wild_patience

I am just heartbroken. I feel like the entire country has been laid off.

I am sick that there are so many people so lacking in compassion that they would put that psychotic megalomaniac back into the oval office. As white married folks, most of Project 2025 would not affect us as much as others, but if they do away with Social Security and especially Medicare, that will wound us terribly. We need affordable health care. I am very glad I already have a DNR on file. If I have a massive heart attack, just let me go. I don't want to live to see what will happen to this country.

After reading Cake Wrecks' blog for so many years, the most valuable lesson I have drawn from that is to never ask them to write the word "congratulations" on a cake. It's unreal how many ways that can be misspelled.

I have been waiting and waiting for our health provider, Kaiser NorCal, to get in the RSV shot. I do so enjoy not getting sick. I have not had a cold since December, 2019, and that was a doozy I would not care to repeat. So I finally broke down and made an appointment at CVS, knowing I would have to pay.

I knew it was over $100, but I didn't know it would be over $300. ($324.99, to be exact) I had searched their web site before, looking for the price, but it wasn't given. I do not like to make phone calls so I decided to risk it. The clerk at the pharmacy counter was as helpful as she could possibly be. She checked my Medicare. We both knew that my Kaiser insurance was no good there, but as I have Medicare part D (the meds coverage) through Kaiser, she tried anyway.

I bit the bullet and got the shot. I took an image of the receipt and sent it to my doctor along with all the vaccine details for my medical record. Hopefully she will know whether Kaiser will reimburse me or not. Even if they don't, I'll feel better about not masking at Christmas dinner with my family. I wear a mask at all other times (and, of course, have had the latest Covid booster, my flu shot, my pneumonia shot, my Shingles shots, etc.).

I subscribed to Netflix about a year ago and have been watching it off and on.

Gaiman's Sandman was the nudge that pushed me to do it. I have always had mixed feelings about Sandman. It's both brilliant and unsettling. I found some of the issues of the comics (which I read as they were first coming out) and the Audible production repellant. I didn't have that issue with the Netflix presentation. It was visually gorgeous and some of the (to me) grotesque art in the comics was toned down so I wasn't put off by it. I look forward to the rest of it when it is made and aired.

Bridgerton was a big deal when it came out, mostly for the controversy of including so many non-white actors. I didn't have Netflix at that time so I read the original novels by Julia Quinn to get an idea. I really enjoyed the novels. I enjoyed the Netflix production, too, but it doesn't have the same feel as the novels.

One thing that sticks out in the Netflix production is the Queen. I approve of the multi-racial casting in the show except in this one instance. She doesn't feel right and is much more prominent in the show than in the novels.

Queen Charlotte, wife of George III, was a northern German princess who died in 1818. The Bridgerton books are supposed to take place between 1813 and 1827. If they film the whole sequence of books, they'd better get rid of this scene-stealing queen.

Penelope, aka Penny, the best friend of Eloise Bridgerton, is also more prominent in the TV show than in the books. This is a good change because Penny is a very important character (and I love the actress and how she portrays her) as we will find out in later seasons. Penny and Eloise are my favorite characters. Eloise, too, gets more of a spotlight here than in the books.

Penelope is straight out of Jane Austen, the not-enough-money sensible heroine from a family of featherheads. Her father is an irresponsible gambler and her mother could give Mrs. Bennett a run for her money. Her sisters are like Lydia and Kitty. Penny is very smart and painfully aware that her family and weight (she's heavy) make her no one's first pick for bride.

The other younger female leads are weak. Daphne in the books is pretty strong. This Daphne - not so much. I thought it made sense to change the woman marrying one of the brothers to be half-Indian herself rather than just a transplanted English flower returned to India. I liked her better than the Daphne.

Another show I watched and enjoyed was a half-hour comedy, Never Have I Ever. This is from Mindy Kaling, the story of a high school girl whose family is from India. Her father dies during her orchestra concert and she winds up in a wheelchair for a year. (Presumably it's a psychosomatic reaction. She was very close to her father and this devastated her.) The show starts when she's back in school, walking, and trying to live down her notoriety as "wheelchair girl." She's smart, a nerd, with other nerdy friends. She's desperate to fit in and date cute guys, so much of the show deals with her inappropriate ways of doing so.

At times it's also a touching family show. Her mother is painfully aware that their relationship is not good, and she doesn't really know how to fix it. There is also a beautiful college-student cousin living with them, and the girl winds up being compared to Perfect Kamala all the time.

After reading a recommendation on File 770, I watched the Korean show, Extraordinary Attorney Woo. I loved this. The cast is all very, very pretty people, and I found the lead character very easy to identify with. Woo Young Woo has autism. She is absolutely brilliant, but she is socially awkward and so obsessed with whales that she brings them up constantly. Her mother abandoned her and her father brought her up. He runs a restaurant, having abandoned his own dreams of being a lawyer.

Woo did not speak at all until she was 5. Seeing a mentally-ill man screaming at her father stressed her to the point that she started screaming herself and quoting from her father's law books. She has a photographic memory and had memorized all these books. That was how her father found out both that she could speak and was brilliant.

Most of the show revolves around Woo Young Woo in the office. While she is brilliant, she is also very vulnerable. When she is over-stimulated, she needs to rock or put on earphones which play whale songs. This makes some of her co-workers initially disdain her but she also draws the attention of one of the other guys at work. It's not clear what his job is. He's not an attorney like the others. I'm guessing he's the equivalent of a paralegal. He is very interested in her and she's not aware for a long time.

It's nice to see the progression of attitude changes as her co-workers get to know her. In the first episode, the other young female attorney shows disdain for her, having gone to law school with her. It looks like she's set up to be the classic mean girl, but she's not. She actually cares about Woo Young Woo and we find out gradually that, while she doesn't like to always be losing in their academic and professional competition, she also has been protective of Woo Young Woo since law school, standing up to bullies for her. I'm eagerly awaiting a second season which is being filmed this year.

I caught up on a couple of shows which I had started watching on network TV then had dropped. One of these was The Good Place and the other was Crazy Ex-Girlfriends. I had dropped them for the same reason, as I recall. While they're funny, I was uncomfortable with too many of the actions of the main characters.

The Good Place, having been up for a Hugo, is pretty well known so I won't say much about it other than watching the entire thing allowed me to see the full arc and how each character grew and became a better person.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is one of those shows with musical numbers expressing what is going on in the characters' heads. This is very effective here. The first episode gives us "The Sexy Getting Ready Song," the star (Rachel Bloom - also the creator) singing about getting ready for a date. She's trying to look sexy as she shaves and plucks and tries to squirm into Spanx. Then she shows us her date at the same time: he's napping on the couch.

The songs are great. The entire cast sings and dances. The main character, Bloom as Rebecca Bunch, is a mess. The set up is that she was a very successful lawyer in NYC who moves to West Covina, California after running into her old boyfriend from summer camp. (West Covina is where he lives.) She becomes obsessed with him, desperate to get back together with this guy, ignoring the fact that he has a long-time live-in girlfriend. Much of the action revolves around her attempts to get him to notice her, aided and abetted by her new best friend, Paula, a paralegal at Rebecca's new law firm.

So much of what Rebecca does is so wrong and difficult to watch, which is why I stopped watching it. I kept with it this time and saw that, like The Good Place, it has a drive and an arc. We know from the song in the opening credits in season 1 (each season has a different opening song, one which fits that season's big theme) that Rebecca has mental problems. She was very successful in New York but miserable and depressed.

Over the years, we see Rebecca go into therapy (and avoid way too many sessions). We see her truly awful parents and get an idea of why she is the way she is. The theme song for season 2 is "I'm Just a Girl in Love," as she dates other guys. Season 3 gets darker and her theme song changes to "Crazy" with all these different versions of her. Season 4's song is hard to describe - it keeps flipping to the wrong woman instead of the star. Anyway, she hits rock bottom and in season 4 finally gets a proper diagnosis and meds and is on the road to mental health. And the songs remain hysterical.

Lastly, I just watched "God's Favorite Idiot," starring Melissa McCarthy and her real life husband. I generally like religious-themed shows, but this one is just bad. In the first episode, Doug Falcone's character, Clark, is hit by lightning or something. McCarthy's character, Amily, is a co-worker of his. Late at night in the office, Amily sees Clark glowing and faints.

This show has so many problems. McCarthy's character is genuinely unpleasant in the first few episodes. She is very open in her alcohol and drug abuse, drinking a flask at work without trying to hide it and regaling her co-workers with all the drugs she's taken. She is rude and inconsiderate, dropping the F-bomb in the office all the time.

The whole office is an HR nightmare with all the swearing and belittling of co-workers. The boss is extremely ineffectual and they abuse him as much as they abuse each other. No one seems to actually work.

This place is supposed to be some sort of IT support group, and the set is all wrong. The only monitor we really see is Amily's, which always has a solitaire game going on it. One monitor, smaller than mine. IT people usually have several monitors in their office, the wide ones so they can maximize what they do. (This is a new show from 2022 - there's no excuse for old monitors on the set.)

God has supposedly chosen Clark to spread that message that God loves them, all religions are fine with God as long as they preach love, etc. God shows up in a few episodes. This is fine. Clark seems to be a good person. (He has cats!) But Amily is not. She's a pretty nasty piece of work, and we find out that Amily has been chosen as well, and God keeps calling her "good people." I hate to contradict God, but she's not.

This show is also curious in that it has the least attractive cast I've ever seen in a show. Melissa McCarthy is the best-looking, I think, but what did they do to her hair? It looks bleached blonde and damaged. Bleah.

Yesterday I sent feedback to Apple Support in which, among other things, I requested the last two days of my life back.

I have a 6-year-old iPad Air 2, which I really love. It's my main e-reader and it goes everywhere with me. The few times we travel, I rely on it for internet access. I buy purses based on whether they can hold my iPad or not. (I don't buy them if they don't.) Planned obsolescence: you know a 6-year-old electronic device is pretty near the end of its lifetime.

The battery is draining much more quickly than it used to. I went to the dentist this morning, and just the brief period of time in which I was using it (for reading) while waiting, it went down 30%. It has frozen on me a few times, needing to be turned off and on again. It's gone totally black, needing a reboot.

I went online with Apple Support, looking for an appointment to replace the battery. I was very surprised to find that neither the original HQ at Infinity Loop (maybe 1/2 a mile from me) nor the new spaceship HQ (one mile a way) does that. It wanted to send me to the Apple Genius Bar at the Apple store in Valley Fair (a huge mall). There is no way in hell I would go to a huge mall a week before Christmas even if I felt comfortable walking from the parking lot to the center of the mall!

There were a number of other options so I selected the closest Best Buy, which I have been to and I know that it's a stand-alone store with a big parking lot and handicapped spaces near the door. The form I had submitted for the appointment had all my information: what the product was, what the problem was, what I was expecting. My confirmation, since I was doing all this through the Apple web site, included the serial number of my device. This means at least Apple knows what it is and when it was manufactured (2016).

I went to my appointment at Best Buy yesterday only to be told that they are not authorized by Apple to replace batteries on iPads. They are only authorized to do replacements. You mean you can only sell me a new one, I asked. Yes, the guy confirmed.

I called Apple Support directly and spent a long time with the fellow on the line. His best advice was to call the Apple store and a few others to see if they had the battery in stock so I would not waste time driving to anything which was going to be a bust.

I called the non-Apple stores first. I was told the same thing as at Best Buy: we don't work on iPads.

APPLE - why do you list these places as repair spots when they can't do anything! If I have already put in what my device is, you should not direct me to a place which doesn't work on it!

So I called the big mall Apple store. The support guy had told me to talk to someone in the store itself so they could check supplies. When you call the store directly, you get a telephone tree. I said I wanted support and I wanted a live person. Oh, they sent me to a live person. A live person in another state. I asked them to send me back directly to the store. I get transferred again and when I explain the issue again, this person thinks I have a new battery in my hand and am looking for assistance installing it myself. (There are YouTube videos that I could use for that. I don't want to do that.)

After quizzing this guy, I finally got the following information:
*battery models get upgrades in newer models of iPads
*my iPad is so old, it would be difficult to find a new battery for it
*the batteries in use in newer iPads may not be compatible with mine

So I wrote Apple and gave them feedback that when this sort of occasion comes up, someone wanting a battery replacement on an older model, it is perfectly okay to say, sorry, we don't do that. It is not okay to send a person on a wild goose chase which just burns up theirs and every person they asks' time.

Despite this, I am very enamored of iPads, and am sort of tied to them. (The app I use to organize and read sheet music off of, ForScore, is only available for iOS. That's why I bought the iPad in the first place.) I will be replacing my old one some time after Christmas.

All this news related to the overturn of Roe v. Wade has been very triggering for me. It's only recently that I figured out that I am suffering a form of PTSD and have been for much of my life.

When I was 10 or 11, my 19-year-old sister got pregnant. This was 1966, the year before abortion became legal in California. She, of course, was terrified and tried to self-abort. That didn't work so she told my other older sister, who I think told her to tell our parents. I don't know how that conversation went, but I know the results: a shotgun marriage.

You have to understand that in our little white suburban neighborhood, we were the family the neighbors talked about, mostly because there were so many of us. We were seven rather loud kids with two working parents. While other families were Leave It to Beaver, we were the Addams Family. So "what will the neighbors think" was a very big deal.

My dad already had a poor opinion of my sister's boyfriend. They had gotten into at least one physical fight in front of the house. (Very entertaining for the neighbors, I'm sure.) But my dad made him marry her. She dropped out of college.

I don't remember at which point the guy abandoned my sister. She had moved back in with us, which was rocky for everyone. When she went into labor, it did not go well. She needed a C-section. Back in those days, the doctor needed permission from her husband. Her husband, who had abandoned her, was found long enough to say, hell no, he didn't want any scars on his wife. My dad said, screw that, doc, go ahead and operate.

The doctor did, and my sister and her little girl were fine. They lived with us and my sister found a job. My sister worked evenings and my mom took care of the baby. Despite having 7 kids, my mom is not good with babies. (She always had her two German aunties to help when we were little plus hired child care.) My mom taught school all day, came home, and didn't really want to deal with kids in the evening. My sister had not gotten the baby baptized (we are a very Catholic family) and I remember my mom just snapping one night and screaming, "You're a heathen baby! A heathen baby!" at the baby when she would not stop crying.

My sister has never been what I would call a happy person, and she was understandably extremely unhappy during this period. Guess who was her favorite punching bag?

When Kelly Clarkson's song, "Because of You," came out, it resonated so strongly with me and still makes me cry every time I think of it. If you're not familiar with it, here is the first verse and chorus:

"I will not make the same mistakes that you did
I will not let myself cause my heart so much misery
I will not break the way you did
You fell so hard
I've learned the hard way, to never let it get that far

"Because of you
I never stray too far from the sidewalk
Because of you
I learned to play on the safe side, so I don't get hurt
Because of you
I find it hard to trust not only me, but everyone around me
Because of you
I am afraid"

I have never wanted to have children. I have always assumed that I have always felt that way, but lately I have realized that this is probably why I have always felt like this. The song lyrics I quoted above are the way I have always felt. Getting pregnant has always been the worst thing I can imagine. I wouldn't let any guy touch me until I was 30. It's probably why I got fat, as I've been fat since I was a kid. (The only fat kid in the family, another target on the back.)

As difficult as all this was, for many pregnant people, this would have been a best-case scenario. My sister came from a white, middle-class family who supported her. She was not thrown out on the street. She did not die from a botched abortion. But forced birth hurts families.

I support pretty much unlimited access to abortion. (Doctors don't do third-trimester abortions unless it's a medical emergency - that's my definition of pretty much unlimited.) I am a practicing Catholic. I have prayed about this for literally decades, and God gave me an answer a few weeks ago.

I had been praying that if I am wrong in my stance on this that God change my heart, change my mind. He did not. He told me someone has to stand up for the women (and girls and trans people) who are pregnant against their will. Someone needs to speak for them. Someone needs to speak for all the little sisters out there who see this happening to their older sisters and are traumatized. God is not for forced birth. This is scriptural. He sent the angel Gabriel to Mary to ask for her consent before she became pregnant by the Holy Spirit.

My relationship with this sister has always been strained due to this. It's just been in the past few years that we have really been speaking at all. (She lives in another state so I rarely see her.) I have not gone very public with this because it would probably really upset her. Those of you who know me, have probably guessed that this is the sister I used to refer to as Maleficent.

We are living in terrifying times.

We took our older cat, Pippin, to the vet for the last time today. He had just been on December 8 for a check up and all was well then. His kidney disease was under control with the prescription cat food we were feeding him.

About 2 weeks ago, he seemed bored with his food - he would eat a little then look at us like he wanted something else. We had a sample bag of another kidney food which we gave him then, and that seemed to satisfy him for a few days. Then he started eating less and less.

I think he stopped eating 2 days ago. Due to my work schedule with its 12-hour shifts, today was as early as we could take him in. Feeling his body, the vet found a huge mass in his abdomen. It was surely cancer so we said goodbye and stayed with him as the vet put him to sleep.

We've had him 16 years. He was part of a feral cat colony in nearby Campbell. He was trapped by the Humane Society, neutered, and his ear was notched, marking him for release back to the wild. For some reason, another group took him and we adopted him from them. He was our second feral. The first had tamed well after a few months - Seven was never friendly to other people, but he was affectionate and friendly with us. Not so Pippin. He never truly got comfortable around anyone. He did request petting, but only from me, and I had to sit in a particular place on the couch and pet him with one hand. Two hands scared him.

Maia, our 5-year-old cat, has been looking for him today and sniffing around his usual sleeping spots. We're going to see how she deals with his loss. If she seems too lonely, we'll get her a companion.

Farewell, beloved Pippin. You were born wild but you died loved.

I am so upset about the evil people running this country. Probably not all the people signing the Trampcare bill are actually evil, but they are callous at least. How dare they refer to themselves as pro-life and try to put this into effect: it's anti-life. You cannot say "you can't have an abortion because every life is sacred" and then deny health care to mother and child. It is cruel and inhumane.

Whose was the demonic mind that decided that rape and domestic violence could be classed as pre-existing conditions and therefore make the victim ineligible for healthcare? Evil. This is the injustice that cries to heaven.

Who among us does not have a pre-existing condition? Ever had acne? That's a pre-existing condition. Had a C-section? That's a pre-existing condition. As are acid reflux, anxiety, and obesity.

Shame on Congress. Woe to the Republican party. We need prophets, not profits.

As so many people are abandoning LJ, I suppose I should come here, too.