The Red Pill Is Light Blue

Yesterday Nick had his quarterly shot at the Fenway. I just hope this isn't the last one. I have the info to order T from some dodgy steroid sites in the UK, but I'd really rather not and he's even more nervous about taking medications without a doctor.

The appointment was late, so they ate, mostly, in the city. I made greasy tacos for dinner and it was a glorious exercise in gluttony.

He was limping this morning, which is kind of standard. It's in the upper thigh and we always forget to put heat/cold on it the same night. He's got two more midterms today and two makeup midterms tomorrow. And please let them go well. Monday he came home feeling "ok" about them, despite not getting to a couple of questions in Latin, which is sort of an issue we're working on--not finishing in a timely fashion.

I read the news and nothing is good. It's very upsetting. This used to be a real country and now it's some kind of clown show.

I think I'm going to try to get back into the Tuesday evening Dungeon Crawl Classics game with Eric. I really like the system. My only thing is that it's 7-10pm and honestly, most nights I'm in bed by 8 or 830. I just can't seem to get enough sleep, even with a sleeping pill. Last night I forgot mine and woke up at 330 and couldn't get back to sleep. Part of that is that a neighboring town government, Bourne, got hacked over the last weekend. I feel like it's inevitable and I'm just hoping I can make it the next three years.

I have jury duty next Wednesday. I don't want to go.

Yes, this is where we're at. Fortunately, after an unfortunate round of the same six Xmas carols grinding out again and again, I'm in silence while everyone is at the office pot luck. A festive time of various things covered by overly sweet commercial spaghetti sauce. I'll pass. I have a nice theater steak waiting for me in the evening.

I'm still pissed off from yesterday. That won't change for a while. I'm also just plain exhausted. And the weather is miserable, but we at least avoided snow. It's making my bones ache though.

So tonight I need to sweat down a pound of onions for onion dip. It was funny. I mentioned I had to make onion dip in my office and there was a pause like "um yeah... so what" until I said "from actual onions."

The cats bowtie collars arrived yesterday. I don't know why I'm just totally feeling that part this year.

I am mostly just really tired. Really really bone exhausted.

I am looking forward to seeing Gauge and Antonia, The New Yorkers. Though I could use a day of rest, but better to be front loaded.

I'm also looking forward to our big Yule Feast.

Overall I'm not as into things as I felt like I was when Nick was younger. But I'm not nearly as down as I've been in the past.

And a week before the 11th annual sketchy day, he had a checkup and has lost three pounds and is healthy. Yay.

Today is Nora's birthday and she's now sick. Yesterday we took a trip to Edaville Railroad aka Edaville USA aka Thomasland--as in Thomas the train. (The timing was picking the day with the best weather forecast.) This is a real classic Olde New Englande sort of thing to do. It started off when a guy bought a narrow gauge train to service his cranberry bogs which slowly morphed into a tourist railroad, mostly known for it's huge display of Christmas lights. In more recent years, they added a few "small child" amusement park rides and a couple of years ago, they did a big expansion into Thomas-Land aka Thomas the train. Again, all aimed at little kids rather than trying to compete with Six Flags.

Before my family ran into a brick wall, my parents took me to it when I was around Nora's age and I remember it pretty fondly. The other place we went to a very few times was a little amusement park called Jolly Cholly's. It was a lot like what Edaville is now, with rides mostly aimed at little kids. I remember little cars, all of them sort of 50s styles and already out of date. I didn't care, I was four or five. I was charmed.

And that's pretty much what yesterday was like. Charmed. They definitely have some "better" rides, including a roller coaster, but it's all small scale and fun. And there's a whole lot of retro stuff there including a "space" ride build around what are clearly meant to be Mercury program capsules--so probably 59 to 61 as I'd guess once the Gemini spacecraft was revealed in 1961, they'd probably have used that.

What's great is the atmosphere is perfect for little kids. There are no teenagers here trying to impress their dates. I think it gives some of the older younger kids ie, the 9 and 10 year olds a little more permission to enjoy what might get overlooked as "little kid" rides. And even for Nora, there was only one ride, a scrambler, that she was too small to ride, Though we told her she was too short for the rollercoaster and a couple of others that we thought she (or I) would freak on. She did freak out on the tilt a whirl, which she loved the last time we went. I'm guessing that's because it was towards the end of the day and she was getting tired and probably a little dehydrated.

Another nice aspect, is they don't care if you bring stuff in. So we had our water bottles and some trisquits to eat. We also got a couple of sodas along the day and had lunch at one of the official places, so we paid our pound of flesh. The $4 they lost in forcing us to buy a bottle of water was more than made up for in goodwill. Plus, really, you gotta let the little ones have their water bottle or their snack or whatever the heck it is that they want. They're, well, little.

One thing I have to give Nora is she is not a commercialized child. She glanced into the Thomas gift shop, but never pushed to go in. The only item she actually even asked a little about was a Thomas balloon. She was there for the experience.

As an odd "holy crap" sidenote, the "Thomas" train is actually just a prop and the train is really powered by a small red diesel switching engine behind Thomas. A tip toe through wikipedia and a few other sources informs me that the red switching engine was originally built for The Whitin Machine Works, which was the the mill in the Decaying Mill Town where I grew up.

We had a wonderful vacation. I spent Thursday and Friday desperately trying to rest and hydrate myself enough to be well for vacation and by Sunday, I was capable of being poured into the car and by the time we got out there, I felt sort of human. That evening we went out for Mexican at La Veracruzana and spent an hour or so at Groff Park in Amherst, which is a little playground. Nora met someone and they played on the seesaw for a while and then they played with Bubble Stuff and the girl's parents gave her a vial of it. We're not sure, but there were two women and we think they were a two mommy family, but it was hard to tell. It could have been a 30 something woman with a 20 something woman or it could have been a 40 something woman with her low 20s daughter.

Monday was July 4th. We took it vaguely easy and then went to Bub's for an early dinner before going to the fireworks. The fireworks show was great. Nora had a fantastic time and got to ride on the little kid rides they have for it. Bub's was disappointing though. The little rack of ribs that came with our ribs and link was... little. Really little. I thought maybe it was baby back ribs, but even for those, the ribs themselves, like the actual bones, were really small and thin, and had almost no meat. Given that, they were also pretty dry. I can do better myself, which is a big wow when it comes to Bub's. Well blah. Hopefully next time. If not, we'll just get the sides and stuff ourselves with those because they're still amazing.

Tuesday we went to Look Park and Nora got to play at the splash park. We feasted on the snack bar's offerings. The fries are fried food service fries like you'd expect, but geez, you can make a meal out of a $3.50 order. I have no idea how they break even on that, much less make money. We also rode the little train and looked at the animals. We were both exhausted by the end and decided not to do the paddle boats. Next year, that comes first while we're still in shape to corral a 5 year old and keep her out of the drink. That night we went to Panda East, which was our favorite Chinese food place back in the day. Nora had never been to a "real" sit down restaurant before and was very well behaved and very impressed--both achievements as she really doesn't like Chinese all that much. She kept mumbling about how fancy it was, which was adorable. Afterwards, we took her out for ice cream, which was home-made (well store-made) and has apparently ruined her for regular ice cream and she keeps telling us it's not as good as the ice cream in Amherst.

We ran up to Shelburne Falls on Wednesday before driving home, but honestly, I don't remember a lot about the day other than it being hotter than hell. Particularly given that Cape tends to be about 10' cooler than the rest of the state, so we're just not used to it. Oh yeah, we drove through Turner's Falls. We lived there for a year in college. I think it's pretty safe to say we wouldn't do that today. The stark grimness of our state's opiate problem was on full display in the person of a blond junkie prostitute who I simply cannot believe was over 18. I know it's more an aspect of it being more on display where here on Cape our opiate problem is better hidden. But geezus. And note that Tony Bourdain did a "heroin special" episode of his show that was Cape and Franklin County.

And every day we got delicious coffee and croissant at The Black Sheep, which is actually Nora's favorite place.

Unfortunately, the trip took it's toll and while I was "well" (if sneezy) for much of the middle of it, I was back to being sick by yesterday my first day back at work and today I ended up calling in sick because I couldn't stop coughing long enough to take a shower or do much of anything else. Hopefully a day of hydration and DM will help.

It's made us once again start scheming on how to get back out there. Fortunately, the housing on Cape is doing that thing where it goes up faster than the rest of the state. Eventually our tiny home will have enough for us to sell, buy a place out there, and stick enough money in the bank. (Right now, we'd be a better than even, but not with enough buffer for us to be comfortable. Maybe if it was just us, but not with Nora.)

Note: the air is so damned clean in western mass. Cape looks so nice and the ocean air smells pleasant, but we get Boston smog and our weekends in particular are bad because it doubles up the crap floating over the bay with everyone driving onto cape for vacation.

So today is Nora's last day in her preschool. She "officially" graduated in spring and this is technically the summer program, which she insists on calling it, and a little more on the daycare and fun side. But it's her last day. I've really become attached to dropping her off and picking her up as they work perfectly, including the route, with my work and gives us some time alone. The school also does something wonderfully helpful and the little white board gives you talking points for the way home, which is very useful in coaxing information out of someone who's relatively shy. She starts kindergarten next week, but the bus comes after I leave for work and drops her off before, so I'll be pretty much completely removed from it.

Tonight there's a story and ice cream time for the new kindergarteners, which is also a chance for them (and us) to meet the teacher and do one last visit to the school. So two hours after the end of preschool, she'll be in her new school meeting her teacher and the other staff people.

And if that's not enough to finish out a long day,  after the storytime, we'll be heading out to western Mass. We figure she'll sleep on the trip and we can spend the entire day doing fun things for her and then drive home after dinner when she'll also sleep. We hope. This has been postponed for the last few weekends since her birthday for various weather and commitment reasons. It's a last minute thing for all of us and should be a complete surprise for her.

In other news, our new ceiling fan has arrived. We got a rather expensive model that uses about half the usual power and comes with a remote, so we can actually reverse it for the winter. We also invested in a new set of Corelle dishes for everyday use, rather than the mishmash we had. (These included the remnants of the set I remember my mother throwing at my drunk father just before the divorce. Oh the loving family memories.) We have everything ready to go on our roof and new skylight as well.

I'm making some mild progress on my next book. I don't know where this one went off the rails, but it has been a bear to get done. I've done two major rewrites, one of which i totally reversed. I figure I need three more chapters and then start the editing process. The good news on that front is that seven months after release, my book is still on the top 100 best sellers in lesbian romance, which is just whacky.

This is going to be one of those mommy entries. I'm sorry.

What a weekend. I had high hopes. The week before my Active Directory got into serious trouble and I spent all day Saturday in work and a good chunk of Sunday working on it remotely. So I took part of Thursday and all of Friday as comp time expecting to have a nice weekend with a little bit of sane time. That would give me a day to unwind from work, then we'd have Janna's parents over, then we'd have a day to unwind from that.

And that worked Friday. Janna took Nora to the local children's museum and I stayed at home and got a few hundred words of my new piece done as well as just some relaxing peace and quiet. I took care of the shopping and made dough for pizza. We had a nice evening. All was well in the world.

Then about midnight, Nora simply erupted. I'm guessing it was something picked up at the museum, but she just puked everywhere and that pretty much repeated itself all night long. Due to the odd layout of our house, she still sleeps with us, so when I say erupted, I mean erupted on us. Well, I think she missed the cat.

Given the evening's festivities we cancelled for the second week in a row on having her grandparents over for dinner and spent the day being quiet. And a little shellshocked. She started to come out of it about the middle of the day and perked up and was able to eat.

Then we discovered the other shoe dropping. With huge piles of wet sheets, blankets, duvet covers, and everything else under the sun, our dryer decided to die. It runs for about fifteen minutes, then shuts off with a lint filter warning and never warms up. Well, the lint filter is perfectly clean so it must be a sensor or it needs the internal ducting cleaned or something. Janna will call the repair people today. We have some nice independents who were able to fix our refrigerator rather than telling us to replace it. Hopefully they can do the same with our dryer.

For extra bonus points, Janna's parents didn't pick up when we called to cancel and when we made our third call without them picking up the phone or calling back, we started to freak out because of the unsafe nature of their home. Apparently it required actually telling them to call us because when Janna did that, they finally called back an hour later. (They do not have a cell and her father has his email set to delete everything as spam.)

Then yesterday Janna started to feel sick and I'm not exactly firing on all cylinders so more or less the weekend was a complete loss. I barely wrote. The house is a shambles. And now I'm back to work, which I very sincerely could do without for another day.

I got uncharacteristically ambitious yesterday for dinner and made an Asian noodle stir fry. It was basically little chunks of fried chicken, along with whatever veggies we had around, and noodles. I did the chicken in small batches, soaked in siracha and soy and dredged in corn starch. They really came out great, just like the General Tso's or whatever.

The big achievement was that, for once, I nailed the noodles. Nailed them. Wonderful flavor and not falling apart. Perfect in every way I could imagine. I can't even list the number of times I've had wilted noodles or ones that stuck to the wok and ended up half as much. Part of my success, I'm sure, was a different brand of noodle. I was also careful about how much they were cooked and did a lot of seasoning and added a bit of oil while they were still in the (non-stick) pasta pot.

So apparently we're about to be obliterated by snow. We're expecting 15+ inches and 70mph windws which pretty much means 24+ hours without power (or heat), quite possibly two or three days, and God only knows how long to shovel out of. I'm stockpiling electronics so I can write. I'm not excited about Nora being in a cold house for a day or more. There's a good chance this will be the worst storm since we moved here 15 years ago and it's not going to be happy times.

I am maniacallly downloading crap to read and watch during the downtime, but batteries are only going to hold out for so long.

Speaking of writing, my first novella is available for pre-order. It's on the hot new releases and the top sellers for lesbian short reads, so I guess that's good. Though I suspect it's two or three of my friends, not big sales. We shall hope for the future. If it can get onto those lists, it gets visibility and pretty much everything goes from there.