What Grinds Your Gears? :)

[frank_one]

Originally Posted by MsMarvelDuckie

She's about 17, and going senile and blind, and possibly deaf. She spends most of her day asleep, and only occasionally wakes up to eat and/or potty. When she is awake, she wanders aimlessly, crying and turning her head all around while staring into space, as if lost or confused. It's kind of heartbreaking to see her like that, but we haven't had the heart to put her to sleep, since she was my mom's cat and we took Bandit as a favor to her. I keep sort of hoping she will pass on her own since she barely even eats some days, and we have to be right next to her to get her attention. She's still sweet and loving, though, and hubby has gotten pretty attached to her, so it's a decision that is hard to make.

I'm sorry to hear this as I have had a similar experience with a cat years ago. I know it is an hard decision to take but... I think you should let her go, Marvel. I'm sure you and your husband have given her all the love you can, now it's time you help her one last time. She will be ok, you will feel better after a couple of days.

[MsMarvelDuckie]

Well, like I mentioned, she was my mom's cat until last November, so we're not even sure if the decision is entirely up to us. She spent most of her 17 (almost 18 now) years with my parents, so she's more their cat than ours. We mainly took her because they had been keeping her confined to a bathroom to keep their two rowdy dogs from getting into her food and litter box, or running her over in their frequent excited bouncing around. And yes, I feel like her rime is probably near, but she doesn't seem to be in pain (aside from arthritic hips that sometimes bother her) and still recognizes us, so it's kind of a grey issue as to whether we should or let her go on her own when/if that happens. She has food, a cozy bed, and love in the meantime, even if she can't see where she is. (She seems to have the symptoms of feline dementia, but from what I have read, that's not necessarily something to warrant euthanasia. Just makes her a bit of a special needs kitty.)

[IndigoErth]

Poor girl. One of ours we lost some years ago went through that in the later end of her life. Deaf, presumably largely blind, a little confused and would sometimes get herself stuck in corners behind doors, etc. She didn't act pained or anything though and did not put her to sleep until she wasn't able to get around anymore and her quality of life was gone.

This one we just lost, Tim, I felt bad at the vet because he was still getting around (albeit seeming more feeble) and wanting to look out their window. Wasn't like his brother just laying there already half gone. Until last week, he didn't show any mental decline and his vision and hearing seemed fine. We had hoped he could pass on his own at home, but with his kidneys pretty much done for, and assuming his change in behavior may have been from toxins building up in his body, we didn't want him to suffer through that kind of death if it was just going to get worse before it did him in.

But if an old cat is still comfortable, the other stuff is manageable imo. (Okay, the loud nighttime meowing of a senior cat, esp a deaf one, can be a bit trying.)

[Leo656]

Mine's far more minor-league. Sorry to "derail".

I'm getting kinda sick of Halloween and October, to be honest. I don't dislike it, I like it fine, and when I was a kid I was HUGE into it.

Thing is, as an adult, I simply don't like being "locked in" to a specific mood or theme for an extended period of time anymore. Especially with movies; I don't have anything against horror movies, in fact I love a lot of them. It's the whole "house rule" of "All October long we're ONLY gonna watch horror movies" thing that my wife insists on; it burns me out. Every single day, "We need to watch a horror movie." If I wanna watch something else, "That's not what you watch in October!"

It's like, she's not TRYING to be a nag about it. But she still has that little kid's enthusiasm and could just as well do nothing but swim in spookiness and Gothic-ness and horror and gore and everything, non-stop, for 31 days straight. And I simply don't have that in me anymore. Sometimes I just wanna watch, I'unno, anything. Back to the Future or something. And if it's the middle of October, Oh Well.

I just really like doing what I want, when I feel like it, regardless of "Season". I've got this stack of movies and shows piling up that we "can't watch"... because it's October. And thus, if I don't want to watch "Nightmare Before Christmas" for the 87th time, I'm "missing the point of the holiday".

I'unno, feels like overkill to me. And every year, we end up watching fewer horror movies altogether, because I really just can't be bothered, and in turn she gets on my case for being a killjoy. Two years ago, I regrettably kinda snapped at her over it, like "DUDE, I'm not f*cking five, alright? It's October 14th, if I don't wanna watch horror movies right this minute I shouldn't f*cking HAVE to, okay? JESUS."

It's not the end of the world, but every year I admittedly get a little less excited for the Halloween season, and actually look forward to getting it over with a little more. I just don't like having my entertainment options dictated by a calendar. I'm an adult.

Like, nobody does this to me in December. We watch Christmas movies on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and that's it. The rest of the month is just "business as usual". I wish my Octobers were more like that, to be perfectly honest.

[IndigoErth]

Originally Posted by Leo656

It's the whole "house rule" of "All October long we're ONLY gonna watch horror movies" thing that my wife insists on;

Okay, lady, that's weird. I love Halloween, but yeah, being 24/7 with it isn't realistic.

Is she putting DVD's or whatnot on constantly? Because I can't even find enough legit spooky/Halloween-ish movies on the channels that claim to be showing those kinds of movies all month long and so much of it I come across is still unrelated.

[Leo656]

Nah, but sometimes she watches stuff when I'm sleeping.

It's not that the Halloween/horror immersion IS constant, 24/7, all October long. It's just that if she had her way it easily could be, and furthermore, the thing that annoys me more is that if I want to watch something else, it's always "Why do you wanna waste time with that when we can be watching horror movies?"

She's one of those people who's really into Alice Cooper, King Diamond and Marilyn Manson, so on SOME level it's like Halloween all year 'round. Those people are... pretty "devout" with their fandom.

But yeah, I'm at a point where I do kinda side-eye people when they openly declare themselves as one of those "I'm REALLY into Halloween!" people. I just immediately assume that being around them is kind of exhausting, if harmless.

It's not a bad thing. It's just sometimes on a random October day I'd just rather watch something totally NOT "spooky/horror" related and not have to have it be a whole Thing, y'know?

I hadn't honestly noticed that it was getting to me, until like the other day I was all by myself and I saw some horror movie commercial on cable and I just muttered out loud "I'm so sick of Halloween." And I don't even especially think that! It just kinda fell out. And I chalk it up to just generally being exhausted with not having any alternative.

At least as far as movies go. We actually spend most of our time watching the same cartoons and stuff we always do. It's pretty much just the movies thing. If she wants to watch Hostel, and I wanna watch Batman, Hostel wins because the calendar is the tie-breaker. That's what I find irritating.

And I think I'd actually be more inclined to watch more horror movies during October, if it were a choice and not a mandate. Part of me just plain pushes back whenever I'm told I "have" to do something. If I'm actually able to do it of my own volition, I'm far more inclined.

I'unno, not the biggest deal, like I said. Mostly just venting. I'm actually trying to find time to do an Evil Dead marathon this weekend.

[DarkFell]

Yeah, it's no fun when people over do Halloween. I like the day just fine, but there's no way that I would want watch nothing but horror flicks for thirty-one days. That'll bore me out real quick.

I'm no different with Christmas either, and I like to listen to other kinds of music besides Christmas carols. The same also applies to movies.

[IndigoErth]

Originally Posted by Leo656

But yeah, I'm at a point where I do kinda side-eye people when they openly declare themselves as one of those "I'm REALLY into Halloween!" people.

You mean like this? I hope not like that.

But I've pretty much always been about the decorating and props (my ghosts I made last year and the small fence sections I just recently made) and not living and breathing it every moment through the month. ("Spider" not mine, a little too on the cute and expensive side for me, but the rest is my doing.)







Though I totally understand from the angle of the fact that I work for a company that has a cable channel, makes tv movies, and I really wish it wasn't made up of 95% cheesy Christmas movies all year long.

[IMJ]

People who use grandiose language with inappropriate connections so as to enhance their nonsense.

"My latest purchase...." in conjunction with frivolous nonsense - like a video game or comic books. As if this is sophisticated stuff and the "purchaser" is formal and sophisticated for "purchasing it". Instead of saying something appropriately frivolous like "I picked up a copy of..." or "I bought a copy of...." It's even worse when the subject of the verb is basically just some regular item and not even some kind of investment grade collectible or something.

or

Scrolling through Netflix and seeing a header under the search that says "The Irishman Collection". The collection. As if this high level ala cart artwork constitutes a collection. And even more, it's basically two digital files - the movie and a cast interview. But it's a "collecion".

Basically, someone could make the semantic argument that a compiling of anything is indeed a "collection", but context is important, and ironically even that argument itself would fit in with the context of the other two examples and become an example number three. Basically self-aggrandizing language or "elevating significance" of things that are nonsense by using 1 percenter word choices is gear grinding. It's very Napolean Dynamite.

[MsMarvelDuckie]

And now for an actual SERIOUS gear grind- the fact that my weekend was spent, largely, in the bathroom. Yeah, that was fun. Both ends, nearly all weekend. The worst part was not even being able to do anything due to feeling weak and exhausted the whole time. Finally let up yesterday afternoon, but by then the weekend was shot. And now this morning hubby was complaining of an upset stomach....

[MsMarvelDuckie]

New(old) grind. I hate the general public. Like, with a passion. So many idiots and @$$ho*e$ who have no clue how to order in a drive through or who act entitled and dickish when they do. I sometimes want to just beat them over the head for being stupid, but it probably wouldn't make a difference.

[IndigoErth]

You and me both. So much BS that just isn't even necessary.


Add in darn Walmart deciding to try to complicate things with their vendors. Kind of dumb to have to sign in on a sheet (and if we have sign out I forgot... oops), and make it kind of confusing with the info they want and where, when we already do with their Volt app. that logs our time in the store. I understand they want to keep tabs on people, esp after the lady who was telling me about this change said they've had things disappearing (though I highly doubt its vendors doing it), but come on... It's like they want to try to control the schedules of people who don't work for them. Yeah, that will be a hard no. They're one of my Tuesday stores and that will not be changing. This woman asked me if I could also do Thursdays... Uh... what? I don't work for you, so no, I visit within the days my company requires.

Generally my stops are pretty consistant, but kind of annoys me though that they want to to have it down for the specific day and time period I intend on being there, because sometimes things do come up, whether personal or I have to cover someone else's accounts, and small ones have to be pushed to another day or time. They're a pretty minor account compared to my big ones and if anyone has any place to be making requests that impact my work, it's them, not Walmart.

[Leo656]

Pretty minor one, just a bit of a bummer.

Ordered a fairly "hot" new Hulk Hogan action figure on eBay a few days ago. It was an Amazon exclusive that sold out right away when it was offered, and now they're burning up eBay since they're finally being delivered. So I got lucky and "only" paid about twenty bucks over the original Amazon price, which in these cases is a win all by itself. These things often go over $100 as soon as they hit eBay, so part of me was thrilled just to not pay anywhere near that. It's one of those "Ultimate" type figures, with a million points of articulation, multiple alternate heads and hands, cloth goods, all that stuff.

It originally said it'd be here by next Friday, but this morning I got an email that it would be delivered today. Sweet! Nice little surprise.

So I'm looking it over, admiring all of it, and then I realize something isn't right. Then it hits me - one of the alternate heads is missing! I got three heads, alright... it's just that two of them were identical, which is not supposed to be the case. One of them was supposed to be a "yelling" portrait with a black eye, but instead I got the "regular" smiling head twice.

I looked the thing all over, up and down, and honestly the box and tape look completely factory-state. I do a quick Google search and can't find anything about whether any other sets are like this or if I just got "lucky". So I take a pic and message the seller; within two minutes, he gets back to me apologizing and asking if I want to return it. He says he had three of these that he sold, including mine, and that the others were fine so it just must not have clicked that this one had an error. Probably just a factory error, but he feels bad about it. Unfortunately, he sold the others, so I can't do a straight exchange.

I told him I'll sleep on it and let him know, but honestly I'm probably just gonna keep it. It's annoying to pay about $70 for an action figure and not have it be 100%, is all. But I don't want to go through the hassle of sending it back, waiting for the refund, then ordering ANOTHER one from someone else and hoping I get as good of a deal, then waiting for it to arrive. True story, I was never gonna display the figure with that head anyway, it was just a nice little bonus. But since I was never gonna really use it much anyway, I can't say I'm all that broken up about it. Just annoyed. It gets here a week early, but of COURSE I'm the lucky one who gets a factory error.

Who knows, a loose head might show up on eBay for a few bucks. That happens more than you'd think.

[Leo656]

UGH, so something far more annoying happened.

We were doing another action figure review video, specifically for Halloween. Somehow, the camera was on the wrong setting, and basically all of the footage we shot was horrible, way too dark and blurry to use at all. And we didn't catch it until editing was almost done. We tried to save it, but it just looked like complete sh*t. And we simply don't have time to re-do it and still have it up on Halloween, thus defeating the entire point.

VERY aggravated about this for multiple reasons. This was like our One Big Halloween Activity and in the end it's gonna have to wait until next year. So my enthusiasm for this day is completely shot, now. Kinda think I might just stay in bed. Because we thought we had something cool and fun and in the end we just f*cking wasted our time completely, and that's f*cking depressing.

Sigh.

[IndigoErth]

Another Halloween and once again not a soul out there. I hate that people have pretty much ruined it and allowed it do die in so many neighborhoods.

[Leo656]

It's mostly been co-opted by grown-ups who just want an excuse to get drunk and have casual sex with strangers and/or acquaintances. It's honestly been heading that way for a while now. It is kind of a shame but with parents being so overprotective nowadays and especially the last two years of "Nobody can go outside" it's not altogether surprising.

Plus, more and more schools don't even let kids dress up for it anymore, either because it's "a distraction" (c'mon, it's ONE DAY), or more often, because of "racial concerns" and/or the fact that some kids can't afford costumes, or good costumes, and so get picked on by the other kids. I forget where this was, but I read just a few weeks ago that one public school (somewhere in New York state, I think) said they weren't doing Halloween this year because of a combination of the latter two things: Kids who were too poor to get decent costumes were teased in the past by other kids, and unfortunately, most of the poor kids happened to be black. So the school basically said that having any sort of Halloween celebration was both classist and racist and so they weren't going to anymore.

So anyway, yeah, it's for grown-ups now. It is what it is. Halloween is basically just a more whimsical version of "Eyes Wide Shut".

We had a couple kids come by. The kids whose dogs my wife takes care of when they go on vacation stopped by but I don't know how many others there were.

[Sage Ninja]

I legit forgot Sunday was Halloween. Until my 2 year old niece came by dressed up as Minnie Mouse. She looked so cute! First year my older sister dressed her up in a costume and I asked her if she was taking her out trick or treating. She said no but she was contemplating bringing my niece to this event at her day care where all the other tots dress-up in costumes and do something called Trunk or Treat...

Basically instead of going to houses to Trick and Treat, toddler aged kids at the day care show up in the parking lot in costume and go to the trunks of several employee cars where they get candy... Apparently this isn't something unique to my niece's day care, this is an actual thing.

I mean, WTF? Do people think this is safer? Has anyone else heard of this?

My older sister seemed just as incredulous as me and thinks it's dumb, but does want my niece to have a nice time, so I am not sure if she brought my niece over to that or not. I will have to ask her when I see her again.

[Powder]

That's been a thing for years. It's for those who live in unsafe or non-celebrating communities or have a child with any sort of issues that make normal trick-or-treating difficult. What's the harm?

[MsMarvelDuckie]

Our town does this in the town square. A couple of churches do it, too. It's a kind of community event, so it's safer than going door to door, and kids get to dress up, go out, and have fun without having to do a lot of walking for possibly no reward. The kids are guaranteed a good haul, and parents can stand around and talk, while still keeping an eye on them.

[IndigoErth]

From what I'd been reading Trunk or Treat may be partly to blame for the downfall of Halloween thanks to paranoid parents...who seem to think it's safer to take candy from the cars of strangers (well there's a great message!) than from the front porch of the people who actually live near them and, unlike the car people, might be found out if they tried to put a razor blade in there...

In some cases Trunk or Treat makes sense. As events set up for kids who come from areas that aren't safe and rural kids who can't easily visit homes in easy walking distance of each other... But for the average safe neighborhood where it is very easy to run from house to house... screw the people who ruined that. It used to be a safety rule to stick to the neighborhood you know.

It's not even so much that adults have stolen or whatever... it is, at least around here, certain neighborhoods get ALL of it while the rest remain dark.

As a kid, we used to get a good haul in our own neighborhood. There was one time years ago my mom counted over 100 kids! But nearly every neighbor has given up because no one comes anymore. We still put our light on, though we know it's generally pointless.

One of my sister's friends live in one of those neighborhoods that gets it all...so they trick or treat there now. Even heard that in a cul-de-sac a bunch of neighbors set up a bonfire and chair around it and whatever this year.

Sadly, by the time they finally came home, my nephew had fallen asleep in the car and even they didn't do an official trick or treat here like usual.

My sister said, at least to my mom, that we/she should go with them sometime... but what am I to do then other than stand around bored and cold. I can't participate in some other neighborhood's Halloween since I can't haul my own front yard along with me.


Anyway.... Tough work week (not even been online since Sunday), I could add in complaints about that, but this post is already long enough. At least all that is over.