mistressofmuses

(A phrase attached permanently to my hindbrain.)

It is, indeed, fuckin wimdy right now. (Current peak gusts have been over 100mph!)

Our local power company enacted some preventive power cuts (Public Safety Power Shutoff) to help minimize the potential for downed lines sparking wildfires. I am in favor of this, as much as it sucks, because we have had some extraordinarily awful and destructive wildfires. (No one wants another Marshall Fire.)

While (*knock wood*) so far we haven't had more than the briefest of power flickers at home, my office was within the PSPS area. These areas were announced yesterday, originally slated to start at noon, and later moved up to 10am. While yesterday it was still couched as them "maybe" cutting power, by later yesterday and certainly by this morning, it was definite: they would be cutting power at 10am for the announced areas.

A mildly annoying timeline:

- On Tuesday afternoon, the power company announces the *potential* for a PSPS on Wednesday in light of wind and fire risk forecasts, probably around 12.

- Many local schools and county government offices announce schedule adjustments, planning for early closures.

- My manager called me in the afternoon: my company had made the decision to cancel all appointments on Wednesday afternoon in preparation for the wind, and office staff would be going home at noon Wednesday in order to beat the wind and since we anticipated losing power.

- Into late afternoon, the PSPS announcements are tending more toward this IS a planned action, no longer just a potential.

- Government offices declare they will close for the entire day.

- My manager texts me in the evening, saying that despite the warnings only growing MORE emphatic, the company had decided that we will only close early IF the power went out; otherwise, we should plan to stay for the entire day, even though all appointments had been cancelled. Gotta answer phones.

- Relatively late into the night, county schools decided to close for the entire day on Wednesday (which is a pain at least for the high schools, since it's finals week!)

- By this morning, the PSPS announcement is a definite warning; power to the planned areas will shut off at 10:00.

- I go to work, starting at 9:30. No one else seems aware that the 10:00 time was a definite time; everyone is still operating on "maybe around 12:00."

- It is not yet windy.

- There is one group of appointments that was missed in the rescheduling flurry from yesterday, so we call them and ask them to move up to before 12:00.

- At exactly 10:00 the power goes out. Shock. Amaze.

- We are told by upper management to "wait and see." (FOR WHAT? THE POWER IS OUT AND NOT SLATED TO EVEN POSSIBLY COME ON UNTIL AFTER 6PM. WE CAN DO NOTHING.)

- Some of those students we called do come in; we do our best to handle their tests in the lobby, since that's the only room with windows, and to enter their results on our phones.

- My manager asks again how long we should stay. It's still not windy, but the power is, crucially, still out. No computers. No phones. No students. WE ARE JUST SITTING. In an increasingly hot office, because we have no fans or central air, and the sun comes directly in the windows. The answer is "Stay as long as you feel safe! :)" Which... no, it isn't unsafe right now, but THERE IS NOTHING TO DO.

- Finally around 12:30 my manager did let me leave, because we really had nothing else to do. I think it was mostly because she was annoyed that Alex was waiting in the parking lot (because he knew the power was out, and didn't want to go home just to have to come back to pick me up), but whatever.

- The wind really did not start in our area until later afternoon, and even then wasn't terribly severe. It was far worse earlier to the north, and by now it is very windy here, too.

No idea yet if we'll have power at the office tomorrow. There is apparently a risk that they'll do another PSPS on Friday for forecast winds, with the warning that some areas where those warnings overlap could be without power for 3+ days, as they may not restore power just to cut it again. If our power is NOT on, I don't know what the plan will be... I don't know if they'll ask me to go to a different office (hope not, since those are all pretty far from me and I don't have any of my stuff, so I don't want to do that...) or if I'll have the choice to use a PTO day, or if I'll have to just sit in a dark, empty office..?

We will see.

Berry Mad has emerged! She had burrowed a couple weeks ago, and for a while I could tell she was coming back out occasionally to make new mud for herself, but then she didn't seem to even be doing that. I was trying to decide if I should go dig her up (I don't want to overly bother or stress her, but it's not actually cold enough in here for her to hibernate.) But as with last year, as soon as I started to really worry about it, she came back out.


Not that she looks happy about it, lol.


Bonus Guava Splash. (With fruit flies.)

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Sadly Three, one of the katydids, passed away a couple days ago. He was the third of the three we caught this year, but the first to go. This is about the end of the katydid lifecycle; we haven't heard any outside for a week or so. Last year we had two, and one died the last weekend of October, and one the first week of November.

So far both Clickbait and Green Bean are doing all right: still eating their beans, and Clickbait has had plenty to say. Unfortunately, we probably only have another week or so with them, but we can always hope for more!

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I am free for nine whole days! I try to take the bulk of my "holiday" time off around Halloween, since that's my favorite, and doesn't have as much PTO competition as the time around Thanksgiving/Christmas.

As always, I have a long list of things I want to do. Lots of it is creative-ish stuff, like writing or working on the arty reading page I'm about five months behind on. I'd also like to read more, get some of my enamel pins displayed, maybe even play A Video Game, which I basically haven't done in a year+. Mixed in, I'd like to do some of the little cleaning projects that never seem to happen, like getting shelves dusted and drawers organized. Our nice weather is holding, at least to some extent (might be a bit chilly, and some overnight freezes, but not supposed to be snowy or anything,) so it'd also be nice to get a little more outdoor time in before the time change + not seeing the sun for six months makes me lose my mind. I also have plans to get together with Taylor for a couple nights. Also gotta fit in my annual Over the Garden Wall watch, obviously.

Now it's just a matter of doing those things. I know that last year after my Halloween week off I felt quite disappointed in how little we did with the week. I think the weather was less cooperative, but my recollection is a lot of days kind of wasted in being stuck in "waiting" mode, where I'm scrolling on my phone for a couple hours because we *might* have an errand to run later, or taking a nap that ends up eating the entire afternoon... every day.

We already did our big "event" for the holiday, which I'll post about in a day or two when I get the pictures sorted. (We went to the "Spirits and Spirits" event at the Four Mile House, which was a lot of fun!)

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I feel bad for my coworker. Yesterday she told me she was going to put in her two weeks notice today. Sounds like she and her fiance are splitting up. He's moving back to be with his trump-humper family in Wisconsin, and since she can't afford to live here on her own, she's moving home to her family in Alamosa. So big breakup, quitting her job, and having to move all in one go.

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Weirdly, I keep catching myself kind of slipping into "New Year" mode. It could be the shorter days, it could be just general autumn wanderlust feelings, could be the subconscious desire to skip a chunk of winter... I sort of suspect it's just me, haha. I feel like I often get about 3/4 of the way through an allotted time (in this case, 2025) and am ready to jump ahead and start planning for the next bit.

In this case, I really want to start sorting through my TBR list again and figure out what I realistically expect I can get through in 2026. I keep slapping my own hand away from it, because I'm not there yet! Gotta get through this year before I can reasonably guess where to start for next year!
To a lesser extent I'm sort of doing the same with writing goals, and trying to figure out a plan to actually get some sort of writing completed next year (unlike this year.) But again, gotta get through this year to know where I'll be at!

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The World As It Is continues to sort of suck. Alex won't be getting food aid for November, which is money we definitely rely on to, y'know, eat. We will be okay, but I know there are people who are likely to be less okay than we are.

But that's kind of a downer to leave it on so...

Looking forward to this week off, and really hoping to find ways to make the time intentional!

Kind of an oof of a day.

I was already a little annoyed with how I anticipated the day to go... Our office was essentially double booked, with a class and a test happening at the same time. The tests would normally happen in the classroom, but can't do that if a class is happening, which means those students have to test in the lobby, which is a lot louder and more crowded and not a great testing environment. When I was doing some prep for that yesterday, my manager acted a bit surprised pikachu about it, and mildly complained that the person who schedules the classes should have noticed and prevented that from happening...
... Except I pointed it out to my manager back in June that we were double-booked for this date. At the time no one had signed up for the test, so I asked if we should request it be removed. I got a kind of snarky response about "I'm not sure why you're even worrying about something months away when no one is even signed up for it, it might not even fill. There's no reason to be worried about it."
(I didn't say anything about that, because for the most part things have been pretty chill with my manager recently, and I don't want to cause tension. It ended up not being a huge deal, but still... I tried to prevent this!)

But then when we got in the truck... it wouldn't start. Not even a sad click. Just nothin'. *sigh*

So I called my mom, and she came to the rescue with her little portable jump start pack...

Except it also wouldn't work. We did get *one* tiny partial turn-over, but it drained the whole pack and didn't quite get started.

*sigh again*

So mom rescue x2: she took me to work, while Alex took the jump pack in to charge back up.

I got to work just as people were starting to arrive for the class, so I don't feel *too* terrible. Still, I was about 45 minutes late, which I hate.

Mom rescue x3: she went back and she and Alex did get the truck jumped, then went to go get a new battery.

She had to help us do this not that long ago. I looked back here, and we replaced our battery back in March of last year. So it lasted less than a year and a half, opposed to the 3-5 years that they're expected to last. Though I know we did buy the cheapest battery option available last time, and driving in hot weather is one of the things most likely to wear it down, and this summer has been very hot. (Not a ton of days topping 100, but lots of sustained periods in the upper 90s.) But still!

Turned out when they went to get a new battery, the employee of the auto parts place came out to look at it, and said "well, the battery you have is the wrong size. It's way too small!"

*sigh again*

So maybe it's good that we got a year+ out of a battery that wasn't large enough for the vehicle?

We now allegedly have a correctly-sized battery, and not the cheapest available. This one even actually comes with a warranty. Hopefully we won't be doing this in another year and a half. Wouldn't have been able to get it without mom's help, so very grateful, even though I wish I didn't have to keep asking for help.

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Tomorrow I'm going over to Taylor's to hang out for a couple nights. Looking forward to it!

I am alive!

I just haven't felt like I have much to say.

Work hasn't left me in tears, but it is just a constant demoralizing drag. (I know, "so it's like... work?") Practicing just not giving a shit, which probably is really the best thing to do.

Writing still hasn't been happening. I just don't have any drive or interest in working on anything. It's frustrating, but I'm not making it past the "stare at the document and feel worse about it the longer I do that" stage. I do at least still get brief bouts of *wanting* to work on something, which is better than nothing! It just hasn't translated to being able to do anything about it.

I've let myself doomscroll a little more than I usually do, and I need to cut back on that again. I want to figure out bluesky as a site (as tumblr goes through another biannual "is this when the site finally dies?" round), and I also want to be at least somewhat informed about all the ways the US is deeply fucked... but in combination, it's not been great for mental health stuff. And then I feel bad that it makes me feel as shitty as it does, because I know so many people who are being impacted in vastly worse ways.

Is it the seemingly inescapable creep of fascism? Is it my job getting more and more demoralizing and frustrating? Is it the untreated depression? WHO KNOWS.

Today was at least less of a miserable slog. Still overly busy with too much to do, and no ability to anything extra, but I did get caught up with the things that I had to punt from yesterday.

Still no news of the instructor who didn't come in this week. It feels just really unlike him, so I'm more worried as time goes by, but also don't know how I'd find out anything.

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I think my original plan today was to figure out my TBR list for this year, because... well, rather than shrinking, it's definitely grown! But I don't think I have quite the brain power for that tonight. Though maybe I can at least start to read something.

I also need to sit down and look at my writing plan again. December was sort of a wash on that front, but we were busy enough with other things that it doesn't bother me too much.

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For the first time in a while it actually feels like winter, and was snowing as I left work. (Though about a mile or so away from my office, there was a very stark line between where it had snowed and where it had not.)

We have a lot of fog, which is a nicely spooky atmospheric setting... ~just like Silent Hill~ I promise to not say every single time but unfortunately it is very cold and it sucks.

They STILL have not fixed our heat. I don't think Alex followed up with them when he was supposed to. Understandable when he was sick. My mom loaned us a space heater, so now I'm afraid he just feels like it isn't urgent because the space heater is nicely efficient. I can call them, but it'll have to wait until Monday. The space heater, plus the fact that we're on an upper floor and heat rises, has kept it from getting too cold, but dammit, they still need to get it fixed!

Mostly I just feel really behind. The whole *gestures* everything with the election makes it hard to want to do or say much of anything, but I'm trying to get back to doing... something. Catching up here. Writing something.

My break from work was sort of a nothing span of time. We did almost nothing in terms of "going out to do things" and I did almost nothing in terms of "productive personal projects that would have been worthwhile uses of the time."

I spent a couple nights hanging out with Taylor, Sunday (Oct 27th) through Tuesday (Oct 29th). That was fun.

Unfortunately, that Sunday night, Cy started really having a hard time walking. Just about as bad as the first time we'd taken him to the emergency vet. I wasn't home, but Alex was extremely worried. He did start to slowly improve after that, though! Alex was concerned that maybe he'd had a stroke, because his balance was so bad, and he only wanted to turn to the left. I'm more inclined to think it was still just pain, and that moving right was more painful. He wasn't *incapable* of turning the other direction; just reluctant to. He's been continuing to get better, and was back to wanting to run and play by the end of the week, but it was a bad couple of days.

That same Sunday night into Monday, the first katydid, Greenbean, died. :( I knew that late-October - mid-November was about the longest I could expect to have them, but it was still sad to have him go. It's about a month longer than he likely would have lived in the wild, and he overcame that terrible probable-poisoning, and seemed to have a happy month with us, judging by his enthusiastic clicking and eating of green beans.

I miss the clicking. :(

That Tuesday (the 29th), we did our one "go out and do things," which was going to a haunted house. It was fun, though I feel like Alex always goes through them faster than I want to! But there were a lot of cool sets and fun costume pieces. There were two houses: one was nautical-themed and one was more traditional haunted house. Both were neat, but the second one felt a bit more engaging, like it was just better established, maybe. It was a good time, and I'm glad we went.

Halloween itself was kind of a bummer, just in terms of how little we did, but it wasn't *bad.*

Friday (Nov 1st) we did a big grocery trip, but Alex started feeling sick partway through, so I wound up doing most of it solo.

Saturday (Nov 2nd) was a model show. We'd spent much of the week leading up to it doing prep for that, as this one was focused on collectibility (so emphasis on things like age/rarity/condition) rather than the shows we usually go to, where the focus is more on realism. The show... did not go terribly well for us, haha. Not a lot of winners, though the show itself was good. Two of the few winning horses we had were my two from the last couple years of "NaMoPaiMo" - my wisteria stained-glass styled horse (who got second in her class) and my art-deco peacock horse (who got first in his!) I was quite happy about that.
My mom kindly watched the dogs, even though it meant barricading part of her house off so that the cat wouldn't have to see the dogs at all.

Sadly also on Saturday, the second katydid, Moodring, passed away. We suspected it was coming, as she was suddenly eating far less, and then on Friday night she didn't want to move when I got into her cage to swap out her food. :(

RIP, my katydids. I'm glad we had you for a little while, and I hope it was a decent life of green beans and no predators. I miss the clicking.

We are left with somewhere around 30 or more katydid eggs, as Moodring just kept laying them. I don't know how many of them are viable (if any), as the two weren't housed together for very long. There are a few obvious "duds" - ones that are small and dark, obviously different than the bigger, smoother tan ones... but whether they're *actually* fertilized or not, I don't know. We'll keep an eye on them and figure out what to do if we DO wind up with a bunch of katydid nymphs.

Time change has not been terribly kind to me. I am definitely feeling the impact from having it get dark so early.

The election happened on Tuesday and was a bit of a dismal, miserable shock. I still don't have anything better or more meaningful to say about it. I am still afraid of what will be coming.

The return to work was mostly fine, except that now it's dark by the time I leave, which is tough. One of my work friends (our lead instructor) had to go on surprise leave to take care of his father.

We had a major winter storm come through starting on Thursday. It snarled local roads a lot less significantly than expected (Friday night and Saturday morning were supposed to be basically impossible to navigate, but thankfully we did not actually have any trouble.) The storm total by the airport came in at 20", so it was a pretty significant storm! I was super concerned about the potential for broken branches; with the unseasonably warm weather we've had, lots of trees are still leafed out, and I was afraid the snow would break many of them. Also surprisingly less of a problem than I'd expected!

We had a weird power outage on Friday night. Our bathroom light, bedroom light/fan, microwave, and dishwasher stayed on. Everything else, from outlets to stove to other lights, all went out. We messed with the breakers for a good five or ten minutes before we realized that the lights in the apartment hallways were on their emergency power, so it wasn't just us. The parking lot lights were also out. The street lamps were on, but the traffic signals were out. I've never had something like that happen - as far as I knew, all our power to the building came from the same source, and in the past a power outage has knocked everything out, not left a handful of lights and appliances somehow working.

I haven't wanted to write anything much since the election news, though that'll be its own post, probably.

About the only good thing has been reading. I finished Acceptance and have started Absolution.

This "weekend" I decided to get my covid and flu vax out of the way, while we're still allowed to. The pharmacist who did them for me was great - whichever he did first I almost didn't feel at all, and the second only stung a bit. They haven't knocked me down quite as badly as all the previous covid shots have, but I've still felt under the weather yesterday and today. I'm hopeful I feel a bit better tomorrow when I'm back at work, but shouldn't be so sick I can't tough it out.

Unless of course, I'm just also getting sick. I've felt crappy for much of the week, with intermittent sore throat, but mostly just tiredness. That's worse today, but I'm hoping its just my usual side-effects. I've been falling asleep by 8:00 on some nights, but am still exhausted when I get up the next day. Is it getting sick, or just the depression? I can't quite tell.

Love that. Love that "some threat of 100mph winds" part especially.

It IS extremely windy. I am not extremely comforted as we watch the windows shake. The power has gone out a handful of times, though always come right back on. (As has the internet, this time!) So fingers crossed it stays that way. Fingers double crossed that the windows don't do anything worse than rattle.

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Got my second ever migraine aura yesterday night, around 11:00 or so. Can't say I'm a fan! It doesn't hurt, but it is a bizarre feeling to just have a growing blind spot surrounded by bright zigzags drift across your vision. Fucking weird.

I'm choosing to blame a combination of the weather/extreme pressure change with this wind + work stress.

Our online course has been down for three days now, and it's apparently a platform issue, so our developers are limited in what they can do. I fielded 30-some calls about it today, and am feeling salty about how the manager who was doing them yesterday got passive-aggressive about needing assistance (which meant me. And as soon as I offered to help, she did no more.) I would have loved to call in some sort of assistance to help me today, but I'm literally the only one available, so.

Also annoyed because my manager is telling me it is expected that I attend a new phone system training on my day off. I'll get paid for the time, but I don't want to have to structure my day around being home to do it.
(My manager's manager said in the training invite that no, no one has to attend on a day off, because it'll be recorded, but my manager got snarly about it, and I know it'll be easier if I just do the damn thing. I did tell her I might be at the vet at the time for Cy's followup, and she got snarky about "well, it's an inconvenient time for me when I have to pick up my kids, but I still have to figure it out, so you just have to make it work.")

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ETA: as of about 10:00, the highest confirmed gust has been 96mph in one of the canyons. There's an unconfirmed gust of 114mph in a town a bit farther up into the mountains.

Too many wind!

Had a pretty busy string of days over the last week:

( Wednesday I had my dentist appointment )

( Thursday: snow + organizing project )

( Friday was the model show )

( Saturday: recovery day + swap meet )

( Sunday I came over to Taylor's to hang out )

( Monday was mostly more gaming )

Mostly good days (minus Friday being a letdown), but pretty busy. I feel like I have a bunch of stuff to catch up on, and we'll see how well I manage it as I head into my workweek. This is likely the longest string of days off I'll have for a very long while (six days!) but it feels like they were over in a flash, and like I'm very not ready to go back to work.

Well, that weather change happened fast!

The forecast had been for snow - and possibly quite a lot of it - yesterday, though the timing was a little vague. The morning started off with just rain, and it was easy to get to work and everything. Then late morning, somewhere between 11 and 11:30 it went to shit and it went to shit fast. The rain turned to snow, which iced up on the roads immediately, literally within five or ten minutes. We basically cancelled our entire afternoon, as the roads were not safe to be on. Lots of people got caught already out, and struggled to get home. And then it just kept getting worse. The official measurement nearest my office was 11 inches in about 10 hours, I think?

I wound up having to take a Lyft home, because Alex couldn't make it in the truck. I hate spending $50 just to leave work, but I got home safe. (Thanks, Perry!) I bailed an hour early at 4:00, which was the earliest I got permission to leave. Glad I did, because things didn't improve after that.

The snow tapered off overnight, and the main roads were all basically fine today, though the side streets were still a mess. Had a lot of instructors call out saying they were unable to get out of their respective neighborhoods.

It made for some picturesque trees this morning, before it started to melt off.



( Three more pics of trees + two of dogs )

Ugh.

On Saturday night, I got home from work, we ate dinner, and I almost immediately fell asleep - by probably about 8:30 or so. (And tbh, I don't know where the rest of the time up until then went to.) I woke up long enough to take the dogs out in the -5°F temperatures for the 10:30 jaunt, then came back in and went straight back to bed.

Otherwise I felt okay, I was just so fatigued I couldn't DO anything but sleep.

I was annoyed about it yesterday at work, because I do have stuff I want to be working on, but I literally did absolutely nothing after getting home. So, I set up a plan to get caught up here, to get some writing done, to catch up on some tracking, to maybe do some household stuff...

I still felt fine, though I was really tired, despite having slept a good 11 hours or so. It was miserably cold, and I caved and bought a cup of noodles from the corner store for lunch because eating something warm sounded good. It tasted just slightly off, but I figured it was just that it was, y'know, cup of noodles. Now I'm guessing it was an early sign that I was getting sick.

Came home, still pretty tired... and fell asleep before 7:30. Again, got up long enough to take the dogs out in the -10°F temperatures. I was awake for a little bit longer, but not enough to do much. Fell asleep around midnight.

Woke up by about 1:00 with a sore throat. Hoped it was just how cold and dry it's been, but drinking liquids made it feel worse. After that, I just woke up every twenty minutes or so because I'd swallow and it'd hurt enough to wake me.

Texted my manager and told her to have the other support staff wipe my desk down with lysol before she sat there today, ha. Fortunately today/tomorrow is my weekend.

The roads were pretty bad all day, so we didn't go anywhere (except, again, to take the dogs out in the now "feels like -25°F" windchill.) Maybe tomorrow the roads will be clear enough for a dayquil/nyquil run.

I don't have a fever, but I *feel* like I have a fever. My skin hurts, I'm achey, the inside of my ears feel sore and hot. The worst is definitely the sore throat. It's so swollen it's difficult to swallow, and it is extremely painful to do so. I slept most of the day, and Bella was mostly a pretty good cuddle buddy, lol. (Cy kept nearly shoving my legs off the bed, ha.)
I got the full "staying home sick from school" experience (despite it being my day off), as Alex put on Judge Judy's new show ("Judy Justice" or whatever) for mindless background. Judge Judy was *always* what was on in the middle of the day if I was home sick, haha.

Took an (admittedly expired) rapid test, and did not come up positive for Covid, but we've got flu and RSV and mystery crud going around, too.

Sooooo, everything else is on hold. Not gonna worry about writing or catching up here until I feel at least a little bit better. I hope everyone else is well. I'm glad this likely isn't Covid, but it's still no fun.