Irritation

Bitmoji of my cartoon face as an
anthropomorphic salt shaker, because
I'm feeling salty today.

Random (mostly political) irritations this week include...

Asshats (whether flesh-and-blood or bot is immaterial) making wild statements like, "weLL, I gUEss it'S oK fOr a wHIte gUy 2 pLaY Black Panther, thEn!" No, you unmitigated buffoon, Black Panther's race is integral to his character and hugely important to the story. Helen of Troy's is not.

Even if we're going for "historical accuracy" (for a story including cyclopes and other non-human characters, but let's just say we're casting people who at least look Greek), Greece at the time the story is set had all sorts of trade and other relationships with Northern African people, and the character y'all have lost your mind about was hatched from an egg.

Also - historically - the Greeks were super gay.

If you absolute numb-nuts didn't know Elliot Page's former name and status, none of you would even have blinked at his casting. After all, he's fair-skinned, which seems to be the main factor behind most things the Gated Rat and his ilk say and do.

Speaking of that utter twonk, I'm still pissed about him using Grok as the name for his AI. He doesn't grok it. At all. If he did, he wouldn't be... well, all this.

I am also still annoyed that Grammarly keeps telling me ways "to sound more professional." This is my blog, you sorry excuse for an actual useful service. I just need you to shut up and catch my typographical errors. That's it.

Yertle is either dead or incapacitated, and either way, evidently wanted/wants to make the world as unfair and unpleasant as possible, even after his death/incapacitation. Why? Just hatefulness? It's not like you can take your ill-gotten gains with you.

Mister, of course all your favorite people (at least those that aren't you yourself) ran "the election" in Arizona. It was a Republican primary, you complete nincompoop.

LinkedIn, it's not "Easy Apply" if there are six hundred hoops to jump through/you have to do complicated things on the company's website as well as on LinkedIn's Easy Apply. No, I don't want to switch jobs, but I could really use some supplemental remote (or hyperlocal) work because my main job is seasonal and part-time.

On that note, all the job boards - including the ones aimed directly at me - evidently either ignore my filters for remote and part-time, or don't crack down on employers using inaccurate SEO terms in their listings.

If I had money to subscribe to your job-hunting service, I wouldn't be looking for work, would I? It's the same vibe as bank fees for overdrafts.

I'm irritable today (in case you hadn't noticed). I'm not feeling great and I can't tell if it's the usual existential dread or summer allergies or what, which just makes me more cranky. Hmph.

I mean, at least I had fun using insulting phrases in this post, I guess?

How Many Times?

A BitMoji cartoon of a brunette
with grey woman with a thought
bubble that is only scribbles

That is, how many times must we say it?

This (link-heavy) post is a collection of random thoughts and feelings and expressions of incredulity regarding the US government in 2026. I know they're not listening, and I know I've said most of it before - both here and on Vocal - but if even one person gets a clue from what I write, then I've done my good deed for the day.

And probably got some of this absurdity out of my brain. It's not good for my mental health to keep it all in there, and writing it out helps me stop turning it over and over in my head.

They can say it out loud on television, and some people still don't see it.

Or maybe they just don't care.

It would be funny in its ridiculousness if it weren't so dangerous.

The guy in charge of Health and Human Services is an antivaxxing eugenicist who thinks that neurodivergent folks should be put away somewhere. Given that he comes from a family that lobotomized and institutionalized one of their own, and that other members of his family did awesome things (like starting what evolved into the Special Olympics) with that, it makes me wonder what the hell happened to him. Maybe it was the snorting drugs off toilet seats.

Speaking of Weird Health Thoughts™, his buddy over at the Department of Defense (I try really hard not to deadname, but there are a few things like Department of War, Gulf of America, and Twitter that I don't... well, I just don't try very hard) has made a couple of Extra Weird™ ones lately. He made flu shots voluntary for the troops, which meant a bunch of them... wait for it because I'm sure you'll be surprised... got the flu. And now he wants to test all "troops" over 30 for low testosterone.

I think I sprained my eyes from rolling them so hard. Partly because he's so clearly a mess, but mostly because I know people who have always been fairly reasonable - and my definition of reasonable is fairly broad - who still think this is a good idea.

Those same people (remember, they used to be reasonable people, but I'm not naming names) apparently think that Himself can do no wrong... in spite of multi-million dollar penalties for sexual assault, being banned from running charities in at least one state, and gilding everything in sight. Obviously a lot of them are bots... but the ones I know live and in person are not. How can they still believe this shit?

"All libs do is complain and support groomers." 

Bullshit. First of all, I'm pretty far to the left of being "a lib,' secondly, the "groomers" aren't who you asshats think they are, and thirdly, I have very little say in all this. Yeah, I have the power (insofar as any member of the working poor citizenry does) to make changes. But it's not as simple as it sounds.

Anyway, nothing but the details of each atrocity and distraction is new... still same old same old, but honestly, what in the actual fuck.

Random June 2026

A BitMoji cartoon of a brunette
with grey woman with a thought
bubble that is only scribbles

Tried to start this post yesterday after work, but I was Too Damn Tired™. The end of the school year is always like that. Also, the world is a mess, what with trigger-happy cops applying instant death penalty (of a literal infant) for alleged shoplifting on the part of his mother, Himself declaring Himself the queen of the may after losing a war he started for no reason except boredom and self-indulgence (and distraction, but that's pretty much the case with everything he does), and all the rest of That Out There™. Plus, Lizzy not only got her usual head cold after the school year was over, but somehow also pulled a back muscle a few days before her summer job starts.

It's been a lot. But sleeping for almost nine hours last night helped.

So this is gonna be a random post of randomness, impressions and statements both political and non-, and a vent/rant/rave about all the things. And yeah, Grammarly can still bite me; this is my blog with my personal, conversational, and casual writing style. Cope.

I'm really going to miss my work kiddos. I mean, I always do, but this one pair of siblings I've had for two school years now, and the elder just graduated, and I don't know if the younger kid will stay in our district now. That said, most of my work kiddos say the wildest things all the time, I have a talent for relaying those comments, and my work bestie and I are going to officially compile cute things they say/do from all the drivers we can get to participate. Then we'll make a slideshow presentation at some work meeting or another at the end of next school year. I love a project just for the feel-good vibes.

Lizzy graduated from high school! My sister-in-law made fun signs of Lizzy's face for us to wave, I had a cake with her school logo and, "Congratulations Lizzy," on it, my mom hosted a little family graduation party, my dad took Lizzy and her school bestie to a favorite venue the next day at her request, and a good time was had by all (in spite of the year-end cold and the pulled muscle a few days later).

Abby graduates from college this December, and we have agreed that although it would've been nice to be done in June as originally planned (theater and education class credits don't play nice, schedule-wise), probably none of us could've managed two graduations in one weekend. It was an utterly bonkers schedule that weekend as it was!

I'm enjoying "bonkers" as a word choice these days.

Regarding Kids Say The Darndest Things, I had one teen student tell me that the Tesla Cybertruck looks like it wanted to be a spaceship but forgot how. So true.

Aside from helping family with their online pursuits, I'm not working this summer (unless I can find something remote for a few weeks), so I intend to spend the time while the kids are at their summer jobs working on my house and my body. If I can actually get an exercise routine going for long enough for it to become routine, I can keep it going after my work schedule ramps up in late August/early September.

"Pride is a sin!" Yeah, well, so is Wrath, but you seem awfully mad about it." I've used this a couple times this week and it felt good.

At the moment, that's all I've got. And here I was thinking that would be so hard yesterday afternoon.

Runs in the Family - WARNING: outdated jargon ahead

A gradient rainbow infinity symbol with white text reading,
"Why light it up blue... When we have a whole spectrum?"

I mean, of course it does. Anyone who trusts the science (or even basic logic) over Google University/Random Influencers/Autism (but not Autistic) Moms/Geriatric Addict Lawyers Cosplaying Doctors knows this. It's genetic, not the result of Tylenol use or vaccines or diet or (God help us) Wi-Fi signals.

In any case, I have here in my hot little hands what my youngest daughter calls "Mom's Half an Autism Diagnosis." I have reread it several times in the last four-plus decades, but this is the first time I've actually perused the accompanying documents, like the denial of special education services (or even assessments!) from the school district, and the letters between my parents and the school district.

It makes me so sad for thirteen-year-old Jenn.

And it still makes my mother both sad and furious about how Things Could Have Been Better if the district had accommodated any of my needs. Even now, 44 years later. Forty-four years later when both my kids went through this same school district with (ultimately, though it took some support for Lizzy) positive outcomes (my oldest graduated in 2021, even with the Covid BS, and my youngest graduates officially in about two-and-a-half weeks), and this school district is even my employer, albeit in a non-academic role.

To be absolutely fair, this testing and exchange of letters was in 1982, when if you had anything other than high support needs, what we now call Level 2 or 3 autism, or if you had massive intellectual disabilities concurrent with autism or ADHD, they didn't really have a way to do that in public schools, especially for girls, since most of them thought it was a boy thing. The laws regarding started changing in 1975, but those of us with "insufficient handicapping conditions" (ugh, what a phrase! But I warned you in the blog post title) fell through the cracks in a lot of ways until the 90s, when the Education for All Handicapped Children (EHA) act was renamed to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). There were contained classrooms, there was the alternative high school (but that was only for the "troublemakers" back then, and I wasn't hurting anyone or smoking or using drugs or getting pregnant or anything), and there was mainstream. 

Things are much, much better now. Which made my mom cry out of sheer relief when she attended Lizzy's IEPs with me after Laston's death. I tended to mist up as well, but I wasn't aware of all the ramifications when I was the student in question, so it didn't hit me quite as hard when it was my own child under discussion. And (as stated), it's a lot better now.

But the fact that they had a letter from a child psychologist saying I needed assessment and they refused to assess... well, to me that's just a dick move. I'm sure it had to do with money - everything in our society seems to - but how can you be in a special education profession and just basically say, "too bad, so sad, we think she's just being a drama queen because she's a teenager and her parents are divorced?"

So the psychologist said I had some learning issues, the schools refused to test me based on my grades (pretty solid B student through 7th grade, which they found "interesting" in that they thought I just acted out then, instead of coming to the logical (and true) conclusion that I hit algebra and my brain came to a screeching halt), so my dad took me to get a full neuropsychological workup. The results of this were basically that I was intelligent but hyperactive with learning disabilities, especially in sequencing and in more abstract math. My dad sent a letter to the district with these results (the letter is a thing of beauty; between this letter and my mom's ability to write super polite notes in which she (very sweetly) tells you to stick it, you can tell that I come by my writing skill honestly), and they agreed to assess me... but I don't really remember what happened after that, except that I had a tutor for math.

I have said before that my diagnosis is something like, "hyperactive with learning disabilities and sequencing deficits" but that if you put mine (from 1982) together with my daughter's "ASD Level one and ADHD Inattentive Type" (from 2017), they are close to identical, save for updated language.

Anyway, the whole point of this post is to show that things have improved, are improving... even though in the frustrations of the moment that's kind of hard to see.

Because that's an important thing to remember... especially as we're all close to burnout near the end of any given school year.

We're Trippin'

A bridge with a sign that
says Entering Oregon

Not that kind of trippin'.

WARNING: picture-and-link-heavy post!

Caveat: I know the world is shit right now, and I'm doing what I can. Donating goods, time, energy, and money, etc. But Normal Everyday Life with (Young Adult) Children™ is important too. To that end, this post is almost all Just Having Fun, except where All That Out There™ <waves vaguely> insists on sticking itself in.

This trip came about because Lizzy complained that she hadn't been out of the state for nine years (that's about half her life, y'all), and even then, it was for two hours at a pasta restaurant in Idaho. 

Given that that trip was primarily to deliver a third of her dad's ashes to his parents, view an eclipse, and leave Lee with the grandparents for a couple of weeks, I'm sure you can see her point. And it has also been a while since Lizzy and I have had the same spring break, as most years I have out-of-district students to transport, but this time they all had the same week off as we did.

So Lizzy and I spent Monday in recovery mode from the previous weekend's activities; Tuesday, I got a steroid shot in my left knee, we packed, and we attended a birthday party; and then Wednesday, we took off for Points South (and west). Where is Abby, you ask? At school, because her spring break was earlier in the season.

We were gone from Wednesday mid-morning to Saturday late afternoon/early evening, armed with a full tank of gas (in a hybrid, thank goodness, because even then it took two tanksful for the whole trip), a six-plus hour playlist of (mostly up-tempo) showtunes, and reservations for two hotels with pools (one in Washington State and one on the Oregon coast). Oh, and also some arthritis gel because it takes a minute to get the knee back to baseline after the shot.

Amazing "kids' size!" portion of
Macaroni and Cheese.

Last August, we spent Lizzy's 18th birthday at an Airbnb in Olympia, WA, and we so enjoyed The Sensory Toolhouse and Insert Coin Olympia that we planned the first leg of this trip around them. Went to dinner with my brother and sis-in-law (thanks for dinner!), where Lizzy wondered aloud why we would order Annie's Mac&Cheese at a restaurant. She had forgotten (or wasn't aware)  that the restaurant was called Tugboat Annie's (where one can get anything from yummy food to kayak rentals). Also, Lizzy and I kept getting the giggles because there are streets with single-word names like "COLLEGE" and Liz kept envisioning a college called simply that, as though it were a generic product.

I had a similar oopsie later in the trip (also cheese-related, funnily enough), because I asked her why it smelled so much like some of the areas with cows near home. Um, yeah, it smelled like cows where the winding mountain road of Highway 6 dumped us out right in front of the Tillamook Creamery. We did not do the Creamery tour; Lizzy pointed out that there's not enough Lactaid in the world for me to do that, at least not on a short trip like this. If we were there for a week or more, maybe, but not for just a couple of nights.🐮🧀🥛

Then we went down through Portland (Powell's City of Books is still a really good (and enormous) bookstore, but not as cool as I remember it, and it no longer has its own parking garage. It's also possible I oversold it based on 28-year-old memories), and down Highway 26 to Highway 6 to get to the Oregon Coast. Our friends who live down near the town where we stayed had warned us about Highway 53, but Highway 6 was... something. Any road that features permanent Rough Road signs could maybe use a little help. Of course, there were also several somewhat terrifying one-word signs (ROCKS! TRUCKS! SLIDES!) scattered about (COLLEGE), and a wild number of changes to the speed limit. Like it would change a couple of times in the space of a single mile, again with permanent signs rather than advisories.

We were not expecting our double-queen hotel suite to be an

A green-haired girl in a sunflower swim
dress, carrying a pink plastic pail away
from the camera on a beach at sunset

actual small apartment. What hotel room has one two-queen bedroom, a bath and a half, with a full (if small) living room, dining area, and kitchen? The clerk said that the building without the ocean view (I'm unwilling to pay so much more for the view) contains the biggest suites, but Expedia didn't make that super clear. We had lunch with family friends in the nearby town of Wheeler (not that Wheeler), but we didn't stay as long as I would've liked, because Lizzy evidently needed to get back to The Actual Real Ocean™.

Lizzy has been staying at my mom's timeshare on Puget Sound on and off her entire life, but this - the freaking Pacific Ocean - is the real deal. Inlets like the one Wheeler is on are fine and all, but they are not The Biggest Ocean on the Planet either. So we'll have to go for a longer stay the next time, so we have more time for the ocean and for other things as well.

A picture of a sunset over the beach,
where the water is a fried egg.

On the way back home, we experienced more ROCKS! SLIDES! TRUCKS! and my personal favorite, which is "Entering (or "Leaving") Tsunami Hazard Zone." We stopped for breakfast at a cool place called Yolk, where they have agate inlaid into the pathways and funky egg-based art on the walls. This restaurant had a similar vibe to The Braeburn in Langley, Whidbey Island, WA, to me, in spite of different music, decor, etc. Just vibes. We went up Highway 101 this time, and almost ran out of gas at one point, because there is a loooooong way between gas stations up in there, but we did find one in a tiny town while my gas gauge was still at one tick, but hadn't started flashing the OMG-low-fuel indicator. Whew! Also, Washingtonians hold their breath in tunnels (except the driver, of course, if you're smart), but Oregonians evidently honk their horns. It was madness near Portland on the way home!

Once back in Washington State, and with me starting to get frazzled (this has been a long drive even by my standards, and I drive for a living), we pulled off the freeway at Centralia to check out the Centralia (the original; the Olympia one is newer) branch of Insert Coin. The Olympia branch is newer, brighter, and bigger (and has massage chairs, which is not to be discounted), but the original is objectively just cooler, in a nerdy way. The floor tiles (and the tater tots) are all shaped like Tetris pieces. The sink in the ladies' restroom is a barrel a la Donkey Kong. Drinks are called potions, etc.

Lizzy wants to go to the Centralia Insert Coin for her 21st birthday celebration (about 2.5 years from now, on Labor Day Weekend). It's only a couple of hours' drive as long as it's not rush hour, so I think we can probably manage that, and who knows how often we'll be back in the meantime?

Because we will be back.

Also?

COLLEGE! ROCKS! SLIDES! TRUCKS!

Something Positive for Once...

The Greenlight logo, which is, y'know, green

...although it's a tiny bit bittersweet, in a my-baby-is-growing-up sense.

I can't believe I didn't include Greenlight in any of my Best Purchases of the Covidpocalypse posts, because it absolutely was one of the best purchases we made.

We started with Greenlight as a new way to give Lizzy (then 13?) her allowance. Because we live in a semi-rural area (so no public transportation to speak of, and it's too far to walk to a store except a local convenience store with no sidewalks), if I gave Lizzy her allowance in cash as we had done previously, she really had no way to spend it.

I don't even remember how we found Greenlight, because it was before my bank started advertising it. 

It's essentially a prepaid debit card, with parental controls on where the kiddos can shop. I sent a monthly allowance to her, and if she got, say, birthday money, or good-grades money, or weeded-grandma's-garden money, that could be sent to her card, with me vetting all deposits so she wasn't getting money from god-knows-who (safety first!). So she had the kid version of the app on her phone, and I had the adult version on mine. If she wanted to buy something from a store (or online) that wasn't already added by me, her app could request permission to add that seller to her approved list.

It was great, and it gave her some freedom she otherwise wouldn't have had. And when I decided I needed to cancel it (she's had her own checking account for a while now, so I didn't want to pay the $5.99 a month anymore), the company was really chill about it. They did ask why, but as one of the choices was "my kid has outgrown it," this was clearly something they had prepared for.

Decent, and in this world, basic decency is not to be discounted!