January 21st, 2026

[mousme]

 1-State of the Phnee

Okay, I missed a few days, there. I blame the sleep deprivation, because I just forgot about posting for three days and only remembered a few minutes ago. Oops? I’m going to give myself a bit of grace, there, because the last few days of night shifts were rough AF, as the kids are saying these days.
 

There’s actually not much to report since I last posted, at least. The State of Society worship sharing went well, even though I had some moments of frustration beforehand. The current set of Friends who are “in charge” of things are really bad at communicating with me. It could just be that my very neurodivergent brain is not picking up on all the neurotypical subtext that’s happening, but they act as if I should somehow read their mind and know when they are going to deviate from the standard operating procedure, which I cannot do. My ESP has never been as well developed as other people would like.
 

The same Friend who has been bitching about hybrid meetings suggested, less than half an hour before the worship sharing, that we should postpone it, because there was a clothing swap happening at the same time which had been “on the calendar for a really long time!” I had to forcefully remind myself that the Peace Testimony is an important part of being a Quaker, and that it would be very un-Quakerly indeed of me to reach through the computer screen and strangle her. Luckily another member of M&C who was there in person gave her a very firm “no,” because we have very tight deadlines for the SoS report. When the Friend pushed back, the M&C member gently but firmly told her, “If you would like to come to the worship sharing late, that is a choice you are welcome to make, but we will be starting on time.” Shockingly, she did not come late.
 

I tried to attend the Continuing Meeting of M&C in the afternoon, but the Zoom link didn’t work for me, and since it was right in the time that I needed to be preparing for work, I decided after 15 minutes of trying that I didn’t want to spend any more time on it. I had already been up for 26 hours by then and did not have the wherewithal to fight with emails and Zoom and what have you. I will try again next month.
 

I don’t think I mentioned it before, but KK gave me an Oodie for my birthday, which for those of you who are not immersed in American apparel companies, is basically an oversized hoodie made out of fleece that is extremely cozy. Mine is teal coloured and has lily pads, tadpoles, and frogs in various normal-to-weird poses on it. It is VERY cozy. Knowing that I was exhausted after not sleeping since the previous day’s threshing session on Israel and Palestine and the Apartheid-free communities pledge, I anticipated that I was going to get very cold at work. I am generally a person who runs hot unless I’m very tired or getting sick. So, I decided to bring it to work with me, which was both a genius idea and a terrible idea. It was genius in that I was very, very warm and cozy. It was a terrible idea in that I was so warm and cozy that I kept nodding off at my desk because the shift wasn’t very busy and so I didn’t have anything to work on to keep me awake. My shift partner was very understanding about it, luckily.
 

We had a mandatory Town Hall meeting on Monday, where our execs blue smoke up our asses and then pissed on us and told us it was raining. Okay, I am exaggerating ever so slightly, but it was 45 minutes of them patting themselves on the back for all their cost saving measures, and oh, by the way, we did sort of kind of lie a little bit when we said we wouldn’t be cutting jobs and your managers will be in touch with you over the next few days to tell you if you’ve been affected. Oh, but WE EMPATHIZE WITH YOU and we want to make sure you know WE’RE IN THIS TOGETHER except that, of course, we execs are keeping our jobs, and it just sucks to be you, sorry not sorry. Blech.
 

Yesterday I got to sleep in a bit, then puttered around the house, then had a therapy appointment, and then I went for a walk with my friend Jan and her dog Lightfoot as well as Peggy and Pixie. It was a very nice walk, but poor Peggy was having a “clacky hip day” (she has hip dysplasia) and was struggling a bit by the end. We let them romp around in a field at the end of the walk, and Lightfoot and Pixie had a blast chasing each other through the snow, but Peggy was tired and sore and didn’t want to run, so she got quite cold standing still, and we called it pretty soon so that she could go inside and warm up. Next time I will bring the Brittanies’ winter coats with me to help keep them warm for longer. They’re usually okay in the winter, but I think we pushed Peggy a little too hard.
 

Today was a very quiet day too. I did some shoveling, took the recycling away from the curb because they changed the schedule on me over the holidays and so I’ve been putting the wrong recyclables out and my cardboard boxes were blowing all over the countryside. I spent most of the day hanging out quietly with the dogs, took some time to refill the quail’s food and water, and did some dishes. Nothing to write home about.

KK has bought herself a walker with wheels (purple, naturally) and is looking into acquiring a motorized scooter as well, for getting around outside the house. We’re not sure if our insurance will pay for both or only one, so she’s holding off making a claim until she gets the scooter and will go from there. Hopefully that will improve her pain levels while outside the house, because that’s been an increasing problem for her for the past few months. She got x-rays taken a few weeks ago, and the arthritis has progressed to her hips and her back, which is not good news. I’m hoping she and her doctor can discuss better pain management than what she’s been getting so far (which basically boils down to a lot of NSAIDs and Tylenol Arthritis). I don’t know at all what the future holds there.
 

2-State of the Smallholding
 

Apart from shoveling and quail, there’s nothing major on the home front. Given KK’s deteriorating health and pain levels, I am seriously considering talking to our local handyman about what it would cost to install a ramp in front of the house. Apart from KK my friend Amy is also a wheelchair user, and my mother’s mobility is getting steadily worse as well, so it would make a certain amount of sense to make the house more accessible. That being said, cost is going to be an issue, because I am not made of money, and while there are theoretically grants available for making your dwelling more accessible, I am above the income threshold where that would be available to me. The threshold is very low, meaning I would basically have to be unemployed or making minimum wage to qualify, which is luckily not the case. It’s one of those situations where I don’t have enough money to afford the thing, but I have too much income on paper to qualify for any kind of assistance in affording the thing. Oh well. So, yes, I will be taking to AJ (the aforementioned local handyman) and asking for an estimate and we will go from there.
 

3-State of the news
 

The entire internet is creaming its pants about Mark Carney’s speech at Davos yesterday, and all I can do is roll my eyes at all the people who apparently cannot see beyond the surface level of his words. The speech was a very pretty one, and definitely an understated “fuck you, we’re not playing with you anymore!” to the USA, so naturally Trump has his panties in a twist over it. However, anyone who knows even a little bit about Canada’s history, its current political state, and the current state of the world, would have to side-eye that speech quite a lot. It was a speech that was designed to comfort the comfortable, and all those comfortable people at Davos gave it a standing ovation. There have been a few very well written critiques already, and I may post or link them in future entries for future reference (because the internet is only forever for things you never want to see again).
 

*sigh*
 

I’m hoping to get a good night’s sleep and get a bunch of stuff done tomorrow. I would like to get in a workout, do some tidying around the house, and I need to do a bunch of work on the State of Society Report and finish up my D&D character’s history to send to my DM. So much to do, so little time!
 

Catch you on the flip side, friends!