i hear the voices when I'm dreaming

Was having a good day (nice and quiet)

not very Xmas-y; im feeling very ambivalent about it, because reasons (discomfort with the way Christianity is aggressively dominant) and other reasons (the irony of singing every year about a baby who will save the world when the world just gets worse every year, and of lyrics like "born that we no more may die" during a ducking pandemic) and also exhaustion

and then ... my mom got extremely needy.

too tired to type up full saga right now but she couldn't find the link to online services, then when I didn't answer immediately (I was going to bed) sent a bunch of "hello? Hello????? Are you there?? Is your phone off?? Hello?????" texts, then just kind of got worse. And she's always needy but this just hit hard somehow, and I wanted to scream or burst into tears or both. I spent like 30 minutes trying to dissect my feelings

(is that a thing? working out exactly why you're upset and exactly what is irritating you and judging whether it's "legitimate enough"? I have no clue if it's normal, or adhd-ish, or spectrum-ish, or some sort of trauma response, or just me)

and feeling like my anger itself was fragile, like it was a very thin cover for something deeper that I didn't want to deal with

and then i said fuck it, muted my text notifications, and took an edible

+++

tomorrow is ... on the one hand I'm happily not going to my dad's for the same reason as not doing thanksgiving only more so (all of my stepsibs are coming in, plus a wife and baby, plus a boyfriend, and of this horde only one is vaccinated) but on the other hand that means I'm doing stuff with my mom. (Keeping today for myself was hard enough. My mom would be very passive aggressively resentful about being alone on Xmas and so it's easier to give in). Theoretically we're watching Hamilton, or at least the first half, but who the fuck knows.

February is sucking so hard, so far.

Sunday night: aide called in sick. I got her shifts covered.

Monday: *deep breath* lessee. A different aide let me know she can't do Thursday nights any more. I had the *stupidest ever* appointment that required an hour total of driving, and fifteen minutes of waiting, just so that they could confirm that my cpap machine, which has been giving "motor life exceeded" errors, had in fact exceeded the recommended motor life. (It's normally replaced every five years, and I'm 9 months short of that, but I'm in bed 14-16 hours most days, and the cpap is running the whole time.) They didn't replace it (this was one step in the process of getting an early replacement) but it was complete BS.

And then there's the Chess saga, wherein he had to go in for surgery for intestinal blockage that turned out to be a *foot long stick* wtf I can't even fathom how he got that down. And while they were doing the surgery they discovered that it had rotated in a bad direction and punctured his stomach. So ... not good. He stayed in ICU overnight, and will be in the hospital a few more days, but full recovery will take longer. He IS doing better now, eating and wagging his tail and rolling over for belly rubs and generally charming everyone there.

(The trainer feels horrible about this, which on the one hand I can completely understand, and puppies will puppy and things happen and she didn't do this on purpose, but there's also a part of me that's like "(grumpycat) GOOD", because augh. SHE BROKE MY DOG, only not really, and he IS healing and it will be okay, but... yeah. And of course this is not going to be cheap (per the contract, she covers basic vet stuff and wellness checks and shots, but we cover any emergency issues) but more I'm just ... flaaaaail.

And Monkey has a UTI and has to get oral antibiotics, which means she's spending lots of time in impossible-to-reach places; and Yahtzee has something going on with his eye that needs him to go to an animal ophthalmologist. Both of which are technically January things but they're affecting February. And the ophthalmology guy my vet recommended had an appointment at 9:30 Friday morning, and is otherwise booked for a month out (the Friday thing was a cancellation), but he's half an hour away WITHOUT factoring in traffic, so I'm going to have to get up hella early compared to my usual.

Today: Got an email from Netflix that was all "we have changed your email as requested; you will no longer be able to use (email) to sign in. If you didn’t request this, click here to contact us". Felt very phishing-y, so I didn’t click on anything in the email. But I did go to sign in just to make sure I still could. And ... "we couldn't find an account with that email address". So I had to call them (still not clicking the email link because paranoid, but found their contact info a different way) and after confirming the last 4 digits of credit card to prove it was me, they changed my email back and sent me a reset-password link. Did that and also linked up my phone as a secondary source of authentication. But fuck, have no idea how someone got into my Netflix account...

...

I ... may be consuming rather a lot of sugar and carbs, the last few days. Stress eating. Not good for my body probably, but good for my mental health.

I'd really like things to *stop sucking*.

I am less enchanted with memrise than I was initially.

Some issues:

a) On the iPad, some of the font is way too small, and selections tend to be underlined. This means that (for the Spanish course) i and í and l and t and ! and ¡ all look alike, and because of the underline g and q look alike, and (for the Japanese course) any kanji more complicated than the basic are impossible to "read" and I end up guessing from what's available. There is no option to enlarge. There's also ridiculous amounts of white space that could be used for ... oh I dunno, maybe larger font.

(yes the iPad has a zoom feature, but then I'm having to scroll all around the screen, or zoom and unzoom and zoom and unzoom.)

b) On the computer, there are two review methods; speed review, presumably timed, and classic review. Which is ... also times. Not in the sense of "you have an hour before the session times out", not (just) in the sense of "you get extra points for completing quickly", but in the sense of "15 seconds to answer each question *or you get marked wrong*". With a mouse and onscreen keyboard I can't always type quickly enough, much less if I have to think to recall the answer. I could live with "bonus for completing within 15 seconds", but even if you're typing it will mark you wrong once time is up. There is no non-timed recall through the computer.

c) Punctuation is erratically mandatory. One of the sentences it teaches is "cheers!" In Japanese, this is ikō ... except they have it as ikō! with the exclamation mark. Similarly in Spanish, "let's go!" is ¡vamos!" You will get marked wrong for just "ikō" or "vamos". Which is kind of wtf.

d) There are weird unexplained jumps. It made sense to learn "watashi" (I/me) and "no" (possessive particle) and put them together to get "watashi no" (my), then learn "namae" (name) and do "watashi no namae" (my name). And then they jump to "悲しんでいます / kanashindeimasu" (being sad) without having introduced sad, or talked about the difference between imasu and desu, aside from lumping them together as "politeness particles"

e) They don't reinforce kana spellings of kanji. So they teach that 幸せです / shiawasedesu means being happy, but they never review it as しあわせです, and I can memorize that the kanji 幸 corresponds with happy but then they do the audio "shiawasedesu" and I go "...baroo?" Especially since I can't see the kanji all that clearly.

There are other issues too, but those are the main ones. And I'm kind of disenchanted. I think I need to find a different source for learning the grammar, and stick with wanikani for kanji -- you have to pay after level 3, but I can probably wheedle a sub as a birthday present this year, and anyway I'm only on level 2 -- and ... I don't know. Something.