Today is my legal 28th wedding anniversary. I only realized that when I saw something about Flag Day on the net, and I went, "Why is Flag Day significant to me--oh, right! I got married on Flag Day!" Being married has always been more significant to me than having gotten married.

Medications being minimally effective, ER visits to rival ita's experiences, and life long pain.

No, Suzi, don't, Suzi, BAD Suzi.

Just reminding you. May this be a temporary thing they work out.

I've found that one of the components of my insomnia is not just head pain, but neck and back. I replaced the mattress and my pillow and it worked for a while, but for the first time in 15 years I'm now not using a moulded Tempurpedic--just a normal pillow. I'm surprised by the difference, because the pain used to be he other way around. Normal pillows KILLED my neck.

I was getting phone calls late last night about arranging nurse visits, and all I can hope is that they remember it's today, and it's before my midday meds. At least my normal nurse never calls-she texts, so she doesn't disrupt my nighttime routine, but her potential Sunday replacement kept my phone ringing off the hook.

IO9 has this thing where you can create near-infinite subforums, so I created a pan-meta-fandom one. People joined, but no one will post. Meanwhile the fanfic-only one that preceded me by a day thrives. I let in all fanworks! And discussion about fandom! And recs, and WIPS! I'm cool too!

SuziQ, I hope they find something that works for you!

ION, check out this animated .gif: [link]

A woman's phone is stolen and she kicks the thief's ass. Well, not so much his ass as his balls. Plus a roundhouse kick to his face.

(I don't understand the comment about never stealing a white-girl's phone. People suck.)

If you were house/dog-sitting, would $25/dog/day be appropriate? That's what I'm thinking.

Our dogsitter charges $15 per visit regardless of number of pets (I suspect if someone had, say, 6 dogs and 9 cats, she would re-negotiate that), and she spends about 45 minutes to an hour per visit, and brings in mail. She comes 3 times a day (breakfast, dinner, bedtime), so that works out to $45/day for our 1 dog and 2 cats.

Our cat sitter is also our kid sitter, who lives across the street. She always offers to feed the cat for free and I always pay her $15 a day. She comes by once a day.

My cat sitter comes by once a day and charges $15/day. So it sounds like that's the going rate. If someone were to stay in my house, though, I'd pay more.

My sister says it's $30/day for this guy, which would be great, I admit.

That gif of the woman beating down the phone-thief is EPIC. Also EPIC: these women during the liberation of Milan during WWII: [link]

Having now surveyed the scene in daylight, last night's strange car accident seems even more strange. In the dark by flashlight, I had wondered how he managed to throw so much red-clay dirt into the road when it didn't seem he'd dug into my yard that much. I figured in daylight I'd see a huge mess I'd need to fill in. Well, there's a big hole, but it's not in my yard. As best as I can work it out, by the giant divots and the tire tracks, here's what happened: he got confused somehow about where the road went, and hit my across-the-street neighbor's yard first, straddling a deep but narrow ditch and spewing car parts across the yard. He reversed the car and somehow got out, spun around and backed into the neighbor's yard, taking out another divot, then gunned it forward and slammed into the low embankment around my yard. Then the car died and he walked off swearing. The car got towed away last night. A couple heavy rains will smooth out the ding taken out of my yard, but my neighbors are gonna need professional help. I'd love to know the story.

That's just weird, Zen, but I'm glad your yard wasn't damaged much.

Suzi, I'm so sorry about the pain, and I hope the doc today can do something really effective.

'Suela, I wish recovery was faster for you. It sucks not being able to do things that need doing.

I hope the nurse proceeds in a way that works for you, ita.

General better~ma to those who need it.

And congratulations to Emmett!

On my first try with the dialect quiz, I was U.S., Canadian, and oddly Ebonics. Second try was Canadian, Scottish, and Norwegian. I'm still confused about the Ebonics. It'd be nice to have them explain more about the differences in what is natural for various speakers to use in grammar. I found it fascinating that the little information blurb say that "she is raining" would be a normal thing for an Australian to say (whereas that looked straight up wrong to me!).

The idea that, for any given region, ALL of those choices are correct, is boggling. At least I'm assuming they are. We are so weird.