Boot or Sandal?

The important posts here will be friends only for the foreseeable future (Some special posts will continue to be made available to everyone, though.) ...Not trying to hate on folks; just trying to protect some semblance of privacy here - for myself and for the other cool individuals who interact here (I know you're out there...)

My social circle keeps getting taken through changes in Trump's second chance to fck up these United States. One couple (including the woman who married my husband and me) who also had Canadian citizenship have moved full-time to Oshawa, Ontario as of last week for healthcare rea$on$ (and to tend to her aging parents). To make things really interesting, their two adult children (one a fresh college graduate) have moved up with them. I'm not actually mad at that, just hurt that they all felt no other good choice in the matter, and sad for the husband's two older children from his first marriage who had no such option because of having two U.S.-born parents.

On top of that, the Big Loaded Crackpipe (It sure ain't beautiful, and it's more ransom note than "bill" IMHO.) and the sledgehammer it took to nonprofit funding just cost two other friends their jobs at an organization I think highly of, as of last Friday. I found out when one of them changed their job status on FecesBorg to "Retired" over the weekend.

So, what's great?

It's 7:35pm, and I expected to be having dinner at the Willy Street Fair mixed in with a little dancing to some club DJ's at the end of the street closed to the Wisconsin State Capitol. Instead, I'm home, 55 (my age now - who knew that'd ever happen? miles away from there. We left early because husband - not an insignificant number of years my senior - was achy from standing during most of the show - and had seen the one performer he'd wanted, and it was starting to drizzle anyway ( brief, but he was determined, and we drove together), so...

I feel like the need to be at the party until it's no longer a party - the desire to be counting among the "cool kids" that I've had since I was a nerdy, no-fashion sense, preteen who wanted to be where the fun was - is slamming against the grey hairs, the knees and hips doing things they didn't as recently as 45 or 50, ththe sexy [[human beings of appropriate gender]] no longer seeing anything that appealing when you walk past - I liked being cruised, checked out and objectified that way, really!! - and the dozing off in the daytime (which I did in the passenger side on the ride home, to cap things off poorly). Personally, I don't like feeling the impact of that collision.

I figured a little vacation (sun and lazy time and all that) would help snap me out of the mess after a recent (6 weeks ago) server upgrade. One problem with that is that the server cleanup is still very much an active thing after 6 weeks, and the pointman role is apparently still not my strong suit.

Also, the nagging feeling that I've vastly overstayed my welcome at my job is rising in me again, and wants to be heard out (and the suddenly increasing number of cold calls and emails from recruiters for no visible reason isn't helping matters there!). Do I still have a next chapter in me at 49, after 17 years at the same gig?

Everyone's getting high-maintenance around me all of a sudden. I'd rather just be high.

My sleep stops in 2018...

Madison, WI
Gays Mills, WI
Milwaukee, WI
Katona, SD
Bozeman, MT
Sagle, ID
Shelton, WA
Vancouver, BC
Salt Spring Island, BC
Seattle, WA
Oacoma, SD
Brooklyn, NY

I could've done without today so far.

I need some more Goodbyes to actually stay gone (and maybe just as many Hellos to stay a while longer).

The presence of dementia makes you grieve for some people earlier than you're supposed to.

(BACKGROUND: My sister Magen called me last night, reporting that our mother is in the hospital with a not-insignificant infection - basically bedsores cleaned up to the extent that my sisters could do, but things got missed, and the odor was lingering. Magen also hinted that, although things don't appear necessarily grave, that I should consider an October trip to New York. I and my wallet both winced.)

I'm a little bummed (again, but this has been the 800-pound gorilla in my life for the last few years, so that's just par for the course.), needless to say.