je suis un canard gigantesque

One of the cushions was destroyed by the dog, and I spent yesterday hand stitching a repair.

It turned out great! The size was a little off, but the repair works, and it is nice to have a fully repaired couch that I can sit on again.

The front room is also repaired. A spice rack is coming in. We are getting book shelves to clear up some clutter off of some surfaces.

Slowly, our house is becoming a home again.

Got the carpet cleaned. Replaced some air filters. Put in some garden beds and flowed.

We still have to paint the hallway and downstairs bathroom. And I think I am going to frame its mirror and paint the vanity a soft green and figure out some nice flowers to put in there.

And some pictures-- Will put some pictures up in some places that are bare.

But it started with repairing the couch, and I am glad we are getting the home back together.

is fighting someone else

Even as they stab stab stab me

They dagger their blade into

A person with someone else's face

I spent today going over the equations that predict drug concentration in the intestinal gut over space and time.

Abundance means there is enough for everyone, and no one goes hungry.

Wealth means that some have a lot, but that means that some also have little of none.

Medicine and science are related, but not the same.

Engineering and medicine are related, but not the same.

My engineering job is making things that effect the body.

My science jobs before were observation and testing things.

Medical Scribing, PT Aiding, Nurse Aide and Med Tech and EKG Tech were all doing things.

Data analytics is maybe my favorite, now. I like bleep blooping and seeing stories unfold.

But it is weird to click a few buttons and predict death or illness. It is a weird feeling to go, "Oh, ok, so 9000 people will have sepsis from their hemodialysis and be hospitalized", and then realize that it is Joe or Fred or Betty from the clinic that you see every three months during their check up as you're clicking buttons to record their eGFR to feed the data points that build your model. In your model, they are data points on different clusters of well or ill, but in the clinic, they are Joe or Fred or Betty (not real patients just hypothetical real patients), and they were just telling you about birthday with their cat but also complaining about an angry red rash next to their HD access and saying how because of the accompanying fever, they are worried they will have to be admitted, and who is going to take care of Mr. Smittens, the cat?

There are clinical geneticists, I wish there were clinical data scientists that go in with patients to take observational data, like a cross between a nurse aide and an informatician. Analytics is telling stories with math, nurse aiding living help, I wish there were a job helping people with math.

Went to a jazz concert this weekend.

Had dinner at a nice Thai place.

Cleaned the house, made dinner with a really nice salad, made a pound cake, bathed nearly all the dogs, gave the dogs their monthly medicine.

Put in my applications to PA school in NC.

Maybe we can solve the trash problem by sending trash to the sun.

Could we do it without losing enough of Earth's mass to affect its orbit?

Then I met my husband. And now we talk about space elevators and space station Buccees and the energy density needed for swappable car batteries

One person in the whole world understood how I felt about music.

Another, science.

My sister once got mad at me because I was taking my reactive dog for obedience training.

She said that training was dumb, and the things she could do were just an accident, not learning, and then she tried to do the same thing with her dog, who hadn't been taught the same commands.

I couldn't figure out why she was mad, only that for some reason, she was angry at me for taking my dog to obedience training at the dog shelter.

I also took my poodle to an official class, and she got a certificate and a toy for passing.

Our Watson has passed all his classes, although he needs to retake two classes that he passed, because while he passed the class, he failed the good citizen test due to sniffing of the cat food distractions on the recall part of the exam.

I had forgotten that, till just recently. With time and with more knowing things, I realize that my taking my dog to obedience school made her feel bad about herself, even though it had nothing to do with her, and so she mocked and yelled and told me my decision to train my dog was stupid and unnecessary.

And by extension, that meant that I was stupid.

I think that there is not enough separation between her self esteem and the actions of others for her to tolerate differences.

My decision to take doggos to obedience school.

My belief in the reality of climate change.

My sister even once got angry at my now husband for a compliment she gave; he said that he understood why she was wanting to be correct in her job, because lives depend on whether the calculations she make were correct, i.e. he was validating a previous statement she made about wanting to get the math right. But she got mad, and we couldn't figure out why.

She assumes insult, and easily becomes a victim, when instead there is either just difference, or even approbation and validation.

This makes dealing with her unpredictable, and the usual reciprocity of respect and communication difficult, when anything, even a compliment, can make her mad.

A priest once said that sometimes, you have to decide to love someone from afar. And that the best you can do is to pray to God and ask him to care for them when you cannot. And if that is the best you can do, still, at least, there is love in your heart instead of hate or apathy or bitterness.

Being older now and having thought previously that her anger and judgement were indicative of how she felt about me, I am older now and have already overcome the relationship with my emotionally abusive ex husband, and I can see now that her anger and judgement are a symptom of when she feels bad about herself, so at least now, I know that it is perfectly fine for me to have taken my doggos to obedience school, that my decision to worry about climate change is perfectly fine, and that I don't have to make myself small in order to placate her or anyone else, that I can become an engineer or PA or do whatever I want with my life, even if it is just having a small app making business or having a small boutique native tree business from the saplings that grow in my yard, without the regard for her or anyone else's anger.

Being different doesn't make me bad, wanting a small wedding doesn't make me bad, wanting a different life doesn't make me bad. I just get to be different, and her or anyone else's anger is just noise.

If I have to make myself smaller to be loved, that is not love, but control, because why would anyone want anyone they love to be less than themselves?

Love is like gardening: if there is a seed or sapling, it needs to get what it needs to grow into what it is supposed to be, not what you decide is right because it makes you feel better about yourself.

If everyone around me is a rose, and I am a pitcher plant, let me be a pitcher plant. Trying to make me be a rose, and getting angry that I am not one, is just useless and cruel. And asking for my needs as a pitcher plant, and saying that I am not getting what I need if I am getting rose food, is not cruel, only asking for what I need to thrive.

I have decided I have been hacked down enough by others, and I will decide on my own to flourish, now, while I still can.