Took an hour longer to get to the city through the woods tonight, as there were a million fireflies, the deer were barking and looking for mates, owls and hedgehogs were making noise. It was fern season, Midsummer, magic time. 

Because balance

It is only orderly that after receiving the loveliest thank-you letter from a customer, and of course reading it aloud to G for the universe to hear, a day later I am faced with a hostile, threatening, demeaning customer who claims I sent her substitutes and not what's she paid for and that I am inbound for five 1-star reviews. I have no idea what happened, because she refuses to send me a photo of what she got. I am not saying it's not possible I made a mistake, but the way she is wording it, I sent her fakes. I suggested those could perhaps be the bonus paints I add? But to actually forget to pack three paints? Did I mix up the orders? But she claims she got two out of five ... I am not saying it's not possible. It is bound to happen eventually. It is more than possible I am at fault and I did deeply apologise and offer immediately to fix it. Up until now customers were very gracious and thankful I always added some more 'apologies' bonuses.

buuuuuuuuuuuuuuut...

As of this moment, she only insults and threatens me further, when I ask for a photo. 

I weighted the sum of paint that should amount to what her package weighted. No way there were not at least six paints in there. Unless I added something heavy, but, again, a photo would help.

Her FB profile is... problematic. 

These four details combined - her aggression, threats, FB wall, refusal to cooperate and inconsistency in the weight she accused me of (Like, dude, Verona ochre is dry as a bone, it weights NOTHING.), her insults and then long silences ... 

I guess we'll find out what happens when I get five 1-star reviews (she explained she is telling everyone what a disappointment my shop is, regardless). So. We'll finally find out how sharp this Damocles' sword that's been hanging over my head since I opened. 

Not that I'm demented, just very tired and my brain is elsewhere :D

So yesterday, after some mowing, tending to bees and then finally spraying the vineyard - with the two-day sunny weather window we've been offered - we get home and it's evening and I'm excited with new ideas, but tired. I should sleep, but my brain is abuzz. G asks me to find a bakery still open and get some bread when I go down to walk the dog.

I grab the dog, wind some small streets to get to the one with a baker, and I notice an old gentleman kinda looking around on one of the corners. He seems more amused than confused and more leisureful than lost, but still. he makes a few steps, looks around, smiling, stops, looks around. My first instinct is he's got dementia and has wandered off, even though he does not seem to be particularly concerned about it. I tie the dog to the little nook outside the bakery, go in, get a loaf and watch the old gent though the window. Sharing my idea with the lady at the till, I suggest to check if perhaps he's lost and we could call someone? She waves it off, saying he comes in all the time, it's just how he stroll in the evenings. Great, I thank her, and head home. While unlocking the house gate, it occurs to me I should probably take the dog out for potty....................

.......................
Whoops O.O

...



aaaaaawkward.
I hurry back, round the corner and see that my poor dog is sitting outside the bakery, giving me the: "I understand sometimes you act weird, but where did you go??" sad dog face.

Skulking like a ninja, so that the bakery lady doesn't see me, "Who's demented now??" I sneak under the windows, untie the dog and hurry home.

It's a good thing I don't have babies. I would literally need to put the baby on the holding end of a leash so that they would have ME tied down. 

When you buy your wedding ring on Ali Express.

:D
Guess this shows how little I think of wedding rings. 

I did such an unusual thing (for me) last night. An unknown, liberating sense of abandon. We drove to Drej's family's exhibition - her parents and sister all came together to exhibit their work and because they are from a fairly small, ambitious town (one very dear to me), this was quite an event. The exhibition took place in a really old building, like, we are talking castle-age, and it was lovely. I've certainly never seen an all-family exhibit before - and they are all completely different creatives. I was asked to shoot, but kinda mentioned I no longer take my camera to the field, as it is rather old and I haven't the finance to invest in a new one, whereas I still direly require to shoot my promotional material. But since Drej's mate has a camera much like Marki is, I said I'm happy to just push the big button. It's really second nature to me. The chubby idiot with the camera, in the corner of social events. 

The even less characteristic part was, though Drej's mate asked if I'll be taking the memory card to brush up the shots, I just chuckled, thinking how much other work I have and feeling so oddly NOT territorial about it, my psyche felt as light as air. I would normally be sunk into the unedited photos teeth and claws. But naah, dude. You go ahead. I'm over that. Even if people have bags under their eyes on my shots, so be it. That used to drive me nuts. 

I'll admit, tho. I did kinda miss it. I've forgotten how much I like human faces.

Same old, same old.

Days are never easy. My parents are still my parents, still making one another's life a pain. I tried giving them one of G's credit cards, so they would stop constantly bickering over money (They're not poor, just annoying), but they still almost divorced four times and killed one another once by the time they returned from their weekly shopping. Mum is trying hard, but I know that if she makes any kind of mistakes - like missing a road exit today and having to drive around - dad won't shut up about it and then when she kicks him in the balls, he is suddenly the victim and the tortured old man. I called to ask how he is and he explained his usual, how bad everything is, closing with: Let us see if we survive this night ...

Well. I've lived with their bullshit for over forty years. I worry all the time, but they haven't managed to kill one another yet. I'm sure someday they will and two nice police officers will knock on my door to inform me, and this tragedy will tear me to pieces, but ... I am kinda really not even invested anymore. "I just don't know what to do anymore..." Well, dada, every time you cry for help, five people come running, rain or shine, night or day, heat or snow, to try and advise and support you and ready to do anything you think is right, two days later you tell us all to go fuck ourselves for being judgmental and to mind our own business. This happens once a month for the past ... at least twenty years. And of course he is riding his 'poor old man' train hard and will tell me to uselessly go fuck myself if I don't know how to set up subtitles on his channel, or if I ask if he'd manage to stay alive for two weeks on his own, and yet he's never had to set up a doctor's visit in his entire existence. It's mum who manages all that and drives him. He has no idea what the name of his doctor is, what medication he needs or how to ask for a prescription. So. You either need mum or you don't, dad. You don't even know how to answer a flip phone, because mum always answers the phone. 

G and I have been going uphill to try and mow some of the vineyard - due to constant rain and dad not being able to work the estate anymore, the terraces have turned to a jungle. We need to spray the vines, we just have to make our way to them first. Ooh, but the fringes are overgrown with raspberries and I love raspberries! And the bees do, too!

I attempted to extract the atlas from a decrepit dog cadaver I found by the road. I should probably try again with my eyes open, because it takes a certain kind of idiot to mistakenly extract the pelvis. In my defence, the cadaver is a mess. It's melted into black goo with ribs sticking out like a broken wicker basket. Being overgrown and me not really wishing to look too closely, I am not even sure there IS a skull. There sure weren't any femurs. G is not too happy, but I barked at him that when he brings the taxidermist a skull it's a trophy, but when I do it, I need professional help. I've put the thing, whatever it is, on an anthill to clean. 

I'm in a mood for a zombie movie. I haven't seen a good one in a long time. 

Awww, a thousand followers! Only took me since the founding of Instagram to get here! ... I should have posted my tits more, I knew it.

If only I knew how to screen-cap my phone.
So many things make sense, once you look at them from that view...

Back to talking ..

Party's over, sorry G. I can speak just fine today :D

(It was still uncomfortable to speak yesterday, so I invoked my right to a select mutism. (I get about five allowances per year to just stop talking.) Not that G's complaining. It's just weird. You can hear all the machines humming and traffic from the street.

Okay, so.

I was just explaining earlier to G, how my brain is trying to out-algorithm internet and will sometimes suggest things before it has time to measure them. Example, I would walk into the hallway at night on my way to the bathroom and one of G's tremendously huge shoes would be lying there, in the dark. The brain KNOWS what it is, because G always leaves his boots like that, lying around at the door area, but the brain will take the minimal margin between sensory registration and mental analysis and suggest, perhaps it's a really huge black dog! .. or I will walk around a corner and sun will reflect from a shop window and my brain will alarm me there's a huge truck with bright headlights about to hit me!! .... It's always these pompous, dramatic, over-the-top thoughts. A small leaf will fall from the tree and momentarily obscure my vision, hitting the sunglasses, and the brain will yell: hot air balloon is crushing onto you!!..
      I appreciate your sense of drama, brain, thank you, you get points for effort, but ... you're over-shooting. Keep it down a notch. Keep it plausible.

So, G utters this tiny phrase, in Slovenian: Misli vsiljivke. "Thoughts which push themselves in." Like intruding thoughts. Intrusive thoughts. And I'm like ... what do you mean? There's a name for it besides IMAGINATION? My brain constantly trying to push more drama into my life is ... normal??
    So I try to google them and OCD keeps popping up. And suddenly I have this list of features people with OCD generally display:
       - awful aversion to being touched(dude, I just slept for five hours because a dentist put his hands into my mouth)
       - washing their hands fifty times a day (Fuck yes)
       - hoarding (Oh, good gods, yes)
       - freaking out if things are out of symmetry (Yeeeesss...So?)
       - obsessing about injuries (Constantly. Like. CONSTANTLY)
       - inappropriate violent or sexual fantasies (Er ... inappropriate? What does that entail?)
       - stacking things ... (I worked in a dollar store. I staked like the devil.)

and so on. What the fuck are inappropriate sexual fantasies? Being gangbanged by twenty orcs is called fan fiction. Thinking of G horribly killed by robbers is what I do every day. Both my parents dead is what I think first when they don't answer the phone. Having cancer is what I think first when my stomach hurts from eating warm pudding. World ending is what I think about when I pack my camping gear. Murdering autistic children is what I do for practise while I'm writing. It's called having an imagination. I am actually insulted if I run into a subgenre on Porhub I'm not familiar with. How does anyone dare have more imagination than me!

... LoL, Wiki says: Sexual obsession involves intrusive thoughts or images of "kissing, touching, fondling, oral sex, anal sex, intercourse, and rape" with "strangers, acquaintances, parents, children, family members, friends, coworkers, animals and religious figures", involving "heterosexual or homosexual content" with persons of any age.
   
So .... fucking?
I don't get it. What's bad about thinking about sex? Sex is fun.
Wiki: Common sexual themes for intrusive thoughts for men involve “(a) having sex in a public place, (b) people I come in contact with being naked, and (c) engaging in a sexual act with someone who is unacceptable to me because they have authority over me.” While common sexual intrusive thoughts for women are (a) having sex in a public place, (b) engaging in a sexual act with someone who is unacceptable to me because they have authority over me, and (c) being sexually victimized.

I still don't get it. How is that any different from how one thinks about sex every day? I mean ... If THIS qualifies for inappropriate, what is appropriate? Having a guy ride to you on a horse and tend to your twisted ankle while his shirt is a little moist from rain? Who writes this shit?

I have a new tooth!

I don't want to jinx it, because this shit is costly as fuck, but yay! Got a new tooth. I am not sure how long I should wait before using it, so far it just feels weird and tender, so I'm just eating ice-cream and whipped cream. But it looks really good. Like an actual tooth. 

Fell asleep again for almost five hours after coming back from the office. And all they did was cement it into place! But being touched, having someone's hands shoved into my mouth, that awful drilling sound/sensation, the whole invasion, pinching my gums, using a dental floss ... I KNOW all of those things are NOTHING. They aren't even hurtful. Just stressful. But I passed right out after returning home. 

I do appreciate the fact the mouth registers an invasion and is tender and upset. Should probably take something for the ... pain ... Or just inflammation. Fuck it, can't hurt. I can literally feel the weight of the damn thing. 

According to the X-ray, the rest are fine. Wisdoms are sleeping, sinuses (sini?), nothing seems agitated. 

The General used this really good word today ... A professional word. Which would explain SO MUCH. I gotta look it up, but first, doggy walk and some pompous upbeat music. 

When all this is over, when this is all gone, you will want to give anything for a day like this... :/

Today I was a lot better prepared for dad's trip to the ER. I had water, protein bars, coffee, a hoodie, crossword puzzles, umbrella, all of it. And mum came right behind me - we took turns watching dad like a hawk; we didn't let him out of our sight not even for a minute. The doctors and nurses kept telling us to wait outside and we kept explaining they lost him the last time, so no way. And it happens all too easily, too - again, mum went in to switch with me, and he was not there, in front of the office - and she had to look and they found him in an 'observation room' where an orderly parked him after dad asked to be taken to the restrooms. They would have left him there until the end of shift again. It's really fucking scary. It just took four hours today, down from the previous six. I mean so far. I am still waiting.

The best part was his family doctor before it all began. The nurse on house-call took his blood yesterday and the results were supposed to be in today and when mum finally got to the doctor on the phone, the dumb bitch said he should probably just drink less. Twenty minutes later she's calling back, hysterical, that she looked at his bloodwork and she's already called him an ambulance and they're on their way!

Oh, right. Good thing she, you know, looked at his bloodwork. After questions like: What makes you think his heart muscle is weakened?... BECAUSE YOU HAD HIM TESTED LAST YEAR, YOU FUCKING RETARD!

Can people just take an on-line course and then get jobs as doctors? Because I am really worried about his medication regiment. She was literally asking my mum about the diabetes injections, whether those were, maybe, making his legs swell. My mum is a freaking art critic, not a family physician!

This is all super funny until one day when someone will die and our happiness will be over. These nightmares will seem like happy memories. Some day someone will die and we will wish to give anything to have a day like this back. A day of storms and over-priced coffee and retarded people in white coats telling us not to question them. 

The family doctor wrote about his upper extremities being inflamed with some sort of dermatitis... Yes. My father has legs on his head. 

Look what I found! :D

I have a 50-year-old car, under all that layer of desert sand. I don't think I've opened that garage in 20 years. 

Awwww :D Dental X ray. So cute.

OMG, look at my tiny little teeth! Look at those front bottoms! Like a baby goat! Sure, I have more metal in them than a James Bond villain and am getting the crown on the hook up right on Friday, theoretically, but... aww, look at that baby sleeping wisdom down on the left. That should be fun if it ever chooses to hatch, or, mnhehehe, gets inflamed.

Now, of course I have no idea what I'm looking at, is all this shit normal or am I about to have my entire jaw amputated, but I am fairly certain that dumpling bitch above my upper left row is a sinus. Or it could be cancer or I'm just wildly asymmetrical. Okay, I have no idea. But if so, I would have been correct: with all the empty space in my cranium, that dumb thing decides to push into my teeth. That's why they feel like they want to come out and no specific source of ache can be established. Arrrr. Bad sinus, bad! No cookie!

Saliva

I KNOW this is a freakishly unusual topic, as lubricants often are, but as I lay in the dentist's chair today and that awful suction hissing thingy was helping me not to gag, I thought how much I miss my spit when lacking in. The feel of latex gloves pulling and tugging on my dry cheek, at times even rubbing against the thinnest inner-mouth membrane in a way I thought might tear at it, and pinching and scraping my lips ... Once the doctor put a ball of mould rubber into my mouth and over time the suction thingy began to irritate my other teeth and we removed it, five minutes later, when he took the impression out, everything was wet and slimy and juicy. I loved it. It looked terrible, but it didn't hurt. It felt natural and organic. Believe me, I drool A LOT when I sleep. Could be because some part of my mouth is always hurting, or if I take a nap after eating, I am notoriously slimy. There are whole anecdotes about it, even illustrations. But between being slobbery and being dry, I'll take my snail soul any time. 

Getting to the dentist today, the poor man stated: 'Today isn't going to be painful, just a bit uncomfortable' ... and of course ten seconds in, he figures: Fuck it. Let's just give you the painkillers. 

Sorry, mister. Even just the sound of the drill causes me to have a gag reflex. 

Today they took the mould, I think, and stuck in the ... whatever they attach the fake onto. He told me to get the lot X-rayed, to see at least if it is indeed the sinus causing my ache. He used some kind of an electricity something to prod the teeth to find how ... nerved they are? Unnerved? I don't know. They are my teeth, nothing normal about them. They never NOT hurt. It's like a leaky bucket. Always something.

On the plus side, he did compliment me on how white they are. I smirked, thinking he's being patronising, with all the coffee I drink. But they actually are. Fairly bright teeth. They may be ugly, brittle and crumbly, but they are bright :D Yay. 

The General is like the Wolf, you know - from Pulp Fiction. You call him and something gets done. Even just saying 'Calm down, I'm sending G,' gives people a boost of morale. but ... His power is not infinite. It takes a toll on him and even though he would rather die than admit it, he does stress - it shows on his skin and how much he needs to sleep. It would be too easy having him solve every issue everyone I know faces. He'd do it. He'd get it done. But where would the happy hours of the day then fit?

As Mondays go, again, turbulent weekend, and dad's condition is getting worse - again mum has failed to reach anyone who would be willing to pick up the phone. We are talking about an assigned family medicine doctor, fully paid, insured, obliged to help. But no, not picking up the phone, hardly answering mail (I mean the nurse answers the mail.) We have no idea whether his condition is the body trying to clean itself, a reaction to the treatment or the infection getting to a stage where it will again erupt in septic shock. We just don't know. We just know he is getting completely and utterly defeated by pain and inability to move and occasionally spiking fevers. And the fucking doctor is not picking up the phone - the number given to patients to call if they ever need anything, anything at all. Mum can't figure out a way to get him to the waiting room, because she needs to park somewhere and can't leave dad outside for ten minutes, with no-one bothering to assist her. (My sister can't leave the dog alone, because he scratches his ears when alone, you know.) I have a dentist's appointment and G, who should take me, has work right after. 

You should see the look on his face when I told him I'll be okay, I can go to the dentist myself. It's like I was saying it's okay, I can deliver this baby myself, you go do the next most important thing. He considers my emotions paramount and it makes me feel ashamed at times, to make a big deal out of something trivial. It's a big deal to me, of course, when I am alone in my little universe. I do need him to take me and watch over me, especially at times when the dentist asks: do you want me to pull the tooth or do you want to pay a fucking fortune for reconstruction? It's not my only bad tooth. I have no fucking idea!

But to tell mum 'I am sending G', and he gets the doctor on the phone and he gets a nurse to come see dad and take his vitals and blood and to have G on stand-by in case dad needs to be transported - that solves almost all of the problems mum and dad are having right now, today. We are such lost, dependable people. Being helpless is catastrophic to our wit: needing help and not getting it and not understanding why. 

'Calm down. I'm sending G."

'Isn't he supposed to take you to the dentist?'

'I'll live. This is more important.'

What a moronic, insignificant conversation to have as an adult. Dad's leaking legs or my crown reconstruction. What a lighthouse G is. How embarrassing and how scary, what would we do without him? We are terrible at solving shit. We are even terrible at inspiring people to help/assist us. And he gets it done in an hour. An hour that could be spent having coffee outside in the sun, eating macarons and talking about the movie we last saw last night. In another little universe. 

Days are still up and down. Still fucking worried about dad. There is only so much we can do to cheer mum up, she misses her vital, adventurous husband :/  It's just a mess. He has the annoying tendency to pretend everything is great until it is almost too late. Plus the doctors are a fucking sham - nobody tells us ANYTHING. We don't even know which reactions are normal. I worry without pause. 

... But the world is so pretty. I sat in the vineyard while G saw to bees, watching snails and ladybugs and listening to birds and wind. So damn perfect. Everything wants to live and dance, from ants to the sky.

I'll probably go to the woods again tomorrow, just to chill, so we went to the shooting range today. My stance is improving, if I fired one shot too soon and missed completely. G is trying to explain this isn't the army, I don't need to shoot fast, but I wanted to see what would happen. 'Course, his recharge is stiff as all. Empty cases were flying everywhere. 

My brain is at that odd division point where I want to nap in the hay and play with kittens, or blow something up. I mean like a watermelon. Not a ShinRa reactor. 

General's line of the week:

My teeth still hurt - no reason found - far more than can be ignored. This makes me smile slightly sideways. G reacted to one of my attempts at laughing:

    "See, this is why I love you; you have a laugh of a shat-on pigeon sitting excitedly happy on their little branch."

Super trooper dentist visit

You know you're the village idiot when during a procedure the dentists says: "ALONE today?? I went outside to double-check if he's coming or what?"
    And the assistant lady: "Super brave!"

    Yes, yesterday was my first alone visit to the dentists', having two smaller procedures done - root mould and a filling, the worst of which was having to keep my jaw wide open for an hour. Ironically it was not the filling I wanted. But whatevs.

     For some reason, the entire upper-left row of teeth hurts like a bitch. Two of those have always been problematic and have recently been fixed, so in the worst-case scenario they were fixed poorly and there's still something wrong with them. However, he poked them, knocked on them, tugged them, hissed compressed air at them and found nothing. I imagine if there was an infection or something, at least one of them would hurt specifically when oppressed? I'll wait a week to see what happens.
     Fingers crossed the teeth are fine.
    The other option is my sinuses are clogged. Now THAT one is highly plausible. My sinuses are ALWAYS clogged. And it's something I can live with. That one goes away of its own.