Week Ending 11/26

 Let me say... this week was head and shoulders above last week.

It helps that, being a food lover, I really enjoy Thanksgiving. Juno made us a lovely, moist and delicious turkey with her signature stuffing, fresh homemade rolls (which were so good we're trying to figure out how to make them regularly), a nice salad, terrific gravy... and that on top of the pies (one pecan and one pumpkin) and various other delicious baked good she made the night before. It was fantastic.

Yes, I am thankful for my wonderful wife. 

Of course, living a thousand miles from my nearest relatives is not having to have the storied uncomfortable Thanksgiving dinner with said relatives. That's a good and bad thing, I guess. 

The rest of the week was good too. I'm trying to find ways to sleep better and working on managing my expectations of myself more reasonably. I need to remember my own lessons from the early days of my illness - rest when tired, eat when hungry and, above all, take the wins and don't get hung up on the rest.

I dare say, it's good advice in general. :)

Onward

Week Ending 11/19

This is going to be terse. This week sucks. I'm exhausted and I feel horrible.

The people responsible for coming up with the business of medical billing should die screaming in a fire and then burn in hell.

Cancer sucks. Not me, not my immediate household, but someone I care about deeply. Cancer Fucking Sucks.

I'm exhausted and in pain. 

I am loved. 

There is hope. 

They caught the cancer early. 

Also, The Good Place (2016 comedy series currently on Netflix) is really funny... and the people responsible for coming up with medical billing should totally go to The Bad Place. Still not getting over that one quickly.

Anyway...

Onward

Week Ending 11/12

 Difficult end to a difficult week...

I started the week out with a confusing medical bill, not sleeping because I was stressed about it and burning through energy I didn't have making phone calls to figure it out. In the end, it's a real bill but a completely messed up and confusing billing... a point almost everyone I spoke with agreed upon.

Having settled that, I sent the rest of week in bed, or otherwise laying down, trying to recover from that drama. 

The real problem there is that there was stuff I wanted to do. Not stuff I had to do. No obligations or commitments... just, damn it, I had things I wanted to do! The inability to do any of them is frustrating and, of course, that didn't help with the whole "resting" plan.

Which brings us to the (pardon my French) shit-show that was today. Finally feeling well enough to actually try and do some of things I wanted to do, instead absolutely everything went wrong. 

The real issue is that my condition appears to have destroyed my emotional control. Now, anyone who knows me knows that I could make no claim to Vulcan emotional discipline at the best of times. However, these days I burst into tears at sad parts of TV shows... and unfortunately, when I'm frustrated and angry, I can get really, really angry. 

The best that can be said was that I stopped what I was doing, locked myself in the den and did my best (with reasonable success) not to take out my anger on my family or inanimate objects. I still want to smash just about everything in my line of sight, but I'm handling it.

So, yeah... bad week. 

Still, tomorrow is a better day.

Onward

Week Ending 11/5

Another week down... 

Halloween is a special time for me. 

Twelve years ago, on Halloween night, my Grampa Ted passed away. He had had a long life and had been ill for some time. That night, when the Veil was thin, he fell asleep and never woke. I think of him often. He was a quiet, gentle man who did wood carving. That's how I think of him... quietly sitting on the porch of his house in the country, carving something amazing out of a bit of wood. He is a presence, like the mountain the rises behind the house, strong, quiet and constant... peaceful, gentle and loving. Twelve years ago, he stepped across the Veil, but that presence has never left me. 

Earlier this year, after a terrible injury, his wife, my beloved Gramma Cathy, finally joined him. She'd been terribly grumpy about having to wait so long. I miss her, but I know they are together and they are happy.

If Ted is the mountain, she is the garden... rich and green, with the smell of herbs and sunlight. 

They will always be with me.

Yeah, Halloween is special.

Onward

Week Ending 10/29

 So, what happened this week? What did happen this week?

I made myself dinner. That's a pretty big triumph. I can put things in the oven and bake them. So I put a chicken breast in the oven with some bbq sauce, baked it and had it with some Stovetop Stuffing. Hey, I didn't say I made good dinner, but I made dinner.

I painted some minis. I really need to post more pictures of my minis but I don't have any now. 

I played Age of Sigmar (tabletop mini wargame) with D and had a lot of fun doing that. I should see about getting some pictures of one of these games to post too.

I wrote more Bad Moon Rising and published two more chapter. By the way, I actually care about this story. It may not be great literature or important in The Grand Scheme of Things but it's important to me. So it hurts me that folks don't care about it. I just want to say that... again.

What else... I watched two new movies Last Voyage of the Demeter and Barbie, and wrote reviews of both (duh, you can see the links).

You know... I did a lot this week. Which is funny because I still crashed well before noon most days and spent the afternoons resting. Or maybe it's because I crashed before noon most days and spent the afternoons resting. 

Hint, self... hint. 

Wow.

Onward.

Barbie (2023)

I have finally seen Barbie. I liked it. 

If you don't know... well, this movie is richer and more complex than I expected. 

Spoilers I guess

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I was reminded of a theory presented by my Classics professor in college - He said that the foundational myths of the ancient Near East shared the theme of a powerful, primal female force of chaos being defeated by the predominantly male gods, who then established our world. He believed that this mythology reflected a real historical event... a primordial matriarchy, overthrown by men who would go on to found the patriarchal social order under which we still struggle. 

That's pretty much the story... only, you know, with Barbie(s) as Tiamat and Ken(s) as a wannabe Marduk. 

I liked it. I will also say, as a middle-aged white male, I am probably not its primary target audience. Not that it is a movie middle-aged white males shouldn't watch, on the contrary, we absolutely should... but there are parts of it that don't resonate as strongly for me as they do for my wife, simply because I don't share the experience of being a woman in modern America. It reminds a little of the Captain Marvel and (to a lesser degree) Wonder Woman movies in that regard.

Even with him being the villain, I confess I found myself with some sympathy for Ken's struggle... which is essentially to establish his own identity. I don't continence his foray into toxic masculinity but I guess I can understand why, like to many weak men in the Real World, he could be lured into that. In the end, Ken finds that he doesn't need Patriarchy, which isn't about horses after all (watch the movie, you'll get it) because it's just another case of letting someone else define him. He needs to define himself.

Yeah, a lot going on in this movie... plus some great visuals, fantastic dialogue and more than a few wonderful dance numbers.

Well worth all the hype.

Last Voyager of the Demeter (2023)

I've been eager to see this movie since I heard about it, simply because it sounded like a neat concept. Now that I've finally managed to get ahold of it, I am pleased. I find it to be an entertaining movie. The director has been quoted as describing it as "Alien, on sailboat, in the 1890's" and that pretty much sums it up.

If you don't know the story already - there is a short chapter in Bram Stoker's novel Dracula that is the ships log of the Demeter, a Russian sailing ship commissioned to bring 50 boxes of earth from Romania to London... and the horrors that befall the doomed ship thanks to its stowaway: Dracula himself. 

So, there, now you pretty much know the story of Last Voyage of the Demeter... and if you didn't, well you should because the movie doesn't try to hide it. The movie is pretty up front with what is happening, doubtless assuming that most people already know anyway.

What makes Last Voyage of the Demeter isn't any kind of mystery. We know Dracula is on board. We know the ship and the crew are doomed. What makes it interesting is watching how it all unfolds. Getting to know the characters, knowing they are doomed, and watching their Last Voyage...

It's a good story.