Well, dear readers… Long time, no write, huh?

I’m sorry to say that I haven’t been feeling very well lately. I’ve been getting a lot of headaches lately and pressure in my skull for some reason. I think it may be from either a really bad sinus infection that moved to my brain (that happened to me once before) or from the arthritis in my neck (as that’s where a lot of this pain starts). It’s been going on for months, slowly getting worse. I finally caved and went to my GP. He didn’t even examine me… After telling him my symptoms, he decided it was a muscular issue and wants to send me for physical therapy. Forget that I told him prior to this conclusion that muscle relaxers didn’t do shit… I’m not sure what’s happened. He used to be a good GP. Now it seems he’s like all the other doctors, out to make a buck with doing the least amount of work possible. I tried going to a different GP to get a second opinion on another matter and that went even worse. I’m beginning to think that there aren’t any descent doctors around me anymore…

I’ve also been incredibly depressed… I’m still having issues with my weight. I’ve been on this, for the most part, no calorie diet (salads with nothing fattening or high in calories) and I’m still gaining!! I haven’t found a doctor yet who believes me when I say I’m not overeating or eating bad things. Even my friends agree I’m not doing these things. So what’s with the weight gain?! I’m so ashamed of myself that I don’t want to leave my house anymore. I was never fat. I was always a skinny twig, except when I was on certain antidepressants. Even then I didn’t gain as much as I have now. So they check the things that make most sense and, when that’s not it, they just give up. I know I’m getting older… I know your metabolism slows… I know menopause is also a factor. But I went through menopause 18 years ago! I would have had this type of weight gain before now! I’m so down on life right now, I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to look up again. Thanks, doctors…

Now this is fat… Haiku is just this amorphous blob of a cat, haha…

Aside from fat shaming my cat, I haven’t really done much. I’ve mostly been sitting here, binge watching shows and movies. Depression is a horrible thing… But it does allow you to catch up on those shows you started and never finished.

I did, however, go grocery shopping for Thanksgiving to get everything I needed. But even that didn’t go well… I didn’t realize one of the bags was incredibly heavy until I went to put it in the back of the car. When I picked it up, I was totally unprepared for that and had to quickly toss it in the car before I dropped it. That was dumb… I ended up pulling a muscle in the lower part of my ribs. Do you know how bad it hurts to pull a muscle there?! If you don’t, let me assure you that it’s incredibly painful and makes it more than uncomfortable to breathe (because of the pain). So I’ve also been lying around to try and allow that muscle to heal. So far it isn’t going very well. Not only that, but since I have osteoporosis, I need to be careful that I don’t break anything.

And when I’m bored with television, I’m spending time in my little Animal Crossing world with my villagers and my best bud, Punchy (the blue cat). Isn’t he adorable? He runs around my island, playing airplane, with that same expression and I can’t help but smile at the cuteness of it all. Believe me, I’ll take anything I can get that makes me smile at this point… If Punchy running around my island is what it takes, so be it. Besides, I wanted to redo some things on my island that weren’t making me happy anymore and things I thought were weird or didn’t make sense (some things just don’t happen in a natural landscape). I also finally decided that I only wanted a few colors of flowers around my island and more of certain flowers than others. I still have a collection of all the types and colors in a garden, but the rest of the island only has a few. That took forever… But there’s a major update in January for the game and I want my island to be at least satisfactory when it gets here.

I do have one thing to look forward to… If it ever gets here…

I happened to have the good fortune of being able to snag two of the latest Labubu series from Pop Mart! How I got to them before they sold out, I have no idea… Anyway, they finally shipped 9 days ago! But here’s where it get’s weird… It got into my neighboring state, to the intake part of their shipping facility, Monday night. It went to the delivery facility Tuesday night… The city it’s in is an hour to an hour and a half by car away from here. Why is it currently not in my hands?! It’s moving slower since it got to the US than it took to move all through China and a plane ride from there to here! Seriously, what the actual fuck?! Are we this inept here that we can’t move packages through a fucking system?! Good heavens! I made it through pretty much all of fucking China and survived a plane ride here! You can’t figure out, two days after you get it in the delivery area, how to get it to my house only a hour or so away?! If I thought I could, I’d drive there and show them how it’s done.

And there are other perks to being depressed and binge watching… You get to return to those deep, philosophical thoughts, like how stupidly the movie Ghost ends. Aside from being so annoying that it ruined “Unchained Melody” for me forever… My mother and I used to argue about the ending. Look, I realize the reason she said “Ditto” when he told her he loved her was reversing the roles (that was how he always responded to her saying it). But it’s not a sweet, romantic gesture to me. This is the last time she’s going to see him, he’s going to ascend to heaven and no more Sam. You would think, since she loved him so much, that she’d want her last words with him to be profound, a declaration of how wonderful he had made her life, something meaningful… Nope, she chooses to say “Ditto”… What the actual fuck… That’s stupider than Titanic when Rose promises Jack she’ll “never let go” before literally letting him go to sink into the ocean. Maybe I shouldn’t be so damned literal…

I know, you’re all thinking like my mother on that subject. But it’s always been in my nature to over analyze absolutely everything. It’s not a bad thing per se, but it does kind of ruin the enjoyment the writers/actors/animators wanted me to have. I know this… But the logical side of my brain just can’t let it go without trying to make their reasoning make sense. I obviously fail, but I give it the old college try, hahahaa. I could make an entire entry about tv programs and movies I watched that made no fucking sense. Actually, I did… It was about one of the original Star Trek episodes. If you want to listen to me rant on and on about a paradox, it’s somewhere in my early entries…

But don’t think I haven’t been productive…

You see this? This is a five gallon soup pot full of foulness. That’s cut up pumpkin… Yes, much as I hate/loathe/despise pumpkin pie, I make it every year (for everyone else) and refuse to make it if I don’t have fresh pumpkin, This year I got pumpkins called Blue Hubbard because the guy at the produce place assured me these were the best for pie. They’re so tough you need to cut them open with a saw, but they made the most amazing looking puree! As to how the pie will taste or how the thick seeds they had will roast, that remains to be seen… But yes, I cut up, boil and smoosh it by hand through a ricer. It may be time consuming and sound like a huge waste of time to you, but I assure you, nothing tastes as good (so I’m told) from this labor of love.

Listen… I come from a long line of bakers. My grandfather owned a bakery in my hometown. If I used anything less than fresh pumpkin, I’d be disgracing that lineage, wouldn’t I…?

So to end this rambling about nothing, I’m going to tell you what I’m most thankful for. That’s my baby, Baxter. He’s been there for me and has helped me through a lot of mental issues over the years. He’s loving, patient, devoted… And he’s just too fucking cute! I don’t know where I’d be today if I didn’t have him. He’s my best friend and I can only hope that I’m his as well. He is what I’m most thankful for. How about you? What are you most thankful for? Leave me a comment to let me know!

Have a happy, healthy Thanksgiving!