stormdog | Entries tagged with ella

A few other updates from yesterday:

I was driving in some of the worst conditions I can remember this morning. Everyone was driving like 20-30 kph and the anti-lock breaks were still activating at stops. That was awful. I can tell other people were uncomfortable too because I was leaving a ton of following distance, and no one else tried to change lanes into it!

I'm amazed I only saw one car off the road. People up here are probably used to this and have snow tires.

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I just got the latest Covid and flu shots. I expect, as usual, I will have no negative effects, but should that change I'll probably tell you all about it! Miriam got just the Covid booster because either one by itself causes flares of her chronic pain. Together, they can disable her for days.

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Scored at Value Village today:
*13 x 9 Pyrex glass dish for $10
*A nice set of 4 matching glasses for $3
*A giant glass mug for me because I drink so much water and want to have to refill my cup less often
*More forks
*Some gauzy curtains for the daybed
*A (mismatched) set of sheets for the daybed
*An Andreas Vollenweider album I haven't heard (Caverna Magica)
*A Calvin and Hobbes collection

The forks and glasses are part of getting prepped for a visit from Miriam's parents.
We are worried about their visit as a Covid exposure vector, both for them and for us. But they are isolating and masking consistently in the weeks before coming, and Miriam's dad, though he's one of the folks who would not be masking if not for his family asking him too, actually shaved his beard so he can get a better mask fit for the flight here. I think that was a lot for him and I appreciate it very much.

In a perfect world, we wouldn't have to compromise in these ways, but this world has never been perfect. Her parents are significantly older than mine, and after my dad's death, it's become deeply important to us to make sure we see them.

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Treadmill yuri yesterday and today has been Sakura Trick. It's ridiculous fluff, and I am loving it.

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I washed the curtains but did not put them in the delicates bag, and now they have big tears all through them. They were inexpensive, but I'm still sad.

I just really want a super girly canopy bed with pretty curtains! I'll have to look for more, and be more careful about washing them this time. You can't really see in this image, but the purple curtain on the end is badly torn now, so I didn't even put up the other one.

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Ella is taking a leash reactivity class whose first session was tonight. I'm hoping that as well as making it easier to walk her or take her places on the bike, it might be a step toward her barking less at people outside the condo too. If she can *get to* other dogs or people, she's great. When she can see or hear them but can't get to them, she loses her little mind.

But it just got cancelled due to bad weather, so I'm unexpectedly free this evening. More cleaning maybe?

Ella is confused by the sounds I make while watching voice training videos and it's pretty adorable. She's sitting in my lap and sometime she looks at my mouth or looks me in the eyes, I think trying to figure out if she should be paying attention or doing something.

A blanket we bought came with a blue satin ribbon as part of the packaging, so I tried to tie it around my neck in a big bow, thinking it would be cute. Then I looked in the mirror and it sort of looked like a necktie. O HAI THERE DYSPHORIA!

I'll just put that ribbon away now. *laughs*

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Yesterday's movie on the treadmill was Kase-san and Morning Glories. (Some spoilers here, in case you're concerned about that.)

The way the two of them communicated was so refreshing! They're not perfect, especially Yamada, but Yamada has never dated anyone before and is trying to figure that out. Kase, on the other hand, seems more experienced, and is caring and thoughtful.

Yamada is too cute for words. She may possibly be too cute and innocent for this world.
There are moments of drama, but they are resolved quickly rather than drawn out into long spans of will-they-won't-they as happens in other media like this I've consumed. One isn't necessarily better than the other, but Kase-san and Morning Glories was almost entirely relaxing, sweet, and positive, and sometimes that's a really great thing.

I was concerned by the choice Yamada makes at the end to go with Kase to Tokyo for university, but that was in part because I didn't quite understand what her original plan was. I don't know if she's ready, in terms of maturity and ability to think about things in the long term, to pack up her life and move somewhere entirely new and far from home to be with a girlfriend - that ended up not working out so well for me - but I also don't think it's as bad a choice as I was first worried it might be. And none of us start out having the experience to make these choices well: sometimes you just have to do them and see what happens, I think.

I would really like to read this manga.

*Adds it to her online wishlist

Wow, I have a lot of yuri in there... And a book about historic industrial architecture of the United States. Niche books on architecture are expensive. 🙁

When I was in Kenosha the time before last, Lisa and Erik gave me the most wonderful care package full of things that puppy girls such as myself are well-known to like and enjoy! Earlier today, they saved the day for Ella, who was able to go to the dog park. I was going to take her, but all my socks were in the wash, or in the bedroom where Miriam was sleeping and I didn't want to wake her. But in the care package was a pair of socks, emblazoned, in amazing coincidence, with pictures of dogs and fire hydrants! I was able to put them on take Ella for a run-around. Ella is very grateful.

A second wonderful thing in there is this really interesting combination slide rule and ruler by German maker Dietzgen. (Pictures behind the cut below.) It's a 1760-P model, probably dating from between 1928 and 1941. The slide rule portion is fairly simple. It has the A and B scales for squares or square roots, and the C and D scale for multiplication and division. On the reverse of the slider are S and T scales for sine and tangent calculation. This one also has inch and centimeter measures on the front and back; that seems to be fairly common, but I've never had one before so I thought it was really cool! Also interesting to me is that the scales are labeled on the right side; all my other rules have them labeled on the left.

The back has a paper insert with useful conversion ratios. (But are the approximate lowest common denominator comparisons really better than a decimal conversion factor? Is it really useful to know that it's 82 yards to 75 meters instead of knowing you can multiply by ~1.09? I guess it's easier to calculate the conversation factor yourself in either direction this way...)

It even has a chains to meters conversion for you surveyors out there. But more interesting, and the part of this rule that's most fantastic to me, is the flat-head screws in their little shafts that are holding it together. The way things were constructed in different times is endlessly fascinating to me. It looks like this rule probably had a cursor, now missing, that slid on slots on the top and bottom edges.

( Read more... )

To reduce panic attacks about my home and all of my stuff having maybe caught on fire and been destroyed and my pets and Miriam dying while I'm away from the apartment for a few hours, I now have a camera I can look at from my phone. A fun part of it is now we can see what Ella and Purrsephone are doing sometimes. I've assumed that Ella spends most of the time we are both away on the couch.

When I leave but Miriam doesn't, I point it somewhere where I can't see her because privacy is a really important thing to me. But we were out together today and left the camera looking at the whole living room. We found that Ella was *not* on the couch. She curls up in a puppy-croissant under the built-in bench next to the door and stays there. Apparently, she just stays there for who-knows-how-long waiting for us to get back so she can be *right there*.

I'm having a really hard time getting myself to go out to the dog park with Ella. So little motivation. I keep thinking it would be a nice thing to do tonight, but I also just keep not doing it.

While my bicycle was being stolen late last week (more on that later; it's quite a story and I did get it back!), Miriam and I were driving to Prince Albert and Saskatoon and back. We ended up in a situation where we're not quite sure whether we were taken advantage of, or whether we took advantage of someone, or if it all kind of evens out. I'm hoping it was the third.

I had a Robson 61-key keyboard before the fire that I paid $50 for and that insurance valued at $300 to replace with a 61-key MIDI controller. But someone much more local had been selling a far nicer Yamaha digital piano for $340 (a P-155), and after arguing with myself for days about whether I could justify buying it, I decided to go ahead and found it had already sold.

So I started looking for other such deals and found one It was way the hell up in Prince Albert. It was one step down the model lineup from the P-155 (it's a P-115), but it was also rather newer and had all the features I could really want even if it wasn't as nice looking. And the seller wanted $200. Including $80 for gas, that was still a good price and less than what I was willing to pay.

I contacted the seller and asked about coming up on the weekend. He said that he was moving on the weekend, could I come up before then? I asked whether he was taking it with and I could contact him after he moved and arrange a time, but he said no, it had to go before then.

That was Wednesday, and I had a dental appointment Friday so my only option was Thursday, the next day. I'd hoped Miriam could come with if I was driving on the weekend and was a bit disgruntled at having to rush out, so I said that that would cause me some difficulty and would he take $150 for it instead? I'm really awful at asking for concessions like that, but it worked out; he would!

Miriam decided she did want to come with because her pain wasn't too bad that morning, and she could either do some work in the car or take a vacation day. So we drove the four hours to Prince Albert, playing Semantle and talking, stopping on the way to see a giant robot made out of tires, so a big bonus for me! On the way, we messaged the seller once when we were about an hour away, and again about ten minutes out, with no response.

We arrived at the address and I knocked on the door while Miriam and Ella waited in the car. Eventually a woman answered the door and I said I was there about they keyboard. She was very confused. I offered more details, then pulled up the conversation I'd had with the seller. She seemed kind of shocked - maybe embarassed? - and said that her son had listed the piano for sale without telling her and that she wasn't ok with that price. I'm not good at figuring out what to say in situations like that, so I said that I understood and went back to the car.

Miriam and I talked a bit. She asked what a price that would be reasonable to me was, and I thought about it and settled on $300. I wouldn't have driven to Prince Albert for that price, but the gas was already spent. So Miriam decided to go back to the house and ask the woman what price she would accept. We left Ella in the car and went back together, and when we knocked the door was opened by a little girl (I think at some point we learned she was six) wearing just a nightshirt. Miriam asked if she could get her mother and she kind of stood there looking at us and smiling. Miriam tried a few more times, and we learned that her mother was "upstairs," but when Miriam asked if she could *get* her mother from upstairs, she just kind of smiled.

So Miriam knocked again on the open door and the woman returned. Miriam asked what she would be willing to take for it, and she thought about it for a bit and finally said maybe $400? She said that it had been a birthday present for her son, was $1500 new, and that it had taken her a long time to pay it off. We told her that we understood, but that was just too much for us right now. Meanwhile the little girl had noticed Ella in the car and seemed pretty excited about her.

In what was absolutely *not* a conscious attempt to ingratiate ourselves (we just like making little kids happy by letting them pet the cute doggo!), Miriam commented that the girl seemed really interested in Ella. Would she like to meet her? Her mom said that recently a dog had barked at her daughter and scared her, so she was nervous around dogs but really liked them. It was determined that the little girl, who was still too nervous to really talk to us, *did* want to meet Ella, so I went back to the car and got her.

While I was away, Miriam talked more with the mother. She said that, in case she wanted to have a parental talk with her son, she should know that we drove four hours from Regina because of her son's post, and he had known that. Interspersed with that conversation, the little girl had asked a couple times if Ella could come inside! Miriam said that no, she couldn't but the little girl could per her outside and maybe give her treats? She really liked Ella a lot. So I went back to the car to get treats, which took a little looking around among the road trip ephemera, while they talked some more.

Having thought about it more I guess, the mother said that, well, maybe she'd take $300? She said that she had just been approved for disability but the checks weren't coming yet and she really needed money. Miriam agreed and told her that we'd have to go out and get more cash since we only brought $150. Her mother told the girl that we were going to be leaving for a little bit (to get money) and then coming back and then we had to leave because we had a long way to go. At the thought of Ella leaving, the girl started crying!

I hadn't heard any of that, so when I got back to the porch, Miriam said that I should go get the extra cash and she and Ella were going to stay there with the girl and her mom. I was a little confused about Miriam seemingly inviting herself to sit on this woman's porch and I asked the mom if she was ok with that. She was, and Miriam filled me in on their talk, so I drove to the nearest branch of our bank. On the way, I thought about the whole situation more and, before starting to drive back again, texted Miriam with my thoughts. Contextualizing the talk with her son (they have to move that weekend and won't take the keyboard with them) and the mother's statements, I realized that they might be getting evicted, and maybe her son thought selling his piano could help. I didn't express it in the text, but I felt uncomfortable about that and worried that maybe we were taking advantage of them? But from everything I had read online, $300 was a good but still fair price; people don't realize how fast digital pianos lose their value. And Miriam checked several times during the course of the conversation that she was really, definitely ok with that price.

While I was away, the very nervous little girl eventually was brave enough to let Ella eat a treat or two out of her hand. She also dropped and spilled the treat bag on the porch, twice, so Ella got a lot of treats that day! It seemed to make both of them really happy, so it was all definitely worthwhile!

So I got back, exchanged cash for the piano and stand, and loaded them in the car. Miriam told the girl that we would be leaving and she started crying again. I felt so bad for her! And if they *are* getting evicted and in dire financial straits, I feel so bad for all of them. It's so awful when people are in that position, and it makes me feel sad and powerless.

Miriam and I talked about the whole situation as we drove. Did we take advantage of them because they needed cash? Did *they* take advantage of *us* because we'd driven so far and were willing to pay a higher price than we would have otherwise paid? I think we still don't really know, but we both kind of hope that it all evened out, somehow, and that our buying the piano was a help to them.

And then, on the way home, we stopped to see a longtime friend of Miriam's in Saskatoon who, by complete coincidence, is moving away for a year or so very shortly. Since Miriam may find a faculty position somewhere else by then, we may not have had the chance to see them again if we hadn't happened to be near Saskatoon that day! So in the end, that made the gas money worth it in itself, and that takes some of the sting out of the higher price for the piano.

Stuff from yesterday:

I went to the dog park with the intent of walking for an hour while Ella ran around, but the whole place was like walking through a living cloud of mosquitoes. Someone even gave me some bug spray and they were *still* getting me. Ugh. I left after about 10 minutes.

In the evening, I unexpectedly smelled a burning-related smell and had a rush of fear. I had to be 100% sure that the smell was outside (it was) before that fear reduced. I'm not sure if it was the wildfire smoke making it to southern Saskatchewan or if it was neighbors barbecuing, or what. But I closed the windows again.

Also yesterday evening, with the kitchen cabinetry being installed in the condo in the near future, Miriam and I talked about still not knowing how insurance is going to pay for appliances, what our budget for them is, when they should be chosen, or anything like that. At some point, our adjuster said that they would be covered by the condo corporations policy not ours.

We asked the rebuild manager, Pamela, who's been managing lighting, plumbing, flooring, cabinetry, and just about everything, about it. She said we should ask our insurance adjuster. We asked him and he said we should talk to the condo board and/or their adjuster. We asked them and they said we should talk to the contractor that is doing the work. We thought that was Pamela, since her title is flooring/rebuild manager and told the condo adjuster she told us to talk to our insurance.

The condo adjuster said we should talk to a project manager at the company Pamela is with and that Pamela is a flooring manager, not a project manager, so she can't help us with this. Her title in her email signature is flooring/rebuild manager, but ok. Now we're waiting on hearing from a different person at Pamela's company.

We are having some anxiety that it will turn out *nobody* is paying for the appliances and that they will come out of our personal possessions fund in direct contradiction to what our adjuster told us months ago, but he's a crappy communicator so it could happen. We have not been budgeting any of that for replacing appliances, so that would throw a wrench in things.

We also were just told, by the condo insurance adjuster, that our stove will *not* be covered because it caused the fire. If our adjuster didn't suck at his job, we would have known that *long* ago and been able to plan around it.

There's been just one really competent person in all of this; Pamela. Her communication is great and she gets shit done. We're going to send her an email once this is all over telling her how much we appreciate her unusual and remarkable level of effectiveness. She's really been a pleasure to work with.
And lastly, it just feels petty to me to not cover the stove, you know?

Ella was driving me crazy this morning.

I walked to the far end and back of the linear park and path that starts near my apartment. A couple times, I had to "go offroad" and/or jog quickly by other people with dogs so Ella would stop growling and snarling. When I got back home, I found that my keys had fallen out of my pocket. They could have been anywhere along my route, and I was worried they'd be away from the paved path too and be impossible to find.

I ended up finding them on the ground about a kilometer and a half away, at the same spot the roll of poo bags had fallen out of my pocket as I dashed around a couple people with dogs. I would have lost the bags too if someone hadn't called out and told me they'd fallen, but I didn't realize my keys had fallen out of my pocket at the same time.

Currently I have the only copy of our apartment key because we haven't picked up the other from friends who were feeding our cat while we were away, *and* our only copy of the key to the condo too. I was so upset with Ella as I walked back north, and it makes me just not want to walk with her at all except at dog parks.
Once I found my keys I just felt exhausted. Miriam was kind enough to pick me up where I was sitting on the curb at the intersection of Underhill Crescent and Mcveety Drive. She asked if the underhill fae were going to take me away, but I said that I wouldn't take that invitation without her.

Ella got a new toy recently, and now she has a problem. She has to decide whether she likes her old squeaky rope or her new squeaky ball more. And sometimes a mischievous human squeaks one while she's playing with the other and she just doesn't know what to do.

This morning, she tried to bring her new ball outside with her and I wouldn't let her. It's a hard life, being a dog.

We've decided the best thing for me to do at my immigration medical exam tomorrow is to fully disclose that I am on HRT as an mtf person. It is not supposed to cause any problems with the processing of the application, and if it somehow comes out later that I did not fully disclose my prescription meds, that definitely could be an issue.

But I don't like it, and I am pretty scared about tomorrow. And beyond the fear of the actual interaction, I'm scared that transphobes in the bureaucracy will find excuses to disqualify applications from people like me.
Some information on immigration for queer folks here: https://dfimmigration.ca/2021/06/07/a-guide-to-the-unique-challenges-of-lgbtq-spousal-or-common-law-sponsorship-applications/

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I took a 10 mile ride today and am pretty wiped out. I decided to go out half an hour and turn around. Coincidentally, getting to the dog park took right around 29:20. I stopped there to catch my breath and look at cute dogs playing, then came home.

https://www.strava.com/activities/7606265240

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Danae told me today that our mortgage broker wants proof that we paid our rent for the last year. "Well we're still living here," I said. "We haven't been evicted." Danae observed that that probably won't be sufficient. And I realize that people can basically squat in homes and it's legally *really* hard to get them out sometimes. But more generally, I don't understand why the mortgage broker needs all this additional stuff (she asked for cell phone contracts, for example, which neither of us have) now. She needed a letter from the UofR stating Danae's employment information as well, even though she had originally said the offer letter was fine. Shouldn't she have gotten all our information before deciding we couldn't get pre-approved?

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On the plus side, all of today was made better this morning. I laid down and Ella spontaneously nestled into the crook of my arm and looked up at me, and it just made my whole day, which was starting on kind of a down note, so much better.

Current Mood: nervous

This morning, local friends invited Miriam and me to join them at the dog park with their dog Brooks. (We have local friends! For the first time in years! This is so wonderful and slightly anxiety-making at the same time.)

Brooks is the dog that Ella met once earlier and got along with well, even though she doesn't really know how to play. I hoped having a dog she already knew to focus on would help her to be less crazy. (She totally loses it when she sees other dogs walking around the lake.) I was anxious that she'd be too ill-behaved and I'd have to turn right around and take her home.

But she did really well! She has some problems. She is easily excitable, and sometimes gets too jumpy and pushy with other dogs. But a lot of the time, she interacted with them relatively appropriately. And she got to run around like she's probably never run around before, exploring and playing chase with other dogs. She's been fairly low-activity the rest of the day too: I've never managed to tire her out before.

So I'm just thrilled about how well she managed being there, and how much I enjoyed walking around the park, chatting with friends, and watching Ella be about as happy as a dog can be.

We're planning to meet up again to walk around the park tomorrow. Maybe I can get some pictures. And I'm considering going there on my own during weekdays too instead of walking around the lake.

I also built the little function generator kit I got for $7 delivered, and which showed up almost two weeks earlier than it supposedly would. No complaints. After I realized I'd missed putting in one resistor that had rolled under the printer, it produced a decent sine wave. Nice! It's one of these, an XR2206: https://www.electroschematics.com/function-generator/

Current Mood: happy

Pictures ( behind the cut. )

Current Mood: accomplished

Content warning: mental health and self harm.

I'm trying to keep track of what's going on in my life, because it's been so useful to have this record over the past 20 years. No need to respond if you aren't up to dealing with someone you may not know all that well talking about serious mental health problems. I just don't want anyone to feel obligated.

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After my semester of school ended, I crashed pretty hard.

I think that the need to be functional enough to pass my classes had been keeping me going for a month or two when I didn't have anything else that was doing it. When classes ended, I couldn't keep afloat anymore.

For two or three weeks, I was spending most of the day in bed because I couldn't find the motivation to get up. I had near complete anhedonia. I would sometimes try to do something I enjoyed--walking with the dog, playing games I love on the computer, or bicycling--but I got no positive feelings from them. They were a chore, and I gave up on them. More than that, I despaired for the future. I couldn't believe that anything I could do to improve my situation in the medium-to-long term would help. The thought of going to sleep for the night was wearying because it meant waking up to another day of the same thing. I was pretty much out of hope entirely. If not for my partner's care, and caring for the dog, I might have harmed myself. I've never thought actively about suicide, I was having a lot of passive thoughts about not wanting to exist.

Snuggling the dog was about the only thing that could make me consistently happy. Even if I was feeling horrible and crying while doing it. Meanwhile, my partner was being unfailingly caring and supportive, and helping me pursue options for making things better, helping me feel loved and supported even when I couldn't love and support myself.

It was bad.

I've managed to get my prescription for bupropion renewed. After a couple weeks, it's built up enough in my body to make a difference. The improvement is small and fragile, I have panic attacks and crying spells on a daily basis. But I'm also able to enjoy things like walking with the dog. I've been enjoying Civilization 6 over the past few days, though I can only play until the decision making becomes too stressful.

My very last class for my MLIS is this Summer, and it's starting to feel like something I might be able to do. For some time, I just felt terror and inability, but I think maybe I can do it. And over the last week, I've managed to get out for long walks with the dog more often than not. I'm still scared of talking to people while walking along the lake with her. A woman approached the two of us and asked how I was doing, and I just couldn't think of an answer for about two or three seconds. But we still walked along together for a bit and chatted about dogs and nothing horrible happened and the anxiety I felt about the interaction afterward was manageable.

I have thoughts about some of the causes of all this, and I'll write about them in another post.

Current Mood: tired

"He's behind me, isn't he?"

Current Mood: content
Crossposts: https://stormdog.livejournal.com/1404317.html

How curly is Ella's tail? This curly!

Current Mood: awake
Crossposts: https://stormdog.livejournal.com/1404024.html

My last assignment for the semester is done and I can do other things with my brain again! In celebration, let me tell you about the new animal we're living with here.

This is Ella, who is a 2 year old corgi crossbreed of some kind. She came from the humane society in Moose Jaw, and has been in love with us since the day we picked her up about a week and a half ago. The feeling is mutual.

She follows us around almost anytime we move around the apartment. When we're sitting still, she wants to lie down against us and snuggle. She's pretty low energy and chill most of the time, and while that's not the kind of dog I've wanted most of my life, she really is perfect for me right now. I can get dog cuddles basically any time I want them. She definitely fits an emotional support animal role for me.