But between medical expenses and negative income from my wife's business it's a squeeze.

So you're also paying for her expensive hobby as well as providing free labor for it. I can tell you right now she's not going to become successful as a counselor. I can't think of anybody I'd less want to take counsel from than your wife.

After going through a bitter divorce, my abusive father tried to set up a side gig as a divorce mediator. I guess he had this overwhelming need to see himself as a reasonable person.

I have gone to more than one therapist who needed therapy badly.

I have gone to more than one therapist who needed therapy badly.

My brother sees his therapist twice a week. I really really admire the hard work he puts into his own recovery so that he can work with his own clients.

I'm not saying that anyone with their own mental health problems, but I have had therapists trying to put their own issues on mine and also being disorganized to the point of constantly double booking clients.

Be kind to yourself, Gud. One person is not meant to bear the entire load of everything going on in the whole family on a permanent basis.

Sj, my last therapist was quite good in actual sessions, but every time one was approaching I'd brace myself for the last-minute rescheduling or unannounced 30+ minute delay. I even had to find out I was being dropped from her practice by the new therapist I was being switched to. She was like Schrödinger's therapist—existed as a fuzzy cloud of possibilities until I'd open the waiting room door and find out if we'd actually have a session or not.

The Emmy production was maddening. Announcer was awful, music was awful and repetitive. Doing tributes to shows that ended was odd and shows got left out, no way to do that well. Again audience mics were left on during In Memoriam which is awful.

I am super happy for Billy Porter. I thought the speeches from Michelle Williams and Patricia Arquette were great and what ally ship should be. The back room diversity issue is still really apparent.

And Jharrel Jerome!! The best moment of the show for me.

I was not aware of inclusion issues and transphobia associated with RuPaul but read a lot of that last night and am reading more.

Gud, it is worth it to dispute every charge on a medical bill these days, because most insurance companies are rat bastards. They make their profits on nice responsible people who assume they are dealing fairly.

Our camping trip ended up a little shorter than planned, but while we were there, it was (mostly) fun. We drove out Friday night and set up our wee tent, hung out with Tim's brother and SiL, and one nephew, nephew's wife, and their toddler. Saturday, Tim woke up in serious pain from an RA flare (I think the flare started before we left but he didn't say anything because he loves to camp and was hoping the flare would settle down). I told him several times that I thought we should head home and not sleep in a tent Saturday night, because sleeping on the ground really aggravated his pain. He kept waffling and wouldn't decide whether or not to go home.

So we hung out all day Saturday, and even took a 3-mile hike (I am shamefully sore after that hike, but in my defense there were a LOT of hills). But he finally decided that after dinner, we would head home. (Which is how I knew he was in a tremendous amount of pain, because he loves camping so much that it had to take a lot to get him to leave early.) Fortunately, when he woke up Sunday in our own bed, he felt much better.

So, we decided that we are too damn old and decrepit to tent camp anymore, and we'll rent a camper for future camping. (I fucking hate sleeping on the ground, even with a cushy air mattress, so I am definitely in favor of renting a camper!)

Tim's oldest brother, who planned the camping trip, has 4 kids, all of whom are adults and married and have kids of their own. In fact, there are 8 great-nieces and great-nephews, which is awesome.

And it's about to get more awesome, because 2 of oldest brother's kids waited until the camping trip to give him the news that they're pregnant! This family excels at making babies. So yay, 2 more great-niecephews on the way!

{{{Gud}} {{Theo}}

I'm kinda sorry I missed the Emmys entirely, kinda not.

Y'all, I had such a day yesterday. Most of it was good, but I am so tired today and now I'm expected to work. Thinking is hard! Walking to the printer is hard!

I will try to sum up: caught the 6:50AM train to go to the "Stroll & Roll" with my parents, which was really nice but did involve walking 6 miles before lunch. Caught a Lyft to Levi's Stadium and had a not-that-long-but-still-kinda-painful-after-the-6-miles walk from where he dropped us off (because road closures and whatnot, it totally made sense), discovered our seats were at the tippy top of the stadium, so stairs up to the seats and down to the bathrooms and such (I tried really hard not to make that trip much) and then down down down after the game back to street level and then down more stairs to the train station. Standing room only on the train, but everyone was friendly and we were pretty sure seats would open up before we got to our stop. Which they did. But one stop before Mom & Dad's stop (which is one stop before mine) we find out there was "police action" on the tracks ahead and we'd be stopped there until further notice. It ended up being about an hour and a half before we got moving again (we found out unofficially from the Amtrak police standing in our car that there was a car crash on the Carquinez bridge and some poor person involved in that was ejected from the vehicle and landed on the tracks below, so it wasn't an Amtrak incident as such but the tracks had to be closed for CHP to do their investigating and whatnot. Pretty horrifying), I decided I would rather eat dinner with my parents and worry about getting home after that than just stay on the train to my stop (the line in the cafe car regularly stretched into the car behind it, moved really slow, and they were running out of food and all I'd had to eat at the game was part of a pretzel - which was delicious and at the time was plenty but this was a couple hours after I usually eat dinner and I was sooooo hungry). So we did that, ate at the only place open in downtown Martinez on Sunday evening which, luckily, was quite good and decided rather than trying to catch a later train I'd spend the night with my folks and figure out how to get home in the morning. Texted my boss that I'd be in late (9 instead of 7:30, so I want to say "late" - actually made it in by 8:30!)

It felt like 3 or 4 days and I am having trouble adjusting back to my normal routine!