i hear the voices when I'm dreaming

I keep not getting around to posting here. Not sure how much is "typing is hard" (this entry took an hour! On my tablet, which I can type on faster than on my computer!) and how much is just being out of the habit.

Ended up not doing turkey day at my dad's, mostly for mental health (I have Opinions about people who choose not to get vaccinated during a pandemic "because freedom", and I didn't want to spend the entire time watching what I said) but also because... I'd made a comment on twitter about wanting to do Hanukkah this year, so my dad offered to do latkes and candles last Sunday, aka the first night, and sent me home with the menorah and candles and some thanksgiving leftovers, which ended up being pretty close to perfect.

The candles, incidentally, claimed to be dripless. They... uh... well... weren't. I'll upload photos at some point.

I'm also sort of getting into Yiddish on duolingo, though I'm shaky on some of the alphabet (duo uses the Hebrew lettering for Yiddish, not the transliteration into Ronan lettering) ... I've got the consonants pretty well, but the vowels are killing me. And for the language itself, it's Germanic enough that I'm both doing okay and hella confused. There's a vowel shift going on, making words sound like other words.

From memory -- at least in the Hungarian Yiddish dialect duo is using, the word for "you" is /dee/ instead of German du. The word for here is either /du/ or /doh/, i forget which, instead of German da, and I keep wanting to translate doh as there (German dort). I also get into trouble with /vee/ and /voh/; in German the first (wie) is how and the second (wo) is who, but in Yiddish /vee/ is who. (Amusingly, how many -- in German wieviel -- sounds like wiffle, just with v instead of w.)

It's kind of like the German interference I had learning Russian. The word /ya/ is yes in German and I in Russian; /da/ is yes in Russian and here in German; all very frequently used words. So inevitably I'd use the wrong one ...

Sometimes it's not confusing between words, just hard to remember. I can after a second remember that /daan/ in Yiddish is your (in German it's dein, pronounced /dayn/ rhyming with wine) but trying to generate the Yiddish is harder, both because remembering THAT the vowel shifts isn't the same as remembering HOW, and because the vowel letters are hard for me to remember.

Anyway, at least duolingo has taught me how to say that things like "a zebra in a pyramid". So helpful?

(Ok to be fair they were teaching similar-to-English words for alphabet practice .. /a zehbra een a piramid/ or /a kehmul een London/ are easier to decipher than, uh, other things.)

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Totally unrelatedly, the Babylon 5 rewatch I'm doing with my mom -- so slowwww because I have limited mom stamina, especially when she Lingers so one episode takes 2-3 hrs of mom exposure, and she doesn't want to watch separately -- got to A Voice in the Wilderness, which is one of my favorites from S1. I'd forgotten that was the episode with the Ivanovo-is-God speech, lol. Also Londo's Hokey-Pokey rant.

Next up is Babylon Squared. Also among my favorites!

(Shadows and Portents is up there too, although in rewatch I got annoyed at the cc text -- when the Centauri dude is laughing about how his seer aunt predicted he'd be killed by shadows ha ha how silly, and he ends up being killed by a mysterious vessel later that episode, snd the point of him disbelieving the prophecy to begin with is that he thinks she means shadows, i.e. darkness on the wall, not knowing that the Shadows are an old race recently reawaken ... and the first time around that's what the viewer thinks too. Only, the closed captioning text capitalizes "Shadows" in that line...)

B5's special effects and title sequence both look 90s as hell.

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Speaking of my mom ... she wants to know what I want to do for Christmas. My gut reaction is "introvert party with me and the pets where I play animal crossing and watch die hard and nothing else" but I don't think she'd be happy with that, lol. I'm just ... idek. I'm cynical about how commercialized and ubiquitous Christmas is these days, carol singing makes me miss the harp I can't play any more, there's no magic any more, and I realized one of the things making me dissatisfied with Christianity is that if Jesus fixed things (and I know that's a big if but it's also central to Christianity) why are things so fucked up. And my increasing dissatisfaction with Christianity means that the "prepare for and celebrate the birth of the Baby Who Will Save The World" aspect of Christmas is less gripping, and the family aspect of Christmas is awkward when my mom is a lonely energy suck and my dad is married to someone who thinks I hate her and my sister has kids who are cute but exhausting, and I'm an introvert anyway, and I'm awkward about giving and receiving gifts. And there's also the "pagan holiday they got papered over with Christianity labels" factor, and my increasing awareness of Shitty White-People Behavior.

But I'll probably end up doing something with my mom anyway.

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For some reason I am remarkably chatty today. Talked my aides' ears off; even posting here is a reflection of that. No clue why but it's better than the sheer exhaustion I've mostly been feeling.

Yay I guess?

+ + +

Got Covid booster today. In home, which was nice and convenient. My initial vax was J&J so I asked for (and got) Pfizer.

Yay for another layer of Swiss cheese protection, boo for needing it.

Presented without comment:

Dream last night included a bit where, even though we were out in public, my mom had taken my shirt off for some reason or other, and when I got upset because exposed boobs, she was like "oh fine" and draped the shirt over my front -- not back on properly, just draped -- and then was rubbing my shoulder "reassuringly", and when I said "stop that I'm mad at you" she just switched to patting me.

some of this c/p from discord b/c lazy

I.

me: wanna knit something
also me: has no actual motivation
also also me: lemme browse rav, that'll fix it!

II.

[isabeau] me: when $aide gets back I'll have her get me out some yarn to play with
$aide: gets back
me: stares numbly at reddit
[other person] Some days are low energy reddit days and that's okay.
[isabeau] yeah but 2020 has had about 600 such days...

III.

[isabeau] ...I had my aide make me up a margarita & have not had more than two sips. it is sitting on my desk and just ... sitting there, lol. ah, Executive Dysfunction v2020, how fun you are.

IV.

my AC island is still full of halloween.

I have done barely any yarncraft

my netflix queue is full but I've watched maybe one thing? in the last month

V.

half of my aides are going home for winter break, as is my roommate

I have a few replacements lined up but not enough

do not have overnight-stay replacement. really really don't want my mom staying over.

strongly tempted to just stay alone even though that's stupid and also unsafe.

VI.

brainweasels say all of above is proof I suck

not sure they're wrong

*throws self onto virtual couch in a fit of melodramatic sobbing*

Okay, so. Roommate is out of town tonight and tomorrow night because of a friends bachelor party. My mom is sleeping over so I have someone here in case of emergency, but that’s always awkward at best, even if necessary. Meanwhile of my evening-able aides A has been out of town, scheduled to come back late tonight, and so M is my only option.

Fail the first was dinner. Roommate had left a veggie casserole -- vegetables of various sorts, pasta, cheese, idk what else -- for us to have, with instructions to pop it in the oven for 30-40 minutes (covered with aluminum foil for the first 20-25 and then opened). We check it at 25 minutes and it’s cold -- oven had been left on preheat, not switched to bake. Put it in for another 20, covered, and then another 10, open. Cheese is only half melted but it’s steaming and whatever, we’re hungry. Except we managed to both undercook and overcook -- vegetables were still crispy but so was the pasta on top.

Fail the second: I message M that I’m ready for her to come over. (It is 8:30, an hour after I usually start the whole process these days because of how long the bedding process takes and how long after that it takes my body to unwind enough to sleep.) She responds ok but then two minutes later is “pooping her guts out” and can’t leave the toilet and is there anyone that can cover. Now, A is my usual backup, but out of town. Roommate is secondary backup, but out of town. My stepmom is third backup, but superbad idea with my mom here. So I ask my mom if she can do it, and she says it’s better than catching whatever M has. (She also makes comments about the drugs she is convinced M is taking, and asks whether m has ever overdosed.)

Fail the third: my mom getting me ready for bed is a clusterfuck. First she insists that I need a washcloth bath (which I usually just do in the morning), and not just face and armpits but everywhere upper body, and while I put up with this there is a part of me inside that is screaming about bodily autonomy. Second she isn’t strong enough to get my shirt off without hurting my wrist a bit, though I don’t tell her. Third, the commode chair takes strength she doesn’t have, and she hurt herself several times using it -- once pinching a finger on the wheel lock lever, once wrenching her back trying to get it upright (I need it tilted back so I can get in, and then tilted back up for the peeing), once banging her hip trying to stop the chair from rolling. Fourth, she is tired and unpracticed and I am tired and explaining badly as to what goes where and it takes us until 10:20 to get me in bed.

(The only positive about all that is that the next time I’m asking my dad/stepmom for help getting to bed and they ask if she can do it instead, I have reasons to say no.)

Fail the fourth: A had said, before his trip, that he was coming back tonight but didn’t know whether he would be able to work tomorrow but would let me know. I text him tonight asking about tomorrow (before I knew M was sick, but she’s been doing every day for over a week and needs a break) and he finally replies saying that he’s actually driving back tomorrow instead sorry for the late notice. Which means M is my only option for tomorrow. I hope like hell she’s better.

I just kind of want to cry. A lot.