Archive of ‘personal’ category

31
Dec
2022

This is not a sponsored post. No, seriously, it’s not.

categories: personal; word count: 113 words

I am now in love with sodium lauryl sulfate-free (and paraben-free, and plastic-free) shampoo and conditioner bars. They last so much longer than bottled shampoo and conditioner when you remember to dry them off after use, they’re so much better for your hair — you also need to use it less than bottled shampoo and conditioner once your hair “gets used” to it, which surprisingly didn’t take long at all with mine!

There’s also the fact that the majority of them smell really nice, too… a lot better than the bottled stuff does!

I love these bars and I intend on continuing to use them into the new year — actually, well past that point!

29
Dec
2022

Same shit, different day, I suppose. It really is.

categories: personal; word count: 336 words

I put in everything that my family needs to renew our SNAP benefits at the start of… was it this month?

I’m pretty sure it was the start of this month. I know this song and dance well, because it’s taken my state’s HHSC longer and longer to renew our benefits the past… what, six years now? But now it’s getting to the point where they are ignoring my inquiries on their Facebook and Twitter pages, and they put more effort into sending me copied and pasted drivel when I file complaints with the HHSC ombudsman (which is ironically what I’ve been told to do in the past when it takes them longer and longer, or monumental stretches of time, to look at our benefits cases)… so they’re willing to put more effort into not doing their jobs than they are the simple process of renewing benefits where circumstances have not changed. I don’t understand them and I never will, but it makes me hate this state even more. Dealing with anything bureaucratic in this state, or anything that has to do with this state at all, has become more and more of a nightmare as the years have gone on, and it’s only gotten worse, not better. I guess these people want to paint their nails, play on their phones, or play on their computers all day instead of doing their actual jobs… and then the state benefits website has the gall to state that the state is trying to hire state workers to do these jobs. The workers that they already have hired don’t seem like they’re willing to do the jobs that they have. I’ll just contact my state’s Legal Aid if our benefits lapse for any reason, which I don’t want to have to do but will do if circumstances warrant it because being disabled (and having disabled family members) and advocating for benefits and services that one is entitled to is literally like a full-time job. I’m getting used to it.

24
Dec
2022

Branching off of posts that I’ve already made…

categories: personal; word count: 301 words

I’ve kept my real life separate from “my Internet life” for more than a decade now.

On sites that I have both groups of people friended from, people that I know in real life tend not to want to interact with people that I know from the Internet at all and some have even gone so far as to express varying degrees of discomfort doing so. I try to be as respectful as I can, especially in situations like that, so of the only social networking page where I have both friended — Facebook, at least as of right now — I have filters so that no one accidentally “runs into each other”. (The one exception I made to this was decades ago when I actually pursued a long-distance relationship, with everyone indicating that they liked the person after I took the time doing what I thought was getting to know him — this is the one who I had to turn in multiple members of his family (himself included) to law enforcement after… finding certain things out, as I was left absolutely no choice. This floored everyone that knew, or had known, about him, and they alleged that they “had no idea” that he or his family could have been like this. But from that point on I became a lot more judicious about separating real-life friends from “friends on the Internet”, and then I drew a firm line.)

I’m hoping that if I can ever move somewhere that is more tolerant in general that I won’t have to do this.

But back when I hadn’t completely separated the two groups, I could tell that any time I brought up a friend from the Internet (“friend from the Internet”) it was regarded as less than… or in some cases, not even at all.

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