I seem to be feeling better.  Like something has lifted.  Not sure how to describe it.  Still pain, and tired, but different.  That deep overall ache is gone.  Hopeful Jean is hopeful.

I was thinking about words last night.  My homemaker is from Portugal, and  her English is so not there.  It’s really hard, I think, because words are so weird.  We have reed, read, read, red.  Base, bass, bass.  Bow, bow, bow, bow.  Draught and draft.  I’m confused.  So many words only make sense in context.  I think we eventually just know, from experience.  How many of you know the difference in all the bows, for example?  But for a new learner, it has to be hard.  Not as hard as Welsh, or the Asian languages, but still hard.

This got me thinking about area codes.  I know, I am weird.  Anyway, spoken, it is six, oh, three.  Written, it is six, zero, three.  How confusing is that?  Oh is a letter, zero is a number, and yet we use them interchangeably.  The mind boggles.  Well, mine does, anyway.

It is 9 degrees, and fortunately not as windy as yesterday.  Yesterday we had snow squalls blowing straight across from left to right as I look out the window. And it all just blew away.  None on the ground.

Saw an article about robocalls a few minutes ago, and low and behold is my phone not ringing with one as I type?  I get at least three a day.  Caller ID is so worth it, and my landline has a ringer feature so I can tell if it’s someone I know calling without having to get up and check the phone.

I can tell I am better today, because my brain seems to be working again.  Yay, brain. That’s all.  🙂

CNN article about fake (doctored) videos.  They did this on Star Trek TOS.  You think you’re seeing someone, but it’s not real.  Like those hideous commercials where they inserted dead celebrities alongside current actors.  How are you to know if what you are seeing is real or not?  The world is getting harder and harder to navigate, that’s for sure.

Ramblings.  About fibro, what else.  Spoke to pharmacist, decided to give the cymbalta a try.  It’s not as hard to get off of as prednisone if it doesn’t help or makes things worse.  Prednisone has been five (six?) years of hell after they first took me off it too soon and I wound up with withdrawal. Fun times.  Nope.  The thing is, it is really hard to function lately, with so much pain and serious fatigue, worse than usual.  I want to be able to do things, so cymbalta it is.  I’ll keep you posted how it goes.

I just saw a post where the person said they’ve seen a lot of posts like that.  I haven’t seen any myself, thank goodness, but here’s what I accomplished in 2018.  I survived.  Yep.  That’s it.  I made it through 365 days of pain and fatigue and frustration and not being able to do what I want when I want.  And every one of those days I found something to smile about.  Something to laugh about.  Every day was a good day, however bad I may have felt physically.  Well, the hot and sticky days weren’t really all that great, even with central air, but otherwise, fine.  It was all fine.  So far I’ve lived through every challenge, every bad thing that’s happened in my life.  I’ve survived them all.  Yay, me.  It’s a good thing. Oh, this says it better:

Haven’t done this in awhile.
1. What are your feelings about winter?—-I love winter.  It’s autumn, winter, spring, and summer, in that order.  Summer is hot and sticky.  No.

2. What is your go-to drink in the winter? (alcoholic or non-alcoholic)—-Viking Thaw.  Good hot chocolate, Gosling’s Bermuda Black Rum, and whipped cream.  Also, hot coffee, but that’s a year-round thing.

3. What are your favorite things about the winter?—-Snow, followed by snow.  After that, I like a little snow.

4. How do you deal with the wintry blues?—-Lights.  Lots of lights.  I have tiny little grain-of-rice lights surrounding my windows, too, which make me smile every time I turn them on.

5. What are your least favorite things about the winter?—Day after day of gray without any snow to show for it.

This is them at night, and that’s ice glittering in the trees across the street. From January 20th, when we were in the deep freeze.

This is today, in daylight.

More on the MAGA hat thing

Seriously, this kid now has a PR firm representing him.  Or so I’ve read.

Here’s a headline for you:

Losing Faith?

Here’s another one:

Check out this smug American face

Here’s a quote relating to this last one:

“The students’ display of blatant hate, disrespect, and  intolerance is a signal of how common decency has decayed under this administration.” Representative Deb Haaland, Native American Congresswoman.

And one more:

‘I know, let’s chop down these ancient protected trees, because we can.’

And still one more.  So glad I got up today.

Let them starve. I’ve got mine, so who gives a crap.

I’m not anti-catholic in particular, I just think religion in general is the bane of humanity’s existence.  Spanish Inquisition, Crusades, Jihad, anyone?  But if this is what Catholics are learning in their schools, something is wrong somewhere.  Pedophilia, condoning hierarchies, horrible young people who clearly do not understand Jesus’s teachings at all, well something is seriously wrong somewhere.

Chopping down ancient trees to make room for your atvs to play is not specifically  a religious matter, it’s a ‘what kind of person are you, seriously?’ issue.

I have a chronic, debilitating illness and yet my slightly more than 1200 dollar a month income means I am too rich to qualify for food stamps.  But no matter.  If I was rich, I would certainly not want my tax dollars, assuming I didn’t find enough loopholes to avoid paying taxes altogether, I would not want my dollars to assist those less fortunate than myself, because that is the Christian way.  Wasn’t it Jesus who taught, ‘ I’ve got mine, and if you were too stupid to be born into wealth, or have too much integrity to get rich off of other people’s work, and health, and survival in general, well what has that got to do with me and my hard-won, I mean stolen and/or inherited wealth?’  I need to go back and check those ten commandments, cause I think I got them wrong somewhere.

Angry Jean is so very angry at the world, and the parasitic species called humanity that infests it.  And god, yes, I am one of them.  Help.

has a new ad.

Gillette Ad

Here’s part of a comment:  “@Gillette has made it clear they do not want the business of masculine men. ”

So this ‘masculine man’ apparently thinks the bullying, harassing women, and other equally disgusting behaviors is what makes a man ‘masculine’?  I pity his wife (if any woman was unlucky enough to have married him) and family.  Being an asshole is not what makes a man masculine.  Sorry to have to tell you this, sir, but you are a dickhead.

No food inspections due to orange moron acting like the five-year old he is.  Here’s a bit from a Tumblr post on keeping safe.

“Buy hard, solid veggies and fruits (apples, melons) or ones with rinds (bananas are probably fine). Scrub the peel/rind thoroughly with soap and water before consumption.

The more solid and dense the meat, the less likely it is for contamination to spread very far. Buy your meat in solid cuts, NOT GROUND. Especially not ground chicken rn, salmonella bad.

Cook things thoroughly. Follow guidelines for the internal temperatures meat is supposed to reach and stick to those guidelines. Use a meat thermometer. Make your steaks well done for a while.

I’d stay away from shellfish as a whole if I were you. The diseases you can get from it are some of the nastier ones. No sushi for a while, too. If you have fish, make sure it was frozen following anti-parasitic guidelines and cook thoroughly.”

Saw a recipe for healthy chocolate truffles.  Chocolate truffles are candy.  Candy, by it’s very definition, is not healthy.  It is a treat.  Healthy candy is an oxymoron.

Housing inspected today.  FAIL, because the vent is filthy, because the central air filters have not been changed since last February, and had not been changed for three or four years before that.  Should be done every three months, and used to be done every six, but this landlord does the superficial things to make the building look good, but doing the important things for the tenants is apparently not on his list.  I am not cleaning the vent, because it needs to be shown how crap this is.

Friends are coming today to finish up the work they are doing for me.  Then it will be dinner at the Chieftain, an Irish pub type restaurant that has the best Guinness Stew you could imagine.  Oh, yum.  It is run by an actual Irish family, from actual Ireland.  🙂 Guinness is good stuff, people.

Watching a lot of non-American shows on the subscriptions, you can really see how much and why the rest of the planet do not particularly love America.  I’m not too big on it lately, either, especially since our pres has made hatred, racism, misogyny, and everyother crap things humans are capable of, acceptable again.  For shame, Trump and his Republican cronies. The worst of humanity is running my country.

On the other hand, and have you noticed there is always an other hand, it’s a cold but brightly sunny winter day.  The day length seems to be increasing dramatically.  The farther North you are, the more obvious it is.  DD is in Texas for her job, and the other night when she called, it was 70 degrees and broad daylight there while it was 32 and pitch dark here.  Still no snow, but I’m still hopeful.  It’s only the first half of January.  Still time.

So yes, after the walk and the next day shopping, by Friday I was in so much pain.  My friends came and we got a lot done, but they did the work and I mostly just tried to hobble around where needed.  I have been in major pain ever since, just slightly getting better now.  Slightly.  Mind you, this has been a month. Had to cancel my PT appointments, because even getting dressed and combing my hair was more than I could manage most days.  Not fun.  I don’t understand how they say exercise helps fibro, because whenever I’ve done anything, the pain just gets worse.

On the other hand, the place is in much better shape now.  Got rid of a lot of things I don’t need or use anymore.  My friends replaced the oh-so-wornout couch cushions, put shelves in hall closet and a new hanger bar in the big closet.  Those plastic-covered metal shelf-bar things are horrid.  So hard to hang clothes, because there is so little room between the bar and the shelf. This is not my closet, btw.

I want to do some rearranging, as my friend John took my table and fixed it.  It was literally falling apart, and so very wobbly.  It’s old and decrepit, but I fell in love with it in the junk shop and brought it home tied to the top of my car.  Many years ago.  I think what I really love are the chairs.

I’d like to move it from in front of the windows, but then I have to move the desk and some other things, and I just cannot do this by myself.  So waiting for them to come back and help.  I have good friends.  I am very fortunate.

Need to go eat something, so I can take a fistful of pain meds in hopes that I will be semi-functional later on today.  Not holding my breath, however.  Feeling very down and seem to be very whiny lately, but constant debilitating pain will do that, it seems.  I hate when I’m whiny, but sometimes it just happens.

My friend Tess is going to take ukulele lessons.  She already plays piano.  There’s a Tiny Tim joke in there, but she wasn’t over pleased with it.  LOL  Wish I could play an instrument.  Making your own music.  How cool is that? Done for now.  Hope you all are having a great start to the new year, and did NOT make resolutions.  Resolutions are a deliberate choice to set yourself up for failure, is my view of them.  So I don’t.