Gardening season begins again!

Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona Aurora, where we lay our scene….

More alike than different, these plants are currently segregated: whites on one side, purple on the other. I know, nothing looks white or purple right now… that doesn’t happen until much later in the season, when the fruit ripens. They won’t even go into the ground for another month, at which point we’ll have to decide whether we really need sixteen plants worth of eggplants, or if I should hand some off to friends.

Oddly, I hadn’t intended to start plants indoors this year. I was taking a cavalier attitude of only using last year’s leftover seeds and free seeds from the library. (Yes, our public library has a seed library!) That worked until I found out about a free seed event near me – the selection was lovely – and I was halfway home before I remembered that eggplants require starting indoors for our climate.

If you’re wondering why there’s loose dirt in the box, that’s because a cat sat in it and knocked some of the starter pots over.

Let’s talk about perimenopause.

Growing up, most girls will learn about menstruation either from their parents (usually their mother) or their school system. That presentation can be at varying levels of enthusiasm based on cultural significance, among other things, such as the outdated “you’re a woman now!” concept. Bleh.

But nobody in my age group seems to have gotten the perimenopause talk. Part of that may be because of social norms that discouraged talking about menstruation, even more so for older women, and some because our mothers may not have reached that stage at the point when they were sharing the menstruation talk. All of this came to mind when I saw this BBC article about menopause today… older women are quitting their jobs because the system isn’t set up to support the changes we’re going through. The lady featured in this article said “She suffered with night sweats, heart palpitations and migraines that left her feeling weak and lethargic.” She quit because her management didn’t provide the necessary support to deal with those changes.

Like other people I know, perimenopause brought irregular periods – sometimes more frequent, sometimes less, usually heavier that before – which makes preparing for them difficult. When I still worked in an office, I gave up on planning and always carried supplies with me. Hot flashes led to clearing out any turtlenecks in my closet; I was too warm wearing them and the higher neckline made my throat feel constrained. There was a period when my breathe would catch at random intervals; while I received a prescription to deal with it, the doctor didn’t actually mention that it was common during perimenopause.

As to night sweats, well, it’s hard to tell whether that’s hormonal when multiple cats are sleeping on the bed. It’s probably a mix.

Celebrate the journey

“Life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination.”

These are lessons learned in Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archives. Today, I want to focus on the journey part. I recently had the opportunity to rediscover everything stored in my closet, as the sagging support for the clothes bar gave out, dumping my clothes onto the floor early on April Fool’s morning. As I pulled everything out, I found my collection of karate belts, representing my first ten years studying martial arts.

Martial arts belts, ranging from white on the right to black on the left.

I realize it’s hard to tell in this photo that about half the belts are split colors – there aren’t two orange belts side-by-side; there’s a yellow & orange belt between the yellow and the orange belts. That’s easier to notice on the red and blue belt, since the shade of blue is different from the solid blue next to it.

In a rare case of social media being helpful, I am frequently reminded of my martial arts journey on my Facebook account. Just opening the application, I’m likely to see a post by one of many friends I’ve made at various karate events, and Facebook’s reminders of photos shared on any particular day in the past frequently showcase a past test, tournament, or other time on the mat. Even the photo above reminders me of karate friendships; the snow leopard blanket (essential for protecting my sleeping feet from a ferocious toe-biting cat) was a gift from one of those friends.

Karate has never been about the destination for me; that suggests that at some point it will finish. Instead, it’s an ongoing journey filled with friendships that last a lifetime.

Let’s talk about dice jail

Not surprisingly, I have a Quest Calendar again as my day-by-day calendar for the fourth consecutive year. Because each year is published separately, the rules are continuously improving, adding new mechanics to enhance the experience… that’s a fancy way of saying it’s more fun each time. The characters this year are anthropomorphic, and the first six weeks were spent playing one character a week to get a feel for their abilities. I settled on Quill Mudsong, a porcupine Spell Keeper.

Yesterday, while protecting some travelers, Quill engaged in five rounds of combat. Each round of combat required the following rolls: Wisdom (a failed roll results in the Attack roll being rolled twice, take the lower one), Attack (a successful hit allows a Damage roll), Damage (do enough Damage and stun your opponent, allowing you to skip the Defense roll), and Defense (a successful roll reduces the amount of damage you take).

Dice jail with 20-sided die trapped inside

As you might surmise from the title of this post, some of my rolls did not go well. I passed all of my Wisdom checks, but only succeeded at two of my Attack rolls, and only did enough Damage to stun the beast once. I’m not concerned about the hit points I lost; those can be restored through health potions and rest.

But the travelers I’m protecting… that’s another story. This particular combat came with a special mechanic of losing one traveler for each combat round where I failed to hit. Interestingly, I don’t know how many travelers I’m protecting, or for how long… the instruction provided a couple days ago was to track how many I’ve lost. Between the day they joined me (with a mediocre rolls) and yesterday’s combat, I’ve lost six; that’s half the possible losses across three days. But today’s rolls were made with a different d20; yesterday’s sits in dice jail presumably reflecting on those poor attack rolls.

Laughing at the spam

Spam has become pervasive for those of us with an online presence. Unlike my friend John, I’ve never tried making haikus from it, though I do have to laugh at how wildly untargeted some of the spam is. In this particular case, I’m focusing on comments posted to my blog – none of which you see because I have always had the comments set to moderated. I thought I’d break down some of them for educational and entertainment value.

Allegedly from a Gmail account, consistent enough to sign with the same name as the account (while not someone I know): “It’s been a while, but I just read an article online about momsguidetothegalaxy.com and thought it was important to message you guys to disprove this article. It seems like there’s some unfavorable news that could be detrimental.” This includes a shortened link, so the goal is for me to click through to their site. Interestingly, this and most of the recent spam are in response to an August post about Wordle and related games.

Is that Russian? “Ещё можно узнать:” Google Translate says yes. Most of that comment was links, the preview hover on them shows multiple websites that I also can’t read.

Dental hygiene relates to Wordle… how? “If you’re dealing with bleeding gums, tooth decay and sewage breath… And if the thought of eventually losing your teeth does not let you sleep at night… You need to know this.” Link is to a video I’m fairly certain I do not want to watch. There are a couple like this, with different openings.

OK, I kind of like this one: “mukRgDKpG” This reminds me of losing a credit card in college, which someone tested by buying a dollar of gasoline, cluing the bank into the loss. Presumably if this comment was allowed, more spammy comments would appear from the same source soon.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO), podcasts to boost my audience, foot/nail fungus (ewww) miracle cures… it’s like there’s no limit to the subjects spammers will try.

Oh, excuse me, I must go reply to “You got 55 646 USD. Gо tо withdrаwаl => [plus URL]”… yes, that’s what they entered as their name. I’m so sure it’s legitimate that my eyes are rolling like dice.

Anyways, the lesson here is that spam is prolific and if you don’t know the person, don’t click on the link they sent you.

Some off-hand remarks

As I mentioned last week, I had surgery on my dominant hand. As you can imagine, that has made for an interesting few days, especially the first couple when my hand and forearm were bandaged.

I have for years been misusing the term “ambidextrous“. I’m not actually ambidextrous; I’m mixed-handed. This became an important distinction when one of my hands was temporarily out of commission. Ambidexterity is the ability to use both hands equally, which I definitely cannot do. I write and hold a fork left-handed, but crochet and hold a sword right-handed. Holding a fork right-handed, just for those first couple days of healing, felt unnatural, while crocheting left-handed seems awkward. Finger foods are fine on either side though. (Washing dishes one-handed was interesting too!)

Give it a try if you’re curious… stop and think about the item you’re about to use and see how it feels in your other hand.

Hand surgery: before & after

First of all, no before photo in this post… I couldn’t capture the bump on the back of my left hand well for a before photo. The after photo is completely bandaged, so nothing gruesome.

Before

Back in October, before I went to Montreal, my hand started hurting… just a little… and I noticed a bump just before the wrist. It disappeared during that trip, then returned in full force after Dorkstock, to the point where I headed to Urgent Care (5 minutes away) right after work one day. They quickly diagnosed it as a ganglion cyst and referred me to Orthopedics.

“But Frances,” I can almost hear you say, “that was 4 months ago. Why are you just having surgery now?”

The answer is there’s a process to follow before surgery. First we tried anti-inflammatory medication, and when that didn’t eliminate the cyst (though it did reduce the pain), the doctor drained it. Well, tried to… the cyst wasn’t particularly cooperative with the initial needle or the larger one she used next, as neither one managed to puncture the cyst to remove content. Despite that, the bump and related pain lessened for a bit, and she instructed me to give it about 6 weeks and reach out to a colleague who specializes in hands and wrists if it returned. I scheduled that appointment immediately after Capricon, had a 5 -minute appointment with the doctor to confirm that I wanted to move forward with surgery, and scheduled it for the next available date, which was a month out at the time.

The day before, the office called to give me a specific appointment time mid-afternoon, and reviewed the things I should avoid going into that day: alcohol, lotions, jewelry are the primary ones that come to mind. Arrival time was an hour before surgery time.

Once there, it was a lot of waiting time. Wait to check in, wait briefly in the waiting room, then wait for most of an hour in my pre-op room until the doctor came by to inject something numbing into my hand. Once that had time to settle, I took a luxurious wheelchair ride to the operating room, where the view of my hand was completely blocked by a draped sheet. I could feel poking and prodding happening, but no pain, and then my hand was bandaged up.

After

Left hand and forearm wrapped in bandages after surgery

After the procedure, I was wheeled back to my pre-op room, offered a snack, and told I could change back into my clothes once I was sure I was stable. At that point, my fingertips weren’t numb anymore, but the rest of my hand still was, including the knuckles and base of my fingers. It’s a weird sensation that lasted for hours; that area was still numb when I went to bed several hours later – and partially numb in the middle of the night.

By early morning, none of that numbness remained, though any pain is mostly limited to movement. Part of my release instructions are to move my fingers frequently, so I’ve experimented with different movements to see what’s comfortable. For example, typing sitting down is a bad angle for my wrist, but standing up seems to be OK. I’m also applying ice packs regularly and found a position at my work desk for keeping that hand elevated most of the time (including with an ice pack). The bandages stayed on for two days (coming off just before this post is live), and I have a follow-up appointment in just over a week to make sure it’s healing well.

In terms of other restrictions, well, the doctor said to listen to the hand… if something hurts, I’m probably not ready to do it yet.

The home repair project is done!

Well, this home repair project at least. As any homeowner can tell you, there will always be another one. (The kitchen faucet, for example. Or the couple lingering spots of green paint outside). But the work for this particular project resulting from the hailstorm and covered by the insurance finished with the garage door installation earlier this week.

An updated photo of the house, now with a white garage door and trim instead of brown.

Let me just say… damn, it looks good. I am immensely grateful to C&N Construction for doing the work and Allstate Insurance for covering the repairs. (I was going to say funding, but technically I suppose it’s funded by all of us customers paying our insurance bills.) Both companies worked together to make this a fairly painless process for their mutual customer.

What an ex-siding week!

Sorry, I couldn’t resist the pun. As I mentioned before, because of a hailstorm last spring, our house needed a new roof, siding, and garage door. As you may have guessed from the title, the siding work happened this week.

It wasn’t without problems – apparently it’s fairly common for siding work to mess up the fiber connection to the house, so my ISP was out here yesterday, starting to repair our internet connection as the siding team was wrapping up. And my mailbox, along with the neighbor’s, now have new posts because they got knocked over around lunch yesterday.

The front and side of a beige house with brown gutters.

Here’s what the house looked like on Monday, with beige siding and brown gutters.

The front and side of the same house, three days later, now blue with white gutters, matching the white window frames.

And here’s what the house looks like now, with blue siding, white gutters, and a white number plate with gold number replacing the old (and smaller) black numbers. At some point soon, the garage door will be replaced with a white one for a fairly uniform look.

Primaries matter too.

As we come upon Super Tuesday and other primary dates, I thought it was important to mention that voting in primaries matters as much as voting in the general elections. Like with the general elections, there are local races that are probably not getting much press that you should absolutely pay attention to.

Let’s start at the top. If you use Ballotpedia to create a sample ballot based on your voting address, you should see the federal elections (in my case, Presidential and Congressional district candidates) and state races (Senate and House of Representatives). I’m (not surprisingly) voting in the Democratic Party primary, so without Ballotpedia, I wouldn’t have realized that our incumbent state representative has no primary candidates from other parties. When we bought this house in 2016, I noticed in that general election that several positions only had Republican candidates, so this is definitely a shift. If there’s one thing you can give the previous President credit for, it was galvanizing people to run for office at all levels because of how offensive he was (well, is).

And that’s where Ballotpedia stops for me. It says there are 4 candidate races on my ballot, so I have to research the county and township races somewhere else. Most of the primary candidates at this level are both incumbents and running unopposed, leaving only one race I feel I should research: the county recorder. Since the local races are the ones that will have a more direct impact on me – they influence property taxes, school and library boards, and such (though I still don’t know why county coroner is an elected position) – I’ll take the time to look up these two candidates before completing my mail-in ballot.