erratio

Today is brought to you by diffrentcolours, who rescued me from missing lift club by offering to drive me there when I slept through my alarm and woke up ten minutes before we'd have had to leave the house.

(This also means that we could deliver the outdoor cat shelter, which is no longer needed by our neighborhood cat, to a friend who's in the process of being adopted by what had been his next-door neighbor's cat.)

And then this afternoon he drove V and me to the garden center to buy compost to re-pot a giant houseplant and straw mulch (it's called Strulch!) for the outdoor gardening season. And then to B&M to buy a bag of rocks. V is working on making a barrel pond for the backyard, which leads to some funny purchases -- last time I bought three random biggish rocks, called "rustic slate."

And then sadly D was too wiped out to go to a gig tonight that we'd been kinda planning to, which is a shame but probably would've meant that if we hadn't done errands this afternoon we wouldn't have gotten much further than the bus into town before he was wiped out. Still calibrating as recovery goes on.

And I was pretty tired too, having lifted all the bags around. The rocks were tricky because we couldn't get a shopping cart so I just had to fireman-carry the bag around the store. It wasn't super heavy but it was really awkward, and I was worried about tearing the bag. Plus the rocks were cold, seeping the body heat out of me. The bag was labeled "North Sea cobbles" and I feel like they remembered their chilly home while pressed to my shoulder.

So I made easy dinner (bangers and mash) and we watched the Twins second game. Which they won! But I was so pessimistic the whole time, D made fun of me. The bullpen didn't collapse! Royce Lewis had a great game! It was weird but I hope this happens every day!

It was a nice day. And tomorrow we have D&D -- the DM spun up a character for me last time, but we ended up just watching the movie (sadly without audio description this time!), but I offered to come along this week as a couple of the usuals won't be there because they're sick. I'm a fighter, my favorite thing to be, and the DM described the niche as Utility Himbo so that's basically his name. Bo, for short! So I'm looking forward to that tomorrow.

A new rug arrived today that V bought for the spare room. I took it upstairs and was admiring how soft it is. It's very differently printed -- leaves and swirls on a teal background -- but seems to be made of the same kind of material as my "space rug" in my bedroom, which has a colorful stylized rendition of the solar system.

Gary would love this, was my first thought. Because he loved my space rug. He'd rub his face on it and wiggle all over its soft smooth finish.

The other day I opened the box my new webcam came in, and admired how its internal cardboard packaging, along with its size and shape, would've made it the absolute perfect box for Gary, we liked to use the cardboard recycling to hide treats in for him to find. We re-used the ones he didn't joyoualy tear apart, but we were always on the lookout for new Good Boxes. And I guess that habit hasn't died out yet.

A couple of days ago, I determined that my webcam wasn't working on my laptop, for calls with my parents, or on my work laptop.

D kindly took it away the other day, and diagnosed it as Dead. He also reminded me we had one that I could use for work but doesn't work on Linux -- something I'd entirely forgotten about; I think I'd conflated it with the other webcam which had stopped working entirely...

He also sourced a replacement, sent me a link. Which I said was terribly sweet of him but I didn't really need, just for my parents when I could shuffle things around and just use the camera on the laptop. But it arrived the next day; he'd bought it for me anyway. "Thirty quid to keep your parents happen seems worth it," he said. Awww.

So, tonight I was so looking forward to the call with my parents starting with something other than my mom complaining that she can't see me.

Instead, the first thing she said when my camera pops on was "You're getting those deep wrinkles in your forehead too, like Grandma [my mom's own mother]."

Which a) only when I frown, or raise my eyebrows [so maybe this is the only way my parents will ever see me, lol] b) my grandma was a badass, so I hardly mind looking like her! c) to age is to live!

But most of all: she's treating me in a way she'd consider horrible bad manners if I behaved this way toward anyone.

Again. (A story I'm fond of trotting out is the time we were in a restaurant, my appetizer arrived, she looked disgusted at it and asked me warily what that was; I said "butternut squash soup" and she said "oh yuck!" A thing I'd have been told off for if I'd reacted that way to someone else's food that I both didn't have to and shouldn't have eaten!)

Can't believe D paid £30 for my appearance to be insulted like this, heh. It's a fancy webcam too; he said he got "only" 720p rather than the £50 1080p, and I was thinking this is already too big a number, I don't want my parents to see me in high definition (unfortunately for me, I said this as "that's too many p for my face!" which made D snigger because his mind is always in the gutter!). it's very zoomed-in too, which is unsettling for me too since I have to have my monitor so close to me. It's been such a long time since Mom commented on my facial hair and I'd like that to become a much longer time, an unbroken streak. She's gonna say whatever she wants as soon as she (thinks that she) is off-mic; all I ask is for her to be polite to my face!