Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

My friendslist is all the same this morning. Almost without exception, every post on it is expressing sorrow over the US election results. I'm right there with you.

But this morning I woke up with a small positive thought: We're now one day closer to Trump being out of office. And tomorrow we'll be another day closer.

I just have to try not to think about the damage that will be done before he's gone.

I heard the saddest quote on the news yesterday. Some woman said, paraphrasing:

"They always told me I was wrong for not believing in gay rights. But Republicans hold the House, Congress, and now the presidency, and that's telling me I was right all along. Blah blah back to traditional values, things the country "should" believe in, the quote went on and on.

It makes my heart ache.

I try to focus on the positive things. Hillary won the popular vote. So there are more good, kind people in the country than there are people who support that abusive, racist, bullying piece of crap.

I wish we could address the issue of why it's not the popular vote that counts, but as Democrats keep winning the popular vote and yet losing the election, the Republicans won't ever let that happen.

I noticed something really odd last night. Before surgery, I used to play a game while falling asleep: If you could pick any three foods in the world and have an unlimited amount of them to eat, what three foods would you pick? You didn't have to worry about getting tired of them, as the next night you could pick three new ones.

( I couldn't sleep last night, so I tried playing the game... )


This is really scary. What other changes have happened to my brain that I don't know about?

I wouldn't usually write about a book before finishing it, but this has been bothering me since last night. Book three of the YA not-zombie trilogy I've been posting about lately.

The scene: A band of fighters is moving from one town to another, through not-zombie territory. They're attacked, outnumbered, but in the end they win. One member, the son in a father-son fighting pair, is mortally wounded. They can't stay with him until he dies, can't carry him with them.

They're armed with knives and guns, and used both in the battle (so no worry about the gunshot attracting unwanted attention). They've killed not-zombies by "stabbing them in the heart" multiple times, including in this battle.

From the book:

...their eyes locked. "Make it quick, Pa."

"Aye," Thornson [his father] said.

In a dreadful, tender gesture, he scooped Dennis into his arms and carried him to the river. There, he held the boy's head in the water until he stopped struggling."

Reading that again, I just have no words. This has to be a logic fail of the author's, not of Thornson.

The image of that scene is scarier than anything else in this not-zombie* story.

* The author is very big on saying this isn't a zombie story. However, in all ways but one, these creatures are zombies. Somehow they're breeding, but otherwise: zombie.

For folks new to my LJ, years back I used to post disturbing stuff on a regular basis (always with warnings and descriptions). This video reminds me of that.

NWS: Brief view of girl parts. No gore, no sexual matters. ("Credit" for link goes to lives_this_life.)

( Vaginal Knitting. Click here for the video. )

I do NOT want to buy whatever it is she's knitting.

aberdeen pointed out that there has been an update in the Great Homophobic Pasta War of 2013: Gay-Friendly Bertolli Makes The Most Of Barilla's Homophobic PR Mess.


(I think the dog might be the only smart one of that group. Why would pasta want to go into sauce, get cooked, be eaten?)

In much, much, much less amusing news, a Real Housewives of New Jersey cast member (Melissa Gorga) has written a book. Love Italian Style: The Secrets of My Hot and Happy Marriage. I'm not going to link to it on Amazon, I do not want to encourage anyone to buy it. (Though, on second thought, the comments are worth reading, so here's a link).

I've never watched any Real Housewives show, and quotes from this book do not change my opinion of the show or the type of people who are in it.

This woman tells men to rape their wives. Her exact words: “Men, I know you think your woman isn’t the type who wants to be taken. But trust me, she is. Every girl wants to get her hair pulled once in a while. If your wife says ‘no,’ turn her around, and rip her clothes off. She wants to be dominated.”

Just reading that disgusts me. The idea that some man might believe that and take it to heart...

I think I need to hide or throw up or perhaps both.

Today's happening is in addition to major medical issues I haven't posted about yet. Basically I'm visiting the doctor more times this month than I do in years, and with all sorts of medical tests I never had before. One day I'll write more about it.

Anyway. Woke up this morning. Checked email first thing. Found out I need to move. Owner wants to renovate my apartment, so he offered to let me move into another apartment in the complex, but he raised our rent six times in a year, and I've been wanting to move out. So if I'm going to move, I'm not moving to another apartment he owns.

My blood pressure was already going through the roof, just based on that first email.

I sat down with Craigslist and started going through postings. Found a couple I could live with, then one I liked. 9:30 and I visited it. It had everything I required (permitted cats), and the things I really really wanted (washer/dryer in unit, dishwasher, AC). The location is good, and while it's a big complex, the area is really pretty (feels more like a park than an apartment complex), plus it has a nice pool.

10 AM and I filled out the application.

Today was going to be a big day because I was picking up my first smart phone (an iphone), so I scurried off to the Apple store in the mall to pick that up. Horrible trip, HATE that mall so much (think about every high-end fashion brand on the planet and put them all in one mall, that was this place). I felt so amazingly out of place. Plus I injured my foot a while ago, so I was hobbling around on it through the giant mall. (At least I didn't lose my car. That's one of my biggest nightmares, that I can't find my car. My nightmares really aren't all that creative -- either me doing horrible things to people I like or losing my car.)

Noon I was home with my phone and lunch and got an email that my credit check/application passed "with flying colors" (which made me laugh -- my credit score is nearly perfect, darned straight I better have passed!).

1 PM and I had made a ton of phone calls to movers (phone-phobic me! I hate calling people and talking on the phone). Turned out 8/5 is a really late, bad time to try to book movers when you want to move that same month. I finally found a company that both had a good rating on Yelp and had an open booking.

Now I need to pack. I've been living in this apartment for 13 years, so... I have no idea how I'm going to be ready in time. I have a grand total of 5 boxes to use. Luckily the dates work out well:

New apartment ready 8/28
Movers coming: 8/30
Out of old apartment by: 8/31

I just hope the owner of the apartment I'm in now isn't a pain about "30 days notice" when I'm just a few days short of that.

Must make a list of all the things I have to do. It feels an impossible task to be ready in that short of time.

I have a confession to make. Goosebumps scares me. (The TV show version, I was too old for the books when they came out and haven't ever gone looking for them since.) Does that sound wacky? Let me describe today's episode:

I was multitasking and missed the first few minutes, so I'm not sure how, but a bunch of kids ended up in an old, abandoned building.

Turned out it was an old insane asylum.

The kids found an operating room. With all sorts of saws and other instruments you'd expect for brain surgery. Clear shot of them, all looking clean and new.

Next the kids found medical records describing the operations and electroshock therapy. (Not described in details, but one character talked about how they electrocuted people and another about "cutting people open".)

Unsurprisingly, the place turned out to be haunted. The ghosts locked the kids in a dorm-type room, but the kids (scared) break out. The ghosts kept whispering to them "Lights out... lights out..." but the kids have no idea what it means.

One kid gets snatched out from the middle of them and reappears strapped down on the operating table. The ghost doctor gets ready to cut his head open. The kids learn that the ghosts were saying "lights out" as a warning, that the doctor would operate on (experiment on, in not so many words) any kids out of their room after lights out. The End.

WTF. D:

A while ago the author of the Animorphs book series and I were emailing back and forth. He's still writing young adult books, and I commented how one had really scared me. He wrote:

I've been asked about whether these books are too scary for kids and I usually answer no, they're too scary for adults. Kids are very hard to scare. They're immortal after all. The processing of aging is in part the learning of fear. Babies aren't scared of anything. Old people are scared of every cool breeze.

That's really tru--ARRRGGG COOL BREEZE! COOL BREEZE! But seriously, I think that really is correct. This episode scared me because I know it could have very easily been true (not the ghost part, but a long-ago doctor abusing mentally ill patients). The idea of being powerless, strapped to a table, at the mercy of an abusive doctor (ghostly or not)...

Edit: And in more scary news? I lost my cellphone a while back, but I only use it once or twice a year, so wasn't rushing to replace it. Twice last week my car didn't start on the first try. Talk about scary, not having a phone in that situation... No pay phones around, would I have to walk in a store and ask a clerk to borrow theirs? c.c I have a new phone now.