I do not take blog hiatuses very often. It's actually pretty rare.

I've had maybe 5 or 6 in twenty-three years maybe? My longest hiatus was, understandably, when I was moving my mom to a facility (and the aftermath) because I couldn't care for her any more. It was the absolute lowest time in my life with a hurt so deep that communicating with the outside world (let alone the entire internet) simply wasn't possible for four months. Oddly enough, I didn't take a hiatus when she passed two years later. By that time I had already said goodbye twice... once when I moved her out of my home... again when she no longer remembered me... so it was actually therapeutic to remember how incredibly lucky I was to have such a great mom, and reflect on what an inspiration she is and the horrors of her slide into dementia, then talk about my lessons learned about caring for a loved one with dementia so that maybe it could help somebody else.

Other hiatuses aren't nearly so dramatic. A couple times because I had things to deal with. A couple times because my blog was broken.

But this past week? There really isn't a reason. I just needed a week off. I have entirely too much on my plate to write about anything so I just... didn't.

Let's see what happened...

• My spiffy new heat pump uses the existing return line to the air exchanger in my garage. It's a line that goes through my walls. And because the builder did a horrendously shitty job securing the line and made zero effort to dampen the sound, it can get way more noisy than I'm comfortable with. So I am having to rip out another wall to deal with that (let's see... that would be #4, if you're counting).
• After my first landscaper got COVID and was no longer able to work... my second landscaper bailed after I approved his plan ("I can't deal with the job right now")... and my third landscaper just plain ghosted me after his final proposal didn't include major things we discussed, but was the still same price he originally quoted!... I am now on landscaper number four. I am fairly optimistic. And I'm happy that I didn't spend all the money I saved for the project four years ago.
• My annual Spring allergies are killing me. As I age, I swear they are getting worse and worse. It's all so weird because I had outgrown all my allergies decades ago, only to have them return now? Why?
• My job is pretty tough. I have to juggle a lot of tasks, know a lot of information, and be creative enough to assemble it all in a pleasing way. Which is why I don't fucking need things making my life harder. And the thing making my life exceedingly difficult right now is the Epson Colorworks printer I have to use for printing labels. Constant problems. Changing labels is a nightmare. Constantly thinks it's jammed when there's nothing jammed in it. A roll runs out of labels and the printer acts like the world is fucking ending instead of just stopping and alerting you. Half the time I end up having to turn the printer off and on MULTIPLE TIMES in order to get the thing to finally LOAD THE FUCKING LABELS. — The first computer I used was a punchcard computer as a guest of a university. From there I moved to a VAX. The first personal computer I had was an Apple ][. I have bought more computers and computer tech in the past 40 years than I can even remember. AND THE EPSON COLORWORKS PRINTER IS THE FUCKING WORST OF ANYTHING I'VE EVER USED! Seriously horrendous. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I FUCKING HATE IT. I'd almost rather draw the labels by hand than to use this fucking thing ever again. I fantasize about setting it on fire. Or pushing it off a cliff. Or dropping it in the ocean. I am posting this to my blog so that anybody Googling for thoughts on this fucking piece of shit will know to avoid AT ALL COSTS.
• Because time has been scarce, cooking has been minimal this past week. The majority of what I've been eating has been frozen stuff. It's starting to wear on me. Until I started eating healthier, I had no idea how much of a toll crap food was taking on me. But I'm just too exhausted to spend the 30 minutes to an hour cooking up something better each night. Really hoping to do a hard reset on my meals soon, because this is unsustainable.
• And of course there's the usual bullshit that never seems to stop. I swear, some people have completely given up on decency and kindness, and just just live to see how many people they can hurt. Watching it in the news day-in and day-out is demoralizing in every possible way. A part of me wonders exactly what has to happen before there's no turning back from the toxic hellscape we're creating. I mean, clearly we're already in hell... Florida reaffirms this almost daily... but this trend of persecuting as many people as possible just because people don't like them or don't care about them will almost certainly spill over into things and people who they DO like, right? Trans persons and drag queens today... but maybe Episcopalians and left-handed people tomorrow? Where the fuck does it end?

Since blogging is pretty much... well... dead... I might have to take a minute more often. I always thought that if I took breaks I would just stop altogether, but it hasn't happened yet. So maybe?