RL things I love
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I impulse bought a plug in/heated throw blanket from Costco today. Best purchase!! I am warm for the first time in like 3 days! Also it's super soft. Now I just have to keep the teenagers or husband from stealing it.
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I have a heated "spa" throw that I utterly love. Invested in it a couple years ago after some talked me into it and they are totally worth it. Not at all the weird burny wires I remembered from the 90s.
I do highly recommend for anyone who gets all achy in the colder months!
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@ganymede And anything with Godbrand.
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Anything by Peter Stormare is going to be boss.
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I started streaming again yesterday. I had forgotten how great the community I've become a part of is and how much fun I have just playing game with those same people. It's a bit of positive I've really needed and so I'm totally grateful. So, yeah, Twitch and Destiny 2. These are things I'm totally loving at the moment.
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We do adopt a kiddo for Christmas here at work. I requested an age/gender combo that she has a hard time finding people for, and we ended up with an older boy. An older gaming boy. My team is excited about it. EXCITED. Last year they participated sort of because-it-was-there, but this year they are actively enthused and have all sorts of ideas and everything. He's gonna get a good Christmas.
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Doubleposting because today is a day for winning.
My short-term disability claim was approved!!!!! FINALLY.
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I've been waiting almost half a year since I bought my ticket for Ghost...
Tonight's the night! Just twenty minutes until I leave work, run home, stuff my face with some food, get dressed, then run back out.
And THANK FUCK I don't actually have a migraine today!
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I put enough cinnmona in this year's apple-cranberry sauce that it pretty much just tastes like a cranberry version of apple pie filling.
This was not the plan. I am still pleased.
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My oven died spectacularly yesterday in the middle of cooking the turkey (no, 225 is not what i set my oven at wth.... is the thermostat br- bang! Flames! Screaming oven! Melting heating element o.O)
Called up the friend and was like "say how about thanksgiving at your place?" Best. Salvaged. Thanksgiving. Took us an hour to cart everything but there was turkey and the sides, sit and shoot the shit, listen and dance to disco, hang with one of my former daycare kids. Far too much wine and mimosa's. But I super loved it. It sure as hell beat sitting in the kitchen all day with my laptop while menfolk gamed on the ps4. We now have plans for christmas. And W. Virginia for a real no dogs/work spring break.
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@jibberthehut Excellent recovery! Well done!
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My hair is now more or less iridescent teal.
May not be what we planned, but hot damn if I will complain.
Oh fucking well.
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@surreality Does the colour translate in photographs? I'd love to see that!
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@ninjakitten I'll have to see when the sun's back.
Might be able to get the husband to take a few swatchy pics. We didn't do pics this time because my scalp is kinda joker green for the moment. -
So I have been, intermittently (when they schedule events I can actually make) attending events with a local 'lady geeks' group here. Mostly tabletop gaming, but they also have a knitting group once a month. And I'm gonna try to go to their book club this coming Saturday morning (which means I've been rushing through this month's book this week).
Most events are weekday evenings, so I can't attend, but at least their Discord is active!
But today I was introducing the tabletop gaming Discord channel to the Legacy games (like Pandemic Legacy) and I brought up Betrayal Legacy and my avid desire to play it someday. A few ladies mentioned they'd be interested and very okay with scheduling a monthly weekend night to play.
So! I'm gonna hooooopefully be able to set aside enough to purchase a copy during my mid-month paycheck in December.
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Life.
Today I love life.
Why? Because in this moment, this morning, I'm thankful to be alive.A little backstory as to why I feel like that, as opposed to my usual strive to be positive, but yet ultimately nihilistic self. For the past two days, my car had been acting odd. Nothing drastic, just takes my engine about a second or two longer to turn over before it starts. Which I had noted, but decided to keep an eye on til it got worse.
Well, today it was worse. For a good six seconds, the car just turned and turned until it turned over. At which point I realized, okay I better get this looked at before my car doesn't start at all. I'm think electrical wiring. I'm thinking spark plugs. I'm thinking fuel pump. Some cheap, so very very expensive. None of which I really want to pay for. But I can't miss work, especially if I want the promotion I'm looking to get.
So I drive down to my mom's, because I know she has a family friend who's good with cars, gives good prices and doesn't screw people over. I talk to him, ask him to look at my car, and he has enough time in the morning to sneak mine in. As I'm getting ready to head over to his garage, I'm picking up the trash in my passenger side and I notice I start smelling gas. I search everywhere, fine nothing. No wet spots on the ground. It's not until I'm waiting for my mom, that I see the small puddle right next to my driver's side rear tire. A slow, drip drip. Sure enough it's gas.
Now that has me mildly paranoid, but I figure I just drove half an hour from work, I should be okay and that garage is only five miles away. Drop the car off, ride back, sit down to have a coffee and catch up with mom.
Twenty minutes pass. Phone rings, she answers, it's the guy at the garage. It wasn't anything electrical, apart of the fuel line had rusted and rotted into a gaping hole, that was causing the drip. What I didn't know just how bad that drip was while the engine was running. Makes sense when I thinking of it now, fuel pressure being what it is.
He tells my mom, who then tells me that I'm lucky to be alive because I was driving a literal bomb all the way from work to my mom's and then to his garage. Because the fuel line was so close to the exhaust pipe, all it would've taken was one random spark, or enough heat from the exhaust to ignite it.
And I had driven my car like that for about 40 minutes overall this morning
So. Today I love life. Because I am obscenely lucky to be alive. It hasn't really set in just yet. I'm in that kind of 'haha what' phase.
Because I could've been blown up in my car. Not the way I'd like to go out, but at least it would've been interesting. Still, it's a good day when I can lay in bed and simply be glad that I'm doing so.
ETA: I forgot to mention I had just filled my tank on Monday. Soooo....that would've been around ten gallons of gasoline. So. Yeah.
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Thank goodness you're okay!
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I posted in the MU gripes thread and I feel like I should also post here just like to balance out my karma or whatever.
So, my cat died. That's not the thing I love, obviously, it's been fucking devastating, but the people in my life have been making me smile. Grief is awful but what's less awful is realising what kind of support network you have and how much they care about you and are willing to be there for you to make you feel better.
My dad's been visiting me in my disgusting apartment every day. I feel a bit bad, like I should tidy it up, but he's been managing not to cast judgements in my current state which considering the mountains of OCD I undoubtedly inherited from him, and the fact that his Asperger's usually gives him 0 filter, is a really impressive thing that in and of itself I've been able to really appreciate.
Today he brought me a lentil soup. He doesn't cook so it's in a can, but he explained that he couldn't get me the fresh version from the chilled section because he checked the ingredients on that one and it wasn't vegan.
What he doesn't know is that I've been on a health kick for the last few years and I'm now at the point where I wouldn't touch canned soup to save my life. It's icky to me. I just think about all the processed weirdness this preserved tin must contain and it sucks my appetite right away.
I'm not upset about this though. I'm looking at this can and it's making me smile. I'm sitting here and although I don't plan to open it, it's like a little souvenir right now that this busy dude took time out of his life to visit, bring me some comfort food from the supermarket (I'm sitting Shiva so can't go myself) and rigorously check the ingredients for any milk/egg powder which isn't something he intuitively knows to do. I appreciate that. It's the thought that counts.
Little things. A can of lentil soup which I have no plans to actually eat is the RL thing I love right now.
EDIT: OK, I have more to say.
I have also been thinking a lot about love lately.
I went through a not-so-great relationship earlier this year which was really a failure from the moment it began, but that didn't make the brutal descent of it from bad to worse any easier. Losing that love was excruciating.
People have been very kind and sympathetic to me over the death of Lucky, my cat, and yes he was 'just a cat', but he was also my best friend and I didn't want him to die. I loved him more than almost anything and that fucking sucked.
But the interesting thing is, having both 'losses' in perspective, it sucked in a very different way.
I watched him be cremated yesterday. I had to drive two hours both ways because there actually aren't a lot of pet crematoriums it turns out and of the ones that are out there, fewer do individual cremations — most dump the animals in all together for 'communal cremations' which is one of the more disgusting things I've ever heard of — and even of those that do individual cremations, most don't let you watch. I insisted. It was important to me and I don't regret that decision. I needed to watch him go cold, I needed to put my hand on his fur and feel the way it had changed from soft and silky to coarse and dry, needed to see him go from being my cat to being my cat's body. And I needed to see him enter the incinerator, needed to see him catch fire. I suppose this is strange but I needed it and no one can tell me that what I needed to process what happened could be wrong. I wanted to see it through to the very end.
I cried. And I kissed him on the forehead. And I told him, tearfully, one last time, right before, that I love him so much.
The rollercoaster relationship I went through wasn't like that. It's a very different thing losing a love to the death of the one you loved, compared to losing a love to the death of the love itself.
From the moment I met him 9 years ago to the moment he died, I have not one negative memory of Lucky. There is not one moment with him that I regret, that I would trade away, except perhaps his death itself. The love I had for this cat, and that he had for me, was the purest fucking thing I've ever experienced and ever will experience. Perhaps that's sad and where loving animals has its shortcomings, because indeed part of the reason this can't exist with humans is that humans are inherently flawed — and that's part of what makes loving humans so rich; loving them in spite of flaws. But there is also a trade-off, and that's that the same love, rich though it may be, can also never compare to the purity of unconditionally loving a cat or a dog who loves you back unconditionally.
Looking back on this loss I don't have questions like, 'Why wasn't I enough?' 'Why didn't/couldn't he love me?' 'Why did he choose her over me?' 'What did I do wrong?' 'Why did he treat me so appallingly?' 'Why did he say some really terrible things to me and cross some lines I never would have crossed?' 'Why did he take my heart and then crush it?' 'Did he ever really love me or was it all a lie?'
I know exactly what went down between me and Lucky and I have no questions about it. I know I gave him the best life I possibly could. I know I loved him unconditionally. I know he loved me and that I was his mum. I know I may have saved his life from the shelter, and I know for a certainty that he saved mine.
That's something that no one and nothing can take away from me. Not even death. This pain I feel is the result of unconditional love.
That makes this grief, in many ways, a not so terrible thing after all. It is also beautiful and something to be cherished.
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'Why wasn't I enough?' 'Why didn't/couldn't he love me?' 'Why did he choose her over me?' 'What did I do wrong?' 'Why did he treat me so appallingly?'
@kestrel We find fault in ourselves when we don't feel we can be angry at who's really at fault, partly because of this whole 'there's always two sides' shit that causes unnecessary self-blame. If he treated you appallingly, that's not YOUR fault. That's him being a selfish asshole 100%. You can break up with someone who you don't love anymore without being an asshole. Nobody forced him to treat you poorly, that's all on him.
