hakeer | Reading

Pet-sitting over the weekend was ok, not great. Bleu was a good boy and a sweetheart. Brie was fine when we were inside, but once she got out, it took a couple of hours - repeatedly - to coax her back into the house, because even though she was happy to climb into my lap on the couch, she flinched away whenever I stood in the doorway and called her to come in. Even just sitting in a chair and propping the door open and putting down treats to lead her in took a while. So that was not great. Additionally, because of the cat, I had to take a ridiculous amount of allergy medication just to breathe and my throat and chest were itchy the whole time.

On the plus side, the pizza I ordered was delicious!

I took yesterday off and scheduled a grocery delivery, which never arrived. Apparently none of the drivers would take it? I don't know what that even means, but I took that personally. I cancelled the order, and then today, put in an Aldi order which arrived on time and only cost half as much. *hands*

I'm off again tomorrow for a dental appointment. We are battening down the hatches for a govt shutdown at work, but should be okay if it doesn't last too long. Otherwise, there could be furloughs.

If you, like me, want to escape into fanfic, here's this month's recs update:

unfitforsociety has been updated for September 2025 with 10 recs:

✭ 9 Batfamily and 1 Batfam/Spiderman crossover

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Current Mood: okay
Current Music: We Belong - Pat Benatar

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I had covid once, in April 2022 I think, and I had restless leg syndrome for the first time in my life during that infection. It was EXTREMELY uncomfortable - I couldn't sleep properly, and I mostly couldn't feel comfortable at all sitting up, but I also could not stop moving my legs almost constantly. I think I settled on weakly bicycling them. But since the rest of my symptoms approximated a severe flu, it also sort of blended into the background nightmare and I don't remember it very clearly.

That was the first time I ever had RLS, and I only know the name because I was googling the symptom at the time. Apparently it was a known symptom of that variant, or that's what the net told me at the time.

Well, I just had it for the SECOND time ever last night!

I fell asleep at midnight, and I guess I was awake with physical discomfort, verging on actual pain, from about 2 am to 7 am when I got up to give the cats their breakfast. It was a bit like the discomfort of a limb that's going to cramp or go to sleep in a bad position, but moving only eased it for a moment, so I was tossing and turning and only managed to sleep fitfully once during that, dreaming that I had RLS. After I fed the cats at 7 I microwaved a wheat pillow and when I went back to bed I put it on my thighs, which enabled me to fall asleep finally. Then, of course, I overslept.

Wax says that she gets RLS sometimes, but a mild version that doesn't bother her as much, and that it's apparently a known symptom of menopause?! Wow, I hate that.

And like so many problems, unfortunately, the most effective recommendations for managing it are all stuff like regular good sleep hygiene and good exercise habits, and it's like yeah I know, I'm TRYING! That, and maybe iron might help.

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health

Darth Real Life hounds my every step these days, but I did manage to watch the ( Alien: Earth )

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Munich

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Current Mood: hopeful

Sadly Bluey has had her first bump.

Driving down a road in town that's terrible for people illegally parking on both sides so they can easily get to the nearby Greggs, we were driving behind a lady, who stopped, and then reversed, when a car going up didn't stop, taking up all the available space in the middle of the road. How she didn't see our car behind hers I don't know, but apparently she didn't.

Thankfully, the damage is cosmetic only with a few scratches, and if it wasn't a mobility car we'd probably just leave it or try and get some matching car paint. But, that's not an option, so an insurance job it is.

Pauline's 80th birthday party went really well yesterday. We picked Corey up at 2, and were at the venue for 2:30, Pauline wanted a late afternoon/early evening party so she'd get home in good time, and it worked out nicely. All her family was there, and my aunt and uncle came too, the first time I'd seen them for over a year.

The catering wasn't the best as the chef at the pub we were at had walked out a few weeks ago, and they'd had to arrange outside catering, and instead of the big buffet that was paid for, there were only platters of sandwiches, crisps and cut up cheese. So, Pauline had to buy extras herself, arranging for people to bring 5 large cakes, sausage rolls, cheese rolls and quiches. But, at least the hot beef sandwiches were provided as ordered, and while there wasn't a huge variety the cobbled together buffet was tasty. Plus, we got to bring leftovers home, and is it even a family party buffet if you can't do that and eat slightly stale leftovers on the night/next morning?

If you're interested I posted a couple of photos of us and the kidlet on my instagram here

Unsurprisingly, my brother didn't turn up. He did send a beautiful bouquet but I wish he'd realise Pauline would always appreciate seeing him more than an actual gift.

It was great spending time with Corey, and he was telling me he and his girlfriend have managed to get MCR tickets which made me so happy for them. If I can't go, at least I know they are and will have a great time.

By the time we'd taken him back to Gateshead and got home it was getting toward eight, and it took me about five seconds to get in my pjs, get under the heated blanket with the cats and watch Strictly. After all, it's what Saturday evenings are made for.

Slow Horses: Bad Dates: We are so back, baby! ( spoilers ) Very interested in seeing where this is going.

I am less on the bandwagon and more cautious and disbelieving about the Mets' playoff chances. They control their own destiny for now, but having to play the Marlins to cement their wild card spot is giving me very unhappy flashbacks to past collapses. Also, if Tyrone Taylor is not in CF the rest of the way now that he's back from the IL, then I don't even know what we're doing here.

Lastly, I will be pet-sitting overnight at my brother's tomorrow, so hopefully the new-ish dogs are okay with that. We'll see how it goes!

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Current Mood: okay
Current Music: Maria Maria - Santana

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Sipuli has had three days of short sessions, 5-10 minutes, of clicker training, and it's adorable. She's possibly the cleverest cat we've ever met, and she's very food-motivated.

Our rewards are the little cubes of freeze dried chicken, which are much more expensive than most cat treats but also healthier because, unlike most cat treats, they don't contain anything but meat; and they were the only kind Snookums could have because he was diabetic, and as a result Tristana is used to getting them at bedtime and after Procedures like claw trimming and ear cleaning.

Sipuli has not fully mastered "touch the target", but she's so engaged, and you can see her thinking.

The idea behind this suggestion from the cat behaviorist was, I think, being able to ultimately train them simultaneously in parallel, and maybe get them to act differently at the gate. This seems possible, but we haven't started training Tristana or introduced Wax making the requests yet, so it's early.

On the minus side, yesterday Sipuli got out and chased Tristana across the room for about thirty seconds. You'd have thought they were both dying, but actually it seems like they did not in fact touch each other at all - Tristana was screaming under the chair while Sipuli was yelling back. That's good, that nobody was hurt and they didn't physically fight. But obviously still a setback. Tristana had to go hide in the turtle bed on the heated upstairs bathroom floor for a few hours.

Tags:

cats

The gym was offering free Personal Trainer taster sessions this month, so I did one yesterday. ( cut for exercise and weight talk )

I've an ongoing situation atm where someone is fly tipping bags of rubbish near my house. The way things are set up, you walk out of my garden gate onto the public path, on the other side of the path there's a metal fence, then a steep bank with mature trees that goes down to the dual carriageway. For ages now someone has been coming and dumping rubbish at that spot, probably because between the trees on one side and the thick ivy on my fence, it's a place that's relatively hidden from view.

At first, it wasn't much, but lately it's been multiple big black bags full of rubbish, and pee'ed on puppy pads. I've had to add signs on the gate, and my neighbours has too, saying no flying tipping, CCTV in operation, and if it doesn't stop I'm seriously considering actually getting another ring doorbell for the back of the house.

I've talked to many neighbours about it, and we're all pretty sure who's doing it, it's just getting proof. The rubbish gets reported every time, and last time the council said they'd check through it to see if there's anything identifying. Hopefully, there is, as it's just scummy behaviour.

We went to see A Big Bold Beautiful Journey at the cinema a few days ago. Coming out the cinema guy asked people if we'd liked it, I said, it was okay, another woman said, that it was interesting and yeah, that sums it up.

James is back at work today, just a four-hour shift today, then two four-hour shifts next week, then gradually increasing time as the weeks go on. I'm walking to meet him at Home Bargains at lunchtime as we need cat litter, and I'm not about to carry a sack of that home by myself. But first, a catch-up on here.

I failed the driving test in apparently one of the most common ways to do it: no major errors except that the engine died at an intersection and I got flustered and failed to restart it so many times that the test administrator had to gently coach me through even though we both knew I knew what to do. I was fully aware that I was releasing the clutch too fast, but I just could not slow down no matter how I tried. Until she gently and calmly told me when in her coaching voice, of course, and that worked right away.

We sat there three light cycles. It was like something out of a sitcom. The test administrator was very nice about it; and apart from the embarrassment, I don't feel that bad about it, and I think I'll be okay when I retake it in three weeks.

§§§

However.

It's very frustrating to be told that you just need to calm down or relax, as a person with anxiety disorders. I don't mean it's insensitive or anything, just that it's frustrating because I already knew that and have been trying very hard to, but it's not working very well, because there's nothing that does work very reliably that I can do.

I can't take a tranquilizer. I can't magically make myself extremely familiar with the entire context/place/situation/people. I can't exercise vigorously right before because it takes longer to travel to Turku than it does for endorphins to fade (and I'd have to have time to go home and shower and dress even before the hour commute). I can tell myself everything's going well and it's not an emergency and I should chill; I can tense up all my muscles and then release and do those breath patterns that help lower your heartbeat; and I can listen to music that I find comforting. That's really it. It's got limited effectiveness.

But importantly, the bus ride is already stressful enough for me to need to do those things much of the time because I have a severe perfume allergy and am hypersensitive to perfumes, and typically there is at least one (physically) irritating perfume experience in over 90% of bus rides that I take. It's not often possible to come out of one centered and relaxed and refreshed, even if I logically know that the risk of anaphylaxis was low!

Probably it would still be hard to relax without the bus trip, though.

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German-French channel ARTE also put up the complete Wolf Hall, so I was able to watch the six parter they did based on Hilary Mantel's third Cromwell novel at last. What I thought of the novel itself, its plusses and minuses and how it deals with the history, you can read here, so this review is mostly about how it fares as a book adaptation and tv miniseries.

( Spoilers have heretical opinions on Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell )

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Munich

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Baby Miss L is super into Halloween and has two Hello Kitty dolls dressed like skeletons that dance! She might be a skeleton herself this year! Her costume has not been finalized, but there is time.

As I've mentioned, I was never big into Halloween - it was my mom's birthday, so a lot of the time I was home celebrating with her - but it's fun to see the baby into it.

Today is the 12th anniversary of my mother's death. That is a whole seventh grader! It makes me sad that my parents will never know Baby Miss L.

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Current Mood: sad
Current Music: Bad (live) -u2

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life

I have been thinking about the ADHD struggle, and I decided I should buy the Barkley book on adult ADHD and also a copy of How To Keep House While Drowning; I added them to my cart at the online bookstore, then didn't order them because I didn't have the executive function to do that yet. I found some potential replacements for the charger of my laptop that just broke as well, but didn't manage to finish comparing them and decide.

Other stuff I need to do and have been unable to start includes:( Read more... )

I think a lot of what's blocking me from several of these things in the last month, anyway, is that they feel like projects that require planning and stamina, but so much of my bandwidth has been going to anxiety about the driving test (two days from now) that there wasn't space. This is extremely normal for me and obviously a fallacy, but I guess I've been feeling like the time until the test was mostly short enough that I should just try to minimize anxiety and worry about all the other stuff after. And I didn't want to take my adhd meds in between.

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brain: adhd

Yesterday evening, I made a lovely pan-seared steak for dinner, and today I roasted a chicken. It was more expensive, but I bought one that came already spatchcocked, which meant it cooked in about 40 minutes. I used this recipe and the white meat was quite juicy and good. It's annoying to have to flip the whole chicken in the frying pan though, so I don't know if I will do it this way again, especially since I don't really care about crispy skin since I don't eat the skin. [obligatory quote: "any demons with high cholesterol?... You're gonna think about that later, mister, and you're gonna laugh."]

I also did the first part of this chocolate chip cookie recipe and now they're in the fridge chilling. Tomorrow I will bake 2 off and then do the same thing for the next 3 days too, since it only makes 8 extremely large cookies and they are supposedly best when freshly baked. I will report back on how they taste!

Tomorrow, I plan to make a nice herb and cheese frittata for dinner and lunch for a couple of days too, and of course, there will be leftover roast chicken to eat too.

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Current Mood: satisfied
Current Music: Cowboys vs Bears on tv

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adventures in cooking

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It was a day yesterday.

To start with there had been really heavy, non-stop rain from the early hours. It was also our first craft fair in our town, one we'd been trying to get a spot at for ages. Then Murphy started showing signs of having cystitis again, and not being able to pee, which of course would be an emergency if he had a blockage.

With it being Saturday, our own vet was closed, so we had to get him an appointment at the out of hours vet, which would mean an expensive bill. He's got excellent insurance, but what happens at the out of hours is we'd have to pay, and the insurance would eventually reimburse, as opposed to our vet where they bill the insurance company directly. ( cut for length tldr, Murphy is on the mend )

Friday was nearly a day, too. We've said we'll take my MiL out at least once a fortnight, so picked her up on Friday and had a drive to Barnard Castle to get eggs from the honesty stall at the farm and get delicious bread from a bakery we like. All was going well until we stopped for a coffee, and my SiL phoned saying her electric had gone off so my MiL would have to stay at our house that night.

Obviously, she would have been welcome, but none of the furniture had been moved, she had none of her meds or oxygen generator, and it just seemed to make more sense to wait for a bit to see if things could be fixed before taking her to our house.

To cut a long and frustrating story short, they managed to get the meter sorted and the electricity was back on within an hour, but not before a lot of stress from everyone.

Thursday we'd gone to see Caught Stealing. It's a bit more violent than my usual tastes, but I can say, Austin Butler is a very beautiful man.

One good thing about yesterday, Strictly was back, let the Nikita admiring begin for another year.

If you are interested in checking out Dungeon Crawler Carl but don't want to buy the first book (or the wait list at your library is very long), there's a webtoon version you can check out for free to see if it's up your alley. It's making me want to start a reread of the series even though I just read it last month. *hands*

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Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Mets losing to the Nats

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books: dungeon crawler carl

Miss Austen: is a delightful four part miniseries. Now with the exception of the excellent Miss Austen Regrets, featuring Olivia Williams as an older Jane A., biographical media on Jane Austen has suffered from the usual flaw of biopics or bio series focusing on female authors, i.e. insisting on inflicting plots of their most popular work on their life. Miss Austen also avoids this, not least by the fact the titular Miss isn’t Jane, it’s her older sister Cassandra, played in middle age by a superb as usual Keeley Hawes and in flashbacks when young by SinnØve Karlsen, who is so versatile that despite having seen her being very good as Clarice Orsini, Lorenzo de’ Medici’s wife in Medici and superb most recently as Bayta in Foundation’s third season, I didn’t recognise her until googling her. (In addition to great acting, I blame the regency outfit and hairstyle in the flashbcks. *g*) Jane Austen is played by Patsy Ferran who is also great, both when being mischievous and witty, passionate about writing and her sister, and depressed (for various reasons, not least the early lack of success). In fact, this miniseries has led me to the conclusion that Jane Austen is like Benjamin Franklin in that the best way to treat her is as a supporting character where she can shine and leave the audience asking for more, whereas when Ben or Jane get the main character treatment, the increased focus reduces their charisma and attraction.

(This is also why back in my Highlander days, I never wanted a Methos spin-off, despite being as fond of the character as any other fan. He is perhaps THE example of a character who needs to remain a recurring guest star in order to maintain what makes their charm and mystery.)

( Attend the saga of sisters and a sister-in-law… ) The script manages to avoid the obvious quotes while coming up for Austenish sounding things the characters to say, and does great both with the social comedy of manners and the emotional drama. All in all really superb. Anyone either German like me or French: I watched it on ARTE, which also offers the undubbed, original version. Enjoy!

Current Mood: bouncy
Current Location: on the train

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jane austen,
review

The plumber and the digger have left after tamping the dirt back down and pouring some new gravel where the car parks! The septic tanks have been removed and the separate rainwater drainage is in place!

The sewers from the tenant side do not empty into the tank under the garage anymore (that's still there though, but it shouldn't be able to give us any trouble unless we get like a month of flooding rains and a leak)!

It's all brown dirt and gray gravel again now, but here's a few pictures Wax took of the excavation earlier.

We have lost a few bushes and possibly some hostas, as well as a little flat cement pad that we didn't want, to the piles of dirt and digging. We will need to buy a few baby bushes (rhododendron maybe?) and a bunch of clover seed which hopefully might manage to outcompete the grass. And set the cement paver path back in place. All that has to be done during the autumn, before the frost, so... here's hoping. Also a city tree on the corner of the lot had a lot of its roots cut off and unfortunately a lot more on the other side last winter when the city dug up the street to fix the pipes. It's probably not gonna survive that, I guess.

I have been feeling full of anxiety and suspense when actually a lot of things are going well. This stupid open septic tank issue has been oppressing and terrifying us for a year. Monday and Tuesday are my last driving lessons and then I take the test (tons of anxiety) but my teacher and I agreed I've been doing pretty well. Wax and I have managed to cook together a bit more often, even.

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In which it's very useful to know the numbers of pi by heart. Or eye.

( What have you done? )

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Bamberg

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lies and truth

To the doubts that complicate your mind

I had restless leg syndrome as a symptom during Covid

Alien: Earth 1.08

Dear Festividder

(no subject)

thinking of ways to make it better

I've started clicker training Sipuli

(no subject)

The good news is all I have to do is calm down

Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light (TV Series)

if i could, i would let it go

ADHD roadblocks

tips and overthrows - gotta have it

(no subject)

(no subject)

and that might have impact in the ninth

Miss Austen (Miniseries)

The long sewage nightmare is over

Alien: Earth 1.07

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