Grandma's Back in Hospital, UTI Factories & 1,800+ Other Words
Well the day started off fair enough. There were not too many complications with getting Grandma situated before I had to leave for work. I got her lunch ready and she had actually finished eating before I had head out, so I whipped up the dishes quickly as well. Unfortunately when I got home, Christina did not have the same report. Apparently at around noon an occupational therapist called Christina to let her know she would be coming over today when Christina got off of work.
The lady had come here and they both had trouble getting Grandma off the chair. The lady had concluded rather quickly that Grandma had a UTI. So when I got home, she brought me up to speed, we went down and got Grandma (together) to the bathroom, but during that process we realized that something was up. So I reached out other my Sister and go there insights and feedback, then I called my Mother and we concluded it was best to call for the ambulance and have Grandma taken back to hospital.
So just like that, Grandma's back in the hospital. These fucking places that mask themselves as rehabilitation facilities are really just UTI factories. The lack of care and compassion is written on all the employees faces from those working at the front desk, to those working in the rooms with the elderly patents. They just couldn't make it any more obvious how little fuck they actually give. Maybe it's a requirement to be a cold and calculating drone with no family and no emotions, or maybe we just have lucked out and got all bad ones, every time she has been there, but my pattern-recognition algorithm goes crazy when I think about it.
Also, as luck would have it, just now as things have gone sideways again, Meijer and Woodman's both reached out for interviews. Woodman's sounds very desperate for help. The lady even said on the phone that I should bring my license and social security or birth certificate, so that, if I take an offered position, I can get filed into the system straight away. But now it's like IDK what to do. I can't simply call this lady and be like, well things are sideways with Grandma so, without going into too much detail lets just put the interview on hold until I have a clearer understanding of where I'm at before I obligate myself one way or the other. The fact that I'm applying for a retail position and don't have availability that's totally open (the way most retailers require of their people) really does have me in a strange spot. I was sort of hoping to skate thru the whole interview without having to talk about my situation, even tho my situation is the only reason I would be considering stocking groceries on the graveyard shift in the first place. Family first. Grocers want employees that know nothing other than "Work First, Life Later, and if we can't even get to that second part, well at least work is good" and they're totally okay with that.
There is a quote that will randomly pop up if you issue the fortune command on a Linux terminal, considering you have the fortune-mod package installed. The stock one, not the extras you pile on later. It reads:
Don't act unless you must, and when you must act; hesitate.
Now I shouldn't have probably put that behind a blockquote cos I'm not exact sure that's precisely how it is stated, but that's the premise. But boy that shit stuck with me from the first time that I saw it, and not necessarily in a good way. You see I'm really good at camping on decision making when it matters and so many of these "important" life decisions that I have made were akin to Two-Face flipping his coin in Batman, I just simply left it to chance. But that has been in my nature the entire time of my existence. I try to not make many waves or get in other people's way. I let people walk all over me at work, and I take shifts for this person and that, and I close then open the next day and I don't complain, but if you ask me if I need anything it's always: "No, I'm sir, thank you." Even tho at the time saying such a thing, I'm literally the personification of the "This Is Fine" meme.
So who knows, I'll make the decision on what to do about the interview tomorrow morning when I wake up. I hate that my life is literally going the way the wind blows. I was griping about how difficult it was to help Grandma get on when she got home this past Friday and now here I am really wishing she was here at home with us right now. It's such a shit storm. It would be 'easier' I suppose, if Grandm'a mind was gone and she wasn't mentally all there as fucked up as that is to say. But she's sharp as a fucking tack, like it's embarrassing the amount of history she can recall out of memory where I struggle to recall what I did yesterday have relied on things such as Browser History, my Photo Album on my phone and my Obsidian Daily Notes for years to recall almost anything. In a lot of way I have fallen apart in areas where I was certain I would solid for an eternity and longer. There are parts of me that define me as a person, that were things I was adamantly against even in my thirties. I wouldn't go back in time and give younger me advice, I would go back in time and beat the living fuck out of younger me and came back a few hours later and did it again. But I don't say that to sound down on myself, I just get so angry at how much I thought I understood the world, and "saw thru things other people couldn't". Humbling doesn't quite itch the spot as well as it should when you realize that everyone in the world is going thru the same struggles.
Aw fuck I am all over the place right now. This is crazy. But is also the first time I have had a bit of time to write and this particular seating arrangement flows quite well with the MX keys. I'm setup in the kitchen with the laptop up on the high-riser, MX keys and mouse. MX keys are nice but there is just something about the dip in the keys that I just haven't gotten used to yet. They are by far the best typing experience I have had on my MacBook, me the default keyboard just ain't the best of friends, but I'm a 30+ years user of split keyboards, so I'm naturally going to hate everything that makes me have my hands close together.
I bought Christina the Galaxy 8 Fold Ultra or is it Galaxy Fold 8 Ultra!? IDK. She loves it. It's slick as hell tho. I'm by no means a fan of the opening phones, but there is something quite special about the size of that thing when it's opened up. Especially for some big ass hands like I have. Some of the apps, the way they are laid out when they're on that full big screen is real nice, not to mention the split-screening of two apps at the same time. Oh boy, that would just make my day, but I would sooner just get a cup of coffee and have a seat at the desk. But I do like the idea of having the flexibility of just "setting up" wherever that place might be at any given moment. We got her setup with an Otterbox and they did it right, the way they always do. So that's all said and done, we severed ties with her carrier, she has a random extra Galaxy 24 Ultra, and she's on my carrier now all under one roof.
Oh, I got a new phone too. Not into that new-new anymore, so it was last years flagship iPhone. Finally retired the ol' iPhone 12 Pro Max. She was still humming along, but that battery was toast. I thought about replacing it, but I knew this move would happen sooner than later, getting Christina on my carrier/plan/etc, so I guess I was thinking this would all sort of happen the way it did in the back of my mind without really making a decision (as mentioned earlier). Took her out of the Otterbox and she still looks brand new. Ordered a Commuter Otterbox for it, as to distinguish it from the new phone. I will keep it around for a mobile music player, Hue light controller and just another device to have around to steal my data and surveil me. Let's be honest, it's so I have more readily available cameras for the cats. Without looking at photo galleries to confirm, that might have been longest running phone I've had since the first Pixel.
Put Cinnamon back on the tower. Chezmoi makes distro-hopping easy. MATE was fun, and I do love GNOME, but I guess it wasn't clear on how much Mint-related things have baked into muscle memory over the years, so I just went back to it. I did also try Omarchy while I was hopping over the course of those two days. It's really neat and everything, but as much stuff as I would have to rework into muscle memory all sorts of keyboard shortcuts and new workflows, I basically have my own version off all that stuff already setup in my own little hacked up version of Mint. And I really ain't into all that flashy shit either. I could have the most powerful computer on the planet, I still want all that power for whatever I'm doing, not to use those resources to make my computer like it's back from the future and all synthwaved out. I'm not trying to shit on the project or anything like that, I really do like what they're up to over there, it really is good to see Linux get the spotlight like that. And it's even more satisfying to see how the success of a new distro can rile up the old Linux nerds. Holy fuck, never thought a synth wave wallpaper would make the entire Bluesky platform start making all sorts of wild claims about who dhh is as a person. But's nothing to get too upset about either. Those same nitwits will reach the halfway point in their own lives and look back and realize just how fucking stupid they really were when they were younger. I think if you don't feel that way about your younger self, you probably haven't changed much and have a lot of the same problems you found yourself facing when you were younger.
But there are no single answer solutions to every single persons problems and that's why getting along matters. Being constructive and helping each other out is only way out of this shit storm. That's why influential people divide us and have so for years. The same power and influence that controls the world wouldn't be as powerful and influential compared to a unified majority pulling on the rope in the same direction. That's why Black vs. White, Right vs Left, Men vs Women always has to be a thing. It keeps the in-fighting alive so we don't realize who the real oppressors are.
The Classical Station has been playing almost twenty fours a day since Brandon from North Carolina first mentioned it on his blog earlier this year. However, Marilyn Manson dropped a new album this past month, and while I was not able to listen to it properly for reasons I am not fully prepared to discuss, I have spent some quality time with it lately to-and-from work. Well, I must say, each time this releases a new album, I am thankful that I have followed this guy for as long as I have. Back in the 90s I would have never thought Manson would have even had made it to the year 2026, let alone be sober and writing lyrics the way he does nowadays. While I don't think there is a reality where Marilyn Manson doesn't wear makeup during the day, he has basically dropped all other forms of the "idea" of Marilyn Manson. This record is pretty self-reflective, very self-reflective for Manson, and definitely some wordplay in there that has you thinking maybe he's talking about politics or maybe not. But that's been a hallmark of his for years. You can read his lyrics on paper and they read a certain type of way, but then you can hear him sing the words and it land entirely differently. He did this nearly in every song back in the day, but that I think led to people reading way too far into him and that's why after the Holywood album he sort of simplified his lyrics almost as a way to put a barrier between what he was trying to say and he he really felt. But then as the years wore on, and age I suppose, he started to look at himself more deeply and that's when self-reflective tones started to trickle in. But there there is one line in-particular that he says twice on two different songs I believe: "There may be heaven on my mind, but there is hell in my heart." Perhaps he says the same thing a different way on the other song, but just the principal alone of Marilyn Manson saying those words speaks leaps and bounds as to how far he has come as person. Some of the music itself is pretty uncharacteristic of past work. I mean don't get me wrong, it's a Marilyn Manson album, but there some hard blues inspired guitar going on, and lot more emphasis on just the rhythm of the overall project. That last track goes hard tho. Take a seat.
There are one or two Manson songs that I have to just to immediately skip upon hearing the opening notes (Korn's "Daddy" is one too). Lyrics or music so powerful that it can literally transport me to a different time and place, and not always the best places. This isn't inherently related to the content of the songs themselves and this looking the fundamental misconception of Marilyn Manson directly in the crosshairs. Those songs that I cannot listen to, for one reason or another, some event happened in the past and that song helped me get thru that event in my life and get back to baseline. Oftentimes this was during extreme bouts of severe sort of intense crying or just you know, being balled up on the floor or someshit, just completely fucked. That song on repeat, over and over and over. But then the storm passes, but then that song is cursed; because it now holds all that energy. Those don't really happen anymore, you know, I'm old, I've figured out that most of the working class uses their self-hatred or frustrations with the world as fuel for motivation for work.
In classic William fashion, we will now transition from Marilyn Manson's latest album to where I am at with my reading of the Bible. Well I will admit, that last week leading up to Grandma's release, I was slacking hard as shit. We're talking multiple days of missed reading stacked on top each other, almost collecting dust. I would always have my Kindle in my backpack, but I just never found a time to pull it out while visiting with Grandma. I mean the idea was like if she sort of was into some program on the television or something when I got there, I would just sort of read until the program ended and then visit with her, but she was always listening to the news so it just never became a thing. And those nights by the time we got home and showered and all of that, it's pushing 21:00 and I'm typically up by 06:00. But whatever I am back on the horse daily again. Despite all the progress we have made, we have barely put a dent in the Bible overall. I am halfway thru Samuel 1, to be specific. I did see a SRS Podcast with a high ranking Cardinal who discussed both the Old and New Testament and I was happy that I understanding a lot of what he was discussing of the books that I have read.
Speaking of, it's time to go spend a bit of quality time with Shadow, Pixel and Penny before sitting down for a nice read before heading to bed for the evening.
I just came out full-screen in iA Writer and see I have somehow spit out ~2,800 words. With that many characters in this body, the only thing we can know for sure is nobody will read it.