Corner of Bourbon & Division

I have just enough energy to do an 8 hour shift at work, and not much else. I'm still pretty congested, and although I didn't bother testing today I'm quite sure it would come back positive if I did. I also sound like something crawled into my throat and died. I've had a few clients tell me so over the phone. Oops? I assured them the Government of Ontario has declared me perfectly healthy, and yet somehow they were still skeptical.

The oil splash over my right hand yesterday has turned into two very impressive looking blisters on my ring finger and knuckle. They're still a little painful, but nothing terrible. It mostly looks like I've developed a highly localized case of bubonic plague, although maybe not quite so dire. I wish there was a lesson to be learned from this about kitchen safety, but it was honestly a freak thing, and I was merely the victim of the laws of physics.

I got an amusing call from someone from Ministry & Counsel on my way to work, asking me to help him troubleshoot issues with his new laser printer of all things. Now, faithful readers will likely recall that I am not exactly a computer wizard, and indeed my coworkers have joked for years that I have a "computer curse," wherein computers will randomly malfunction around me in ways that don't make sense. Anyway, I explained that I was driving to work and generally not a computer person, and then I suggested Googling the problem because that's my go-to when first trying to troubleshoot computer issues. Now, this guy used to be a really savvy computer person, but he hasn't kept up with all the latest advances, so it wasn't like I was talking to a babe in arms. He thanked me and told me he'd try it before hitting up one of his techy friends. I am still baffled but also slightly honoured at the thought that I project enough competence that people now randomly call me to help with completely unrelated stuff! XD

In house news, I'm going to need to find some extra energy somewhere in order to start packing up the house properly. I've hired someone to come help pack in two weeks' time, the week before the move, but it's only for three days, and that won't be enough to get it all done. It should be a huge help, at least, to have one other able-bodied person there. In the meantime, I need to pack up as much of the rest of the house as I can.

I feel like the most boring person ever, because I have very little of substance to post about lately. Hopefully I will have something more interesting soon. Thanks for bearing with me, friends, and I will catch you on the flip side!

 Somehow today felt like my busiest day of the week. I got up just in time to fly out the door in order to go to Quaker Meeting for First Day School. Unlike last time the place was full up with children, so I was kept pretty busy. Two Friends took the older pre-teens and teens to the kitchen downstairs for a poetry workshop, and I set up in the "nursery" with a pair of siblings, six-year-old C and her three-year-old brother G.

C is at the exact age when a lot of little girls become "directors," or what is often very uncharitably referred to as being "bossy." I had to very gently redirect her a couple of times when her orders turned rude (mostly just to remind her that saying "please" is important when asking someone to do something for you and not just order them about). While G happily played with a toy cash register and a Fisher Price garage thingie with an elevator, C started with the play kitchen and served me a toy ice cream cup with six scoops of ice cream. I pointed out that it was a lot of ice cream and that I wasn't sure I'd be able to eat all of it, but C wasn't having it. "You can eat it. Just look at your stomach--it's really big!" I mean, true, but also, ouch. Out of the mouths of babes. I'm pretty sure there was no malice behind it, although it's likely she's already unconsciously absorbing some of the fatphobic messaging we have in our society. Anyway, I agreed with her that my stomach *was* big, and then she "helped" me eat the ice cream.

Once the ice cream had been consumed to her satisfaction, she grabbed some paper and colouring pencils, and proceeded to instruct me on how to colour a pattern she'd learned in school. It wasn't my favourite activity, but I've spent time doing way worse things. C and G's grandmother spent a good chunk of time with us too, and helped to wrangle Gabor when he got a little too rambunctious and tried to go get his mother, who was in Meeting for Worship at the time. He fussed a little, but a promise of crackers and cheese got both kids settled pretty well, and eventually the Resident Friend came through with some pre-made Ritz crackers and cheese filling.

After that we had yet another called meeting for the State of Society Report, and it took fully an hour and a half to read through the latest draft and dicker about punctuation and specific word choices and all manner of details. I understand that it's necessary work, but at this point I've been ready to chuck the State of Society Report out the nearest window.

Once the called meeting was over I had barely enough time to run home and turn on my computer to join the first meeting for Nominating Committee. I've agreed to be the co-clerk with one other member of the committee, and we spent the rest of the meeting talking about potential nominees to represent Ottawa Monthly Meeting at Canadian Yearly Meeting. Overall, it was quite productive.

I'd barely finished with Nominating Committee when it was time for a Zoom call with my parents. Luckily my father understands Zoom enough to help my mother log into the calls, and so the only real problem we have now is that my free account only allows us to chat for 40 minutes at a time. We had a really nice conversation, and then it was time to throw dinner together, eat, wrangle the dogs, and watch an episode of The Equalizer.

And then before I knew it, it was time for bed, and here I am. The entire day went by in a blur, and I am exhaustipooped, to quote KK. Time to pass out for the night. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

I can't think of anything to write about tonight, which is kind of a problem since I'm trying to maintain an updating streak. The days are sort of blurring together this week, which often happens when I start evening and night shifts.

Ministry & Counsel are driving me a little nuts this week. There has been a flurry of emails about the State of Society Report, which honestly should be finished by now but people from the Meeting keep goddamn nitpicking at it and I am ready to scream. There's also a lot of dithering about whether to extend the contract of the Resident Friend, who has come to the end of his three year contract. Everyone seems to be in favour of extending it, but typically contracts don't extend beyond three years, and the previous Resident Friend actually hired a lawyer to force the Meeting to extend her contract for a number of reasons I won't get into here so as to protect her privacy. It was super messy, and everyone is understandably a bit skittish about having a repeat performance, even though there is absolutely no indication that the current Resident Friend would do the same. It's not even up to Ministry & Counsel whether to extend the contract, we just make a recommendation one way or the other. Bah.

I have decided this year to pay someone to deal with the ocean of poop in my backyard after the winter season. I want to put in a couple of raised beds, but this will work better if the yard isn't covered in dog poop. Two Brittanies produce more poop than you'd imagine over a single winter season. Anyway, hopefully this will be the start of making the backyard look less like a muddy cesspool for the dogs to wallow in. I actually paid someone for the past two years to do a spring clean-up, and that company stopped offering the service in my area (it may be temporary but they can't give me a timeline of when they think they'll have someone in my area again), so I found another service with comparable prices. I'm actually pretty impressed that there are two companies that offer poop removal services in my city. Who knew?

I've ordered groceries for tomorrow, and I must say that ordering groceries has been a blessing. I was always reluctant to take advantage of delivery because it felt like cheating, somehow, but honestly not having to spend two hours a week on grocery shopping has changed my life. Two hours doesn't seem like all that much, but my God it drained all my energy like no one's business, and it would just wreck half a day (prepare the list, drive to the store, shop, drive home, unpack the groceries, collapse from lack of spoons). So, yeah, now I either do pick-ups during weeks when I'm working regular day shifts, or delivery when I'm working evenings, nights, and weekends. I'm trying to view it as an accommodation and not feel too guilty about it. I also make a point of tipping as well as I can (the website has a limit on how much you can tip the delivery person, alas).

Tomorrow I have therapy in the morning, and then my last evening shift starting at 3pm. KK had an appointment with the registered dietician from the bariatric clinic today, and it looks like I'm going to have to work a little harder to get more protein and nutrition into our everyday food. I've been looking at one of the bariatric cookbooks I got when she first told me she was going to get the surgery, and much as I feared, a lot of that food is quite simply stuff she won't eat. So much of it is tomato-based, or involves tofu or mushrooms or beans or coconut. Most of the recipes sound delicious to me, but I will have to make some serious modifications or maybe just take inspiration from them rather than following them exactly. I've had some success in the past from substituting some ingredients in recipes, so hopefully we'll be able to find something that works.

I'm planning to incorporate increasingly bariatric-friendly recipes in our meals, so that KK will have a chance to get used to them and it won't be a huge change all at once, once she's past the point of the liquid food/puréed food part of the post-surgical diet. It will be good for me to get used to it as well, but I'm much more of an omnivore than she is. When I was talking to the dietitian on Tuesday I kind of had to rack my brain when she asked me if there were foods I didn't like at all. There are definitely some: I don't really care for olives, sardines, and liver, among other things. I don't think there's anything I absolutely won't eat. I'm not a huge fan of slimy textures, either, like undercooked eggs (undercooked whites are the wooooorst), but overall I can choke down almost anything out of politeness if I have to, it's just a matter of foods I won't seek out. Feeding KK stuff she will actually eat is going to be a hell of a challenge once I can't smother everything in cheese anymore. ;)

Interestingly, I found out today that KK is not as far along in the process as I thought. I'm supposed to talk to the behaviourist and then do the Pre-Surgery 2 course, and she told me today that she hasn't been to Pre-Surgery 2 either, whereas I thought she had already finished that stage. It's true that she's a lot more complex a case than me both from the standpoint of her physical health and her mental health, and so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that she's had to have several extra appointments with the dietitian, psychiatrist, and behaviourist, on top of having to undergo that course of antibiotics to get rid of the h. pylori infection she was rocking last year. She started the process in early-ish 2024, so at the rate we're going I may get ahead of her on "the path" as they like to call it.

The only thing I want to avoid is having both of us in surgical recovery at the same time. It will be bad enough when I go through the surgery, because she won't be able to help me at all (and I am rather concerned about the weight restrictions for lifting/pulling/pushing because she won't be able to help with groceries or anything else), so having her be incapacitated after surgery with me unable to help her in any way is a recipe for disaster. I have to make sure I'm as functional as possible for the most amount of time possible. It's possible that once she starts losing a substantial amount of weight she might be able to do more around the house, but I'm not banking on it. I don't think it's a realistic expectation at this point.

Anyway, I will cross that bridge when I come to it.

This weekend I'll be home for the most part, so hopefully I'll have the chance to get stuff done. Seed starting, cleaning, and a bunch of cooking and meal prep for next week.

Why is driving so tiring? I spent five total hours on the road today, only a little less time than I actually spent with my parents, and I am knackered. We had a really lovely day, though, so I have no regrets.

We toasted my mother's 88th birthday with a half-bottle of Veuve Cliquot, and then had a delicious dinner of beef brochettes, bok choy, and ratatouille, culminating in a small array of absolutely delicious French cheeses. Montreal has such good cheese, and I haven't yet found a good fromagerie here in Ottawa. I also haven't looked very hard, I must say, because KK doesn't like stinky French cheeses, and it seems like a waste to buy it just for myself. 

I came home about an hour ago, and sent out the announcements for Quaker Meeting tomorrow, and soon I shall be heading upstairs to lapse into a metaphorical coma in my very comfy bed. I've had a low-grade headache lingering all day, and I am hoping that sleep and maybe a bit more Tylenol will take care of it. I had some Tylenol earlier tonight and that has taken the edge off but hasn't completely vanquished it.

Tomorrow is Meeting for Worship for Business for the Quakers, and I have volunteered to be the bearer of News That Some People Will Not Like, namely that Ministry & Counsel has decided we're going back to three hybrid Meetings a month rather than only two. The person who is clerking tomorrow is one of the few but highly vocal people who haaaaaaates the hybrid meetings, so I expect there will be some sort of psychodrama about it. How much drama will depend probably entirely on how maturely that person handles themselves, and I am not holding out a ton of hope. I am honestly a little disappointed in this person, even though I am also unsurprised given what I know about their beliefs and personality. I hope that if they are sensible and get that the sense of the Meeting is to bring people back together, they will stand aside on this issue (and also not be a prig about it).

I've also been asked to serve on Nominating Committee, which is the committee responsible for getting other people onto committees. The Committee Committee, if you will. The main reason is that all the very experienced Friends who were on it have come to the end of their term this year, and the only people who volunteered are two brand new Attenders who aren't super familiar with the Meeting and have next to no ideas about Quaker processes. So it turns out that my eleven years of being in the Meeting and also being part of Ministry and Counsel qualify me to shepherd the newbies and be part of their education. It's a little nerve-wracking, but also the people who asked me aren't entirely wrong about my understanding a good chunk of Quaker processes, at least at the level of Monthly Meeting. I am absolutely ignorant about Yearly Meeting and all of the larger parts of the Quaker organizations in Canada, but luckily we won't be dealing with them at all.

Tonight is Daylight Savings Time. *weeps quietly* Maybe now that we're in a trade war with the USA we can stop aligning ourselves with them on their time changes, or just outright get rid of DST. I hate it SO MUCH. I'd much rather have the daylight in the morning than in the evening any day of the year. We're not even "saving" daylight, the number of hours of daylight in the day don't magically increase because of it, we're just playing a weird game of Find the Queen except with artificial time markers. Bah. Another reason to go to bed as soon as possible tonight, because I am going to be feeling that lost hour of sleep for DAYS.

I've been posting to Dreamwidth and LJ pretty consistently, but LJ's "new" interface is pretty janky these days. For one thing, it just isn't loading some of my icons when I select them, for reasons I can't figure out. Some work just fine, others just load the default icon, which defeats the purpose of having other icons. I am displeased.

I also really dislike the new posting interface, but I can't revert back to the older version. I can't do proper text cuts anymore, and adding in images is an absolute pain in the ass. I miss being able to just plug in some html code and being able to preview the entry. Now it's all supposedly "integrated," but in practice it's a hot mess. I'm grateful that Dreamwidth is still operating with a recognizable form of the open source software that LJ was built on. I assume the change at LJ is deliberate in order to do away with as much of the old open source stuff, because capitalism, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

It's too bad that both LJ and DW are so quiet these days. I miss the old days of being able to catch up on the minutiae of everyone's lives, both good and bad. I've noticed that on social media people tend to have two modes: 1) Everything is amazing in my life, please look at this aesthetic photo I took, and 2) Rage bait. Those are the two kinds of posts that appear to "drive engagement," as they say nowadays, and the lack of authenticity is a real drag. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that all the friends I follow are suddenly being shallow and inauthentic, but Facebook and Instagram and so forth really encourage you to curate both your posts and what you consume. Photographic posts are rewarded by the algorithm, while text-only posts get "suppressed." The algorithm also decides for you what you should be seeing, meaning that I often miss important news and announcements from friends, which sucks.

There was also something that felt very intimate about blogging, because the long-form content allowed all of us to dive deeper into topics if we felt inclined. At one point I was the queen of very short posts, but I also wrote some much longer thinky-thought type of posts, and having long conversations across multiple comment sections was a great way to get to know people and to deepen my thinking on a number of topics. It also allowed all my nerdy friends to info-dump about the subjects they loved, and by extension allowed me to learn about them. Short-form social media just doesn't lend itself well to this sort of thing.

During Quaker Meeting yesterday, the focus of worship ended up being The Situation At Hand. *gestures broadly* One young online attender shared their trepidation for themself but also their friends in the US, and all of a sudden there was an outpouring of ministry from the older Members, many of whom are old enough to remember World War II, most of whom had family who were active in various war or resistance efforts. So much of the ministry that those elders offered was filled with messages of love and hope and practicality that I could see a lot of the younger people visibly shift out of their despair, even if it was only for a few moments. It was a reminder that we can get through the dark times. We may not get through them individually, but we can get through them as a whole. It doesn't make it any less terrible or scary or awful, but it reminds us that we can be brave and do hard things even when we are afraid.

The elders also reminded us that Quakers have a long, proud history of letting people decide for themselves what pacifism means. For some, it means conscientious objection no matter what, to the point of imprisonment or execution. For others it meant serving in non-combatant roles like ambulance drivers and army medics. For others still it included accepting conscription when it came for them. 

A famous anecdote about George Fox recounts William Penn (another founding Quaker and for whom Pennsylvania is named) asking him whether he should continue to wear his sword. Penn was accustomed to wearing the sword, and at the time was reluctant to give it up. Fox is said to have replied: "Wear it as long as you can, William, wear it as long as you can." And, supposedly, the next time they met, Penn was no longer wearing it.

There are multiple ways to resist in these dark times. We can choose to openly defy those who choose to oppress us, or we can do it more secretly, and take opportunities to resist where they present themselves. We can challenge them in court, we can sabotage their efforts wherever we can, especially if our jobs allow us to slow down/delay/obstruct. We can drown them in useless paperwork. We can hide people who need to be hidden. We can help other people hide people who need to be hidden. We have a wealth of ways at our disposal, and each person's resistance will look a little different.

It was a really enlightening Meeting, and I am glad we were all there for it. I don't think we would have had as enriching an experience of Ministry had we not had both the in-person worshipers and the online worshipers, so I also feel pretty vindicated in that regard.

Today is my only day shift this week. I've switched shifts with a coworker who needed to be on days from Tuesday to Friday, which suits me just fine. I'm working the early evening shift, too, which is great because it means I get to still get to bed by about midnight or half past. Working the regular evening shift usually gets me to bed at 2am, which I find a little rough, but midnight is still halfway decent.

On that note, it's time to get back to work. Catch you all tomorrow, friends!

 Slowly making my way through my weekend day shifts. D&D ended at a reasonable hour but then we stayed up chit-chatting, and I got to bed very late considering it was a work night. I hadn't had the chance to play this particular D&D campaign in several weeks due to a bunch of scheduling glitches and last-minute emergencies for a bunch of us (distributed pretty evenly across the board). We're doing a D&D/gothic horror mashup with Masque of the Red Death, and it's a lot of fun. The nice thing about having a D&D group who are all in agreement that what's important is the story and the character development is that you don't get the unpleasantness of having some players who want to powergame or murder-hobo their way through generic dungeons. You also have the advantage of everyone, including the DM, pulling in the same direction of "what will make the coolest/most affecting story?" We left on a cliffhanger of an entire building just falling off a cliff into the sea. Oops? (It was not the party's fault, for the record.)

There's not much going on at work today. I'm on the Marine desk, and handling an incident involving a grounded cargo vessel that has attracted the attention of the directors, but everything is fully under control, so I've been continuing my catch-up of Critical Role. I've watched ten episodes (I think) since the last time I talked about it, and holy cow, so much is going on! I'm currently watching the live performance from June 15th, 2025. Sam Riegel has made a surprise appearance! I thought Episode 91 was the last I'd see of him for a few months, so it was fun to have him show up. I don't think he'll be here for more than just this live show, but still, it's nice to see his face.

I think the next three or four episodes are a separate story, so I'm not sure if that means Matt will DM for the same characters but in a parallel universe kind of thing, or if a different DM will run the show the way Brennan Lee Mulligan did for the events of the Calamity or Aabria Iyengar for Exandria Unlimited. Whatever they decide to do, I am excited to see what happens. Usually these smaller arcs offer a deeper glimpse into the lore of the world, and I am a sucker for lore.

I still have three and a half hours before I get to go home, and then I have to send out the announcements for Quaker Meeting when I get home. Which reminds me, I need to prepare for my turn at First Day School next weekend. I somehow let myself be roped back in, which is not my favourite thing to do. I always feel singularly unqualified to teach young people about Quakerism when I myself know so very little, even after all these years. When I was the Clerk of FDS Committee I spent so much time stressed the fuck out, and I am not really looking forward to going back to anything remotely resembling that. At least this time I won't be the Clerk, and I've only committed to one Sunday a month, which isn't too bad. Probably what I'll do is arm myself with a whole ton of arts & crafts supplies and try to make the activities as child-led as possible while doing my best to keep it thematically Quaker. There's a lot happening in the world right now, and depending on how old the kids are (it varies a lot), we can gear whatever we're doing toward whatever is on their minds on that day.

We'll see how it goes, I guess.

I did manage to wet block the Hubris Shawl, although it's so big that I didn't have a surface large enough to hold it, so I'm not sure how good a job I did. I did have a sneaky but unformed plan to try to drive to Montreal and back at some point next week, although I don't know how 'd manage that with KK's work schedule. She's asked me to attend a pre-retirement course with her Wednesday and Thursday, and she's planning to be in the office Monday and Friday, and on top of that I have a medical appointment on Tuesday. If KK could switch one of her in-office days to Tuesday I could manage it, but I don't think she will. After that I won't be able to visit my parents for at least another month, which is very sad. Maybe I'll ask for a day or two off in the coming weeks, but there aren't a ton of options on the schedule. Everyone and their cousin is off on courses, which means that there's very little wriggle room for the rest of us to take time off. It kind of sucks, and since I'm the most recent hire, I am last to be considered for everything. *sigh* One of the drawbacks of shift work, alas.

Today is Day 1 of taking only my prescribed blood pressure medication and none of the wacky supplements I've been trying in the desperate hopes that they will do something about my crushing levels of fatigue. I also didn't take any melatonin last night, which I started a while back as a way to encourage myself not to go to sleep stupidly late. I am still taking my iron supplement and Vitamin C in the evening (because low iron is not something to fuck around with), and a multivitamin in the morning, but that's it. I've cut out everything else, and there is an embarrassing amount of  it, quite frankly.

I did go to bed late, but still within acceptable parameters (around 23:30), especially given that I'm working evenings this week, so I'll actually be getting to bed after 01:00 until Saturday, since my shift ends at midnight. Back when I worked for Boomerang I really liked the evening shift, but it was 14:00 to 22:00 rather than 16:00 to 24:00, and I find that finishing at midnight really throws me off my game. However, this morning I had an appointment at 08:00 to get my car rust-proofed (past!Phnee thought this was a perfectly reasonable time to schedule things, curse her). I was pleasantly surprised at how little time it took, and a little unpleasantly surprised at the price, although I encountered that surprise many weeks ago when I was first researching rust-proofing. I also caught sight of two tiny rust spots starting on my car already, and I am deeply annoyed. I will have to contact Steve the Wonder Mechanic and arrange to have him do a hopefully itty-bitty cosmetic job come the spring. I doubt it will be like the nearly-two-month ordeal from October/November, because these two tiny spots have only just appeared and haven't been festering for, oh, six or seven years the way the previous one had been. I'm hoping it will just be a question of a bit of sanding and re-painting.

Peggy's 11:15 appointment to get her bum squished went just fine. Poor thing, she did have one impacted anal gland, and it's really quite painful to have it all cleaned out, but she was a trooper and got lots and lots of treats out of it. Our favourite vet tech is pregnant and will be going on maternity leave in a month, and we are going to miss her dearly while she's away, but we're very excited for her, as this is her first baby! I should make a note to get her a card before she leaves.

I managed to be even a little productive when I got home, which is kind of unusual for me. I cleared the kitchen sink, ran the dishwasher, and gathered up all the recycling to put in the bins outside. It's kind of depressing that this is what counts as "being productive" for me these days, but I will take even the smallest of wins these days. Then I packed up a lunch and a snack for work, crated the dogs (much to their dismay), and managed to get to work on time! Frankly, it's something of a miracle that everything got done and on time today, given my track record.

There is still no word about my composting worms. I am very disappointed. On the other hand, I wouldn't have had time to pick them up today, so I suppose that's okay. Tomorrow or even Wednesday is probably better, because I only have one commitment on those days outside of work. Thursday I theoretically only have one appointment too, but it's likely to take longer than the others, and Friday's M&C meeting could take an hour or it could take three, it kind of depends on a bunch of factors. Anyway, I guess we'll see. I will be following up by email tomorrow to see what's going on with the worms. Maybe they needed an extra business day to scoop the worms out of wherever they keep them, I don't know. Maybe they're growing a new batch of worms from scratch. ;)

KK asked me yesterday if it was still okay to call worms "hermaphrodites," since that word is considered insulting by the intersex community, and while the question was hilarious I am happy she thought about it, because I had honestly not given it any thought at all. We talked about it and landed on the conclusion that it was probably fine because worms aren't intersex the way people are, they truly do have the full sexual characteristics of each sex and are capable of reproduction both ways. But yeah, discussing the appropriate way to gender worms was not on my Bingo card for this weekend!

In the meantime, I took a few days "off" listening to audiobooks, and am back in the saddle today. What's a tiny bit frustrating is that there don't appear to be available copies of the books I'd like to listen to at my local library. As in, they don't have any copies, not that they've all been checked out. So if I want to listen to them, I think I may be forced to acquire them through Audible. BLECH. If you all have any suggestions for audiobook resources that aren't Audible/Amazon, I am all ears! Pun fully intended.

I think that's it for today. I'm going to settle in for my evening shift with my latest audiobook and hope things go smoothly.