January 9th, 2026

[mousme]

 1-State of the Phnee

 

Day 2 after “leg day” has been bruuuuuutal. I can’t tell if this is just normal muscle soreness or if I maybe overdid it a tad yesterday. It didn’t feel like I overdid it, but right now I have to hold onto walls and tables if I want to get in and out of chairs because my thigh muscles have gone on strike. I pulled out the treadmill at work and managed about a mile before I had to throw in the towel because I felt a little woozy. I sat down with a fan blowing on me for a few minutes and feel mostly recovered now, so I guess today is going to be a 1-mile day and no more. Still, today is apparently “National Quitters’ Day,” when most people give up on their New Year’s resolutions (citation needed!), so if that’s true I have made it farther than most!

 

I miss having a bathtub. In the past I would have drawn myself a nice warm bath and had a very nice soak, but unfortunately my bathroom only has a shower stall. KK got the master bedroom with the ensuite bathroom with a jacuzzi tub when we moved in because it made more sense for her to have the extra space for her metric fuckton of stuff, but I will confess to being a bit envious of the tub (which she does not use, more’s the pity) on days when I would like nothing more than to soak with a good book. I do plan on eventually adding a bathtub of some kind to my bathroom, one of those narrow upright tubs like you get in France which are designed with more depth than width. I have always loved that kind of bathtub ever since my parents took me to Paris for the first time when I was 12. Shallow and long North American tubs are vastly inferior, in my opinion.

 

KK apparently also has to get bloodwork done tomorrow, so we will be going together at Fuck My Life O’Clock because the lab only takes walk-ins on Saturday. Normally I don’t mind getting up at 7:00am, but that’s on days when I won’t be getting to bed at 3:00am because I was working an evening shift. I’m going to try to get to sleep a little earlier tonight, but best-case scenario, that will be around 2:00 am, because I finish work at midnight and it takes at least an hour to get home, plus right now there’s a bunch of freezing rain out there, so it’s likely the drive will take longer. Ah, well. It will be worth it to get the bloodwork over and done with. I will just have to resist the urge to take a nap the minute I get home.

 

Today’s Ministry & Counsel meeting was super productive, and I am very pleased with how it went. Our “guest” brought the “concern” I was pretty sure she was going to bring, and I am irrationally annoyed at her about it. To be clear, I don’t think it’s irrational to be annoyed, but the level to which I am annoyed is probably irrational. She is very anti-tech (I think I mentioned this), and she has invented an elaborate fantasy in her mind in which M&C makes unilateral and draconian decisions, possibly specifically to ruin her life and the lives of others who agree with her, I’m not sure. She’s convinced that we moved from two tech-free Meetings a month to one tech-free Meeting with no consultation at all, whereas it was in fact the plan the whole time to reintegrate the online attenders with the in-person attenders as much as possible. Having one tech-free Meeting a month was the *compromise* so that people like her could have some time without the thing they loathe so much.

 

Anyway, her proposal is to go back to at least two non-tech Meetings a month (I’m not mad at that part, actually). More importantly, while she acknowledges that some people can’t come in person due to health issues, mobility issues, and distance issues, she wants anyone who is online to not participate in any way and to remember that they are “auxiliary” to the Meeting. Oh, sure, the Greeter at the Meeting House should make sure to greet the online attenders, but that’s it. They get to be second-class citizens who should only speak when spoken to, I guess.

 

*makes throttling motions with both hands*

 

Like I said, I am irrationally angry about this, and I am waiting to calm the fuck down before I do anything else about it. We’ve set a date for a consultation in the form of a Claremont Dialogue to see if there are as many people as she claims who agree with her (It very much has the energy of “People are agreeing with me in private messages!”), and to discern the best way forward after that. I need to be a mature adult about this because I’m the Clerk of M&C now, so I can’t just run around picking fights with people even if I think they’re being obnoxiously ableist.

 

2-State of the smallholding

 

Much like yesterday, I don’t have much going on right now. I’ve been checking in on the quail, and they seem to be doing pretty well as far as I can tell. Of course, I thought that before and one of them just spontaneously died, so I don’t know how reliable my judgment is on that front.

 

Given how little sleep I’m likely to be getting tomorrow, I’m going to have to be extra firm with myself in order to get the cleaning and such done that I have planned. The temptation to just take a nap and/or doomscroll on my phone will be very, very high. I’m also mildly concerned that my body will revolt, as it sometimes does when I haven’t provided it with enough sleep, and give me a crippling headache or something else that will sabotage my efforts to get shit done. Fingers crossed that doesn’t happen!

 

I will report back in the evening on my cleaning and tidying progress. I know no one is actually interested in that, but I am using it as a form of accountability rather than anything else.

 

3-State of the news

 

The fallout from Renée Good’s death continues. A bunch of (hopefully) well-meaning white people have been using the phrase “Say her name!” and got really shirty when people gently asked them not to use a phrase that was specifically started by a movement that was about the erasure of black women who died violent deaths, usually at the hands of the judicial system.

 

*sigh*

 

How hard is it to just not do something when a marginalized or oppressed group asks you not to? But yeah, my fellow white women got all up in their feelings about it, which is depressing.

 

More video footage was released today that supposedly “proves” that she was trying to run over the ICE agent who shot her, except the video shows her smiling at him, saying “I’m not mad at you!” and very clearly turning her car *away* from him. I can’t decide whether the people in charge in the US have never read Nineteen Eight-Four or if they have read it and think the rest of us haven’t.

 

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

 

Alberta doctors have called on the government to declare a state of emergency due to overcrowding in emergency rooms. I’m guessing that Danielle Smith will be doing no such thing. Hey, remember when she was elected in October of 2022 and said she’d be fixing the healthcare system within 90 days? Yeah, fun times.

 

Otherwise, between work and the 2.5 hour M&C meeting today, I haven’t had much of a chance to get through the news, so I shall leave it there for now.

 

Catch you on the flip side, friends!