13
Jul
2020

This seems like the best workaround for now, so…

categories: personal; word count: 474 words

Okay, so after coming to the conclusion that one game in particular from Epic was taking up… nearly all of the free space that we had left on our PC’s hard drive, and that continuing to download every free game that we qualified for would put us on an unsustainable path with a hard drive that was one terabyte large, I decided to uninstall all of the Epic games that we are not actively playing even though I will continue to “qualify” for all of the free games that they release each week and grow our library that way so that I can download them at our leisure when we do want to play them… that way, they will be there and ready, but our hard drive won’t eventually completely fill up. That seems to be the best way to work around this for now, especially given that Epic games seem to be larger than any other PC(/Mac) game’s (developer? manufacturer? releaser?) that I’ve encountered so far. And to think that I honestly thought that a one terabyte hard drive was large… at least until that happened, you know? And maybe it is. Maybe to have a proper “gaming rig” though, you need something even larger than that. That honestly just blows my mind.

At any rate, we finally have (almost) everything that I can think of for Baby’s First Altar. Bub is continuing to be monitored around it because he’s taken to not leaving things alone when I want, or need, him to leave them alone. We’re working on that. It’s coming along, bit by bit. And weirdly enough, one or two people every now and again have asked me if I’ve ever regretted opening my mouth to Bub’s father’s family about my lack of belief in a higher power, not going along to get along, not keeping my mouth shut about how I really felt about them and their beliefs, and… no. I don’t regret a single thing. Because if we did get married, our marriage would have been incredibly short-lived (and invalid in the eyes of his church because I wouldn’t have been open to life, let alone “willing to be faithful” since I did not want to be monogamous and had made that clear to him). Also worth noting: my own family members were actually unwilling to come to my own wedding if I had one, and pretty much saw the writing on the wall for exactly what it was there. They were more willing to support the fact that it would be a short-lived marriage. Especially my own mother.

None of my own friends (bar the friends that, at the time, were our own mutual friends) were willing to come.

That should have said something right there about the level of avoidance people close to me would’ve had.

12
Jul
2020

Well… here goes nothing, right? Hope for the best?

categories: personal; word count: 283 words

After waffling on it for practically forever (even though I formally joined The Satanic Temple a few months ago), I put in an application to affiliate with my “local chapter”. And when I say this, what I really mean to say is the one that is the closest to me geographically since there is no actual chapter in my city. I’ve been a member of the “Friends of…” group on Facebook for awhile and made a few comments that have gone over well, so at the encouragement of friends and fellow Satanists I decided to try my luck with formal affiliation with my local chapter. Hopefully I hear something good back from them — that can take them a few weeks.

I was honest in the application and I did let them know that certain in-person events may have to… have Bub be worked around, because I’m the only caregiver who can competently chase him in the event that he attempts to elope from a situation, not to mention being the only one who consistently knows his cues and triggers. But there are still a lot of things that I can do online! I wouldn’t be the worst in the world at managing social networking pages, or as evidenced by this, even running a blog. I do know how to set up self-hosted WordPress like it’s no one’s business. Literally. So I can do a whole lot of things online as long as I have migraine medication on hand and my sunglasses depending on how long I need to use the computer or how long I have been using the computer. There are workarounds for this. I just need to find and use them.

11
Jul
2020

I’m an adult now, everyone! I actually have credit!

categories: personal; word count: 340 words

Again, I am not being paid any money to make this post. These are just my opinions.

Remember how I mentioned using Kikoff to build credit since I’m… well, an adult, as old as I am, and have absolutely no credit? Well, as of this month I actually have credit? It’s only 614, but that’s better than the credit scores of a lot of people right now, and that’s definitely better than nothing. So I am very happy with this. That is actual proof that Kikoff reports to all three major credit bureaus in the United States. In a weird way, this makes me excited. On down the line, I might actually need to use this credit for whatever reason, even though I strongly prefer to pay up front for whatever we may need. I don’t like being “on the hook” for things and owing for them, especially if it’s a lot of money. And given that Millenials and Gen Z kids are less likely than ever to own their own home, let alone have their heads “above water” in the financial sense (thanks for that, Boomers… no, literally, thanks for that), having that mindset isn’t exactly a bad thing, heh.

Meanwhile, with bits and pieces of my economic stimulus check I’ve been adding to Baby’s First Altar, although if I have to be anywhere else in the house where Bub could in theory get to it I put everything where he can’t reach it. And given that he likes to hide certain things from me out of some peculiar sense of enjoyment, I’m keeping more smaller important items in my actual purse or carry-on bag. I’ve also gotten myself some nail polish “to spoil myself”, and I even bought myself some cyberlox because these are just me.

For some reason, Bub saw fit to take his emotion flash cards and hide them behind his brother’s bed. He also hid the key guard to his AAC device behind there. I found both. Why, Bub, why? Why must you do the thing?

10
Jul
2020

Times this doctor took me seriously: 0

categories: personal; word count: 402 words

Bub would not leave some of the items that are a part of Baby’s First Altar (as I jokingly like to call it) alone, so now I have to put certain things out of reach when I know that I’m going to be running errands and he could sneak into my room long enough to… do things that he should not be doing. He is not amused about that, but I am also not amused at the fact that the garbage disposal and some of the pipes leading from it out of the house — not many, thank goodness, but some — had to be removed and cleaned because he stuck things down the garbage disposal thinking that it was funny. We had a long talk about how he needs to leave other people’s belongings alone, not to touch them unless he has been granted permission to do so (and “Baby’s First Altar” does not mean that he has carte blanche permission to muck about with things, especially if doing so means that he can damage them), and to please, please leave the garbage disposal alone, especially because this is not the first time that he has done this. He has a knack for shoving things down it right before he goes to bed, and then it gets used that following morning, and crunch. Why, child?

I am also no longer on the inhaled steroid that was causing me issues because my insurance would not cover the nebulized one that… wasn’t. Instead, we are trying a twice-daily actuated inhalation that also replaces the one that I was nebulizing. Because of the pandemic, we also want me to stay off of prednisone unless I absolutely can not avoid it. So because people, and politicians, could not and can not commit to staying at home to ride this out until it is much less of a concern, we had to make this decision for me. Sigh.

I see my neurologist later on this month, which I am not a fan of. Not only did she upend my prior neurologist’s plan of care for me, but she passively-aggressively charted it in my medical files. If it were easy to change to a new neurologist, I would do so. Depending on how future check-ups go, I may actually consider changing to the pain management clinic in this city and see if they can completely take on my care.

09
Jul
2020

I’d like to see Facebook replaced, please…

categories: personal; word count: 263 words

I’ve already said it a few times, but Facebook needs to stop being the popular monolith that it is. Popular and well-known activists and advocates have found themselves getting reported and punished with “post blocks” with increasing frequency, escalating to account deactivations, while the people who need to have comments and posts taken down and their accounts deactivated are allowed to say nearly whatever they want (Facebook literally takes action once in a blue moon) without consequence. You can’t even contact them about this, and if you try to contact them about it on other social media sites that they use — like Mentioning them on Twitter — they completely ignore it because it makes them look bad, and acknowledging that they do it makes them look bad. They literally pretend that it doesn’t even happen.

And you conveniently can’t actually talk to a person to try and appeal these post blocks, and sometimes Facebook arbitrarily decides that you can’t “appeal” them. When I was most recently post and comment blocked for thirty days, I wasn’t even shown the comment that “violated” their terms and services… until a week after I was allowed to post and comment again. Miraculously, it then showed up, and it claimed that “Facebook could not prioritize an appeal”, even though I had not even been allowed to appeal the post and comment block to begin with. So on top of this, they lie about everything that happens to justify the block.

When Bub and I played Animal Crossing more, this made it a lot harder to use the Stalk Exchange.

1 … 315 316 317 318 319 … 361