple of weeks. I'm scheduled for day shifts this week and next week, and there is some work from home time for me, so I need to have my work computer all set up, which I did today. So at least that part is set and organized.

I have ordered the Murphy bed for the new place, and unfortunately it seems like I don't get to have any control over the delivery date and time, and it seems like they might not even deliver into the house, but are just going to dump it in my driveway? Which honestly seems kind of shitty to me, especially since they only mentioned that AFTER I had ordered and paid for it. Argh. I will have to keep an eye on the tracking number so that I can figure out how to be at the house on the delivery date in order to accept said delivery, and maybe bat my eyelashes at the delivery guy(s) to at least put the boxes inside my house.

Okay. It's time for me to go to bed. I have a slightly later start at work tomorrow, thank goodness. This week I am what's called the SitRep writer, meaning it's my job to collate information about ongoing and emergent events, like wildfires and flooding and other stuff, write up a Situation Report (or SitRep) and send that out for approval before the end of the day. Since the reports start rolling in a bit later in the day, my schedule gets shifted up accordingly, and it means I can take my time getting ready for work tomorrow morning. What I think I will try to do is get up at the usual time and take the dogs out to the dog park for a long run so that they will be nice and tired and calm for the rest of the day.

That's it for me for now. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

mousme: A view of a woman's legs from behind, wearing knee-high rainbow socks. The rest of the picture is black and white. (Default)
I am absolutely knackered, to the point where I can’t see straight. I am cautiously optimistic that tomorrow I’ll be in good enough shape to sit at my computer and write a proper update. 

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mousme: A view of a woman's legs from behind, wearing knee-high rainbow socks. The rest of the picture is black and white. (Default)
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