[King Lear]

TIL I learned there are badgers in North America.

Honestly the thing I love seeing the most here is snakes, there are some common ones that are bloody enormous. Once I saw a juvenile hawk grab a meter long snake out the patch of bush outside my apartment (maybe it was a bit smaller, was kind of hard to tell watching is swing around like a helicopter as the raptor took off with it). Oh and I'm a bit obsessed with vultures because a two of them were chilling on my deck railing for no discernible reason (one threw up on the deck which was incredibly gross but kinda cool at the same time).

(Please ignore untidy winter deck and also appreciate my ridiculous cat who couldn't decide she wanted to eat them or they wanted to eat her.)

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[amphibian]

Snakes are lovely. I've had a nest of garter snakes come out this year in our backyard. Our dogs (and my partner) hate them and want them gone, so I catch them by hand and relocate them on the other side of the creek behind our house.

Got ten this past week, ranging from smaller than my hand to two feet.

This post has been edited by amphibian: 14 August 2020 - 03:31 PM

[Malankazooie]

Awoken last night about 2:30 am by skunk smell due to a skunk skulking through my neighborhood. Skunks stink and everyone knows what they smell like, probably from age 8 or thereabouts. I would have tried to locate the little low grade stink nuclear warhead and taken a picture, but it was night (and dark). Funny how that works, skunks being nocturnal and active when it's dark. Being jarred awake by skunk smell in the dead of night is common in the summer here.

- - - -
We don't need no stinkin' badgers.

[Abyss]

King Lear, on 14 August 2020 - 03:20 PM, said:

... I'm a bit obsessed with vultures because a two of them were chilling on my deck railing for no discernible reason (one threw up on the deck which was incredibly gross but kinda cool at the same time).

(Please ignore untidy winter deck and also appreciate my ridiculous cat who couldn't decide she wanted to eat them or they wanted to eat her.)

...

Those are HUGE.

Apropos of upthread, this happened today at an LRT (subway) station here.
spoiler for size

Spoiler

Running joke on social media: "At least he was wearing a mask."

[Tiste Simeon]

On the Isle of Man there's a colony of Wallabies. They escaped from the wildlife park a while back and live wild now.

[Cyphon]

I have been terrified into the realisation that we should probably move house now, within the next six months to get the benefit of stamp duty holiday. Ahhh shiiiiitttttttttt...

[Tsundoku]

Tiste Simeon, on 14 August 2020 - 08:26 PM, said:

On the Isle of Man there's a colony of Wallabies. They escaped from the wildlife park a while back and live wild now.

You can keep the shit ones, but we'd like the 2 or 3 good ones back if you don't mind ...

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

I think my blood sugar is off due to fasting. I’ve been yelling at trumpers all day on Facebook and I actually rage tweeted at the vlasic pickles stork.

[Malankazooie]

There was a lot of smoke in the area here today, from the fires raging in the west. There was a thick haze and powerful campfire like smell. Makes wearing a mask beneficial or detrimental? Not sure really. I know wearing a mask can be an issue already for people with breathing difficulties. Throw in smoke haze and that could be the tipping point for a medical situation?

[Abyss]

Malankazooie, on 15 August 2020 - 12:23 AM, said:

There was a lot of smoke in the area here today, from the fires raging in the west. There was a thick haze and powerful campfire like smell. Makes wearing a mask beneficial or detrimental? Not sure really. I know wearing a mask can be an issue already for people with breathing difficulties. Throw in smoke haze and that could be the tipping point for a medical situation?

The answer to that depends on so many variables that one might as well roll a D20 saving throw and hope for the best.

[Malankazooie]

Well fuck it all. I thought with these plague years we'd see a retirement (or at least a lessening) of dumb, unimportant shit like pumpkin spice. Nope. Mid August and the pumpkin spice is being advertised and ready to flow down diabetic throats.

[amphibian]

We got plum trees and fig trees for our yards. They're going to be great if we can baby them through the winter here in NY.

What's messing with my groove is that the holes for the plum trees have to be 30 inches or about 75 cm wide and 10 inches or 25 cm deep. The front yard has so many ostrich sized rocks that it's just soul breaking to dig these two holes by hand and foot.

[Gust Hubb]

Don't know how to communicate with my wife sometimes. Like, how do you address partially washed dishes that you have to rewash for her? It is a labor to get her helping me clean up, and when she helps with dishes, she does a shit job (leaves crust on the inside of a bowl for instance), which requires me to redo it. And then she gets upset at me for bringing it up. Trying to let this one go and be more prepared for another instance, but jeeze, she can be childish sometimes.

[amphibian]

My neighbors decided that 6:15 am was the perfect time to rev their garage project car many many many times. I went over there to ask for an hour for my partner to sleep a bit more. They turned off the car so they could hear me ask, "didn't understand" what I was asking for, and revved it more after I left. They stopped around 7:00 am.

Real mad at those yobbos. Real mad.

[QuickTidal]

amphibian, on 19 August 2020 - 12:47 PM, said:

My neighbors decided that 6:15 am was the perfect time to rev their garage project car many many many times. I went over there to ask for an hour for my partner to sleep a bit more. They turned off the car so they could hear me ask, "didn't understand" what I was asking for, and revved it more after I left. They stopped around 7:00 am.

Real mad at those yobbos. Real mad.

Those kind of people are never going to be courteous. Their lives are more important than anyone elses apparently.

It sucks, and I've been there.

[Slow Ben]

Saw this pic of one of Abyss' minions and now i'll never sleep again.

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[Aptorian]

Oh, that's just a Flerken cat. They're mostly harmless.

[Gust Hubb]

Wife has to pull in a lot of overtime in the coming month to pay all bills related to the legal fight with her ex. Gonna be a sucky month...

[Gust Hubb]

So, my wife told me today we would spend the day together after she got home from her night shift. To me, that means she comes home. Probably gets some much needed sleep and we go out for our pre-planned bike ride, followed by making our dinner together and spending the night in cuddling with movies. I don't think that is unreasonable.

What actually happened is she went out with friends (not asking if that was ok), stays out with them till just after 1 pm, and then comes home expecting to pick up the day with me from that point onward. To add insult to injury, she says she was finishing up around 10:30 am, which means she took 2.5 hours to get home because "finishing up" does not mean leaving then and there and not taking a detour to drive drunken friends home.

And then she comes home and I don't beat around the bush. I express I am hurt and angry, that I feel like the day has been tainted by this. Because, now I am all worked up and frustrated, so having a nice day with the person with whom you are angry doesn't work. But does she say sorry or apologize? No. Does she say she shouldn't have gone out with her friends. No. Instead, she says she had a long shitty work weekend (justifying going out with frienda), was ready to go out with me when she got home (saying she slept some at work, only drank two drinks and had a lot of water to boot), and felt that we still had most of the day together (so that going out with her friends was not intrusive).

I feel it comes down to simply the spirit of the day. Today was her day with me, and with all the baggage behind her going out with friends and then not giving clear timelines of when she'll be home (not to mention how often she gets wrapped up in her friends' drama during these outtings), you would think it would be no surprise that I would be upset she pulled this shit on our day. Has nothing to do with her going out with friends other days,or a lack of sympathy for long shitty work weeks. It has to so with sticking with one's word and thinking of the other person.

[amphibian]

Gust Hubb, on 24 August 2020 - 06:38 PM, said:

So, my wife told me today we would spend the day together after she got home from her night shift. To me, that means she comes home. Probably gets some much needed sleep and we go out for our pre-planned bike ride, followed by making our dinner together and spending the night in cuddling with movies. I don't think that is unreasonable.

What actually happened is she went out with friends (not asking if that was ok), stays out with them till just after 1 pm, and then comes home expecting to pick up the day with me from that point onward. To add insult to injury, she says she was finishing up around 10:30 am, which means she took 2.5 hours to get home because "finishing up" does not mean leaving then and there and not taking a detour to drive drunken friends home.

And then she comes home and I don't beat around the bush. I express I am hurt and angry, that I feel like the day has been tainted by this. Because, now I am all worked up and frustrated, so having a nice day with the person with whom you are angry doesn't work. But does she say sorry or apologize? No. Does she say she shouldn't have gone out with her friends. No. Instead, she says she had a long shitty work weekend (justifying going out with frienda), was ready to go out with me when she got home (saying she slept some at work, only drank two drinks and had a lot of water to boot), and felt that we still had most of the day together (so that going out with her friends was not intrusive).

I feel it comes down to simply the spirit of the day. Today was her day with me, and with all the baggage behind her going out with friends and then not giving clear timelines of when she'll be home (not to mention how often she gets wrapped up in her friends' drama during these outtings), you would think it would be no surprise that I would be upset she pulled this shit on our day. Has nothing to do with her going out with friends other days,or a lack of sympathy for long shitty work weeks. It has to so with sticking with one's word and thinking of the other person.

I thought about this for a few days. I have been the person who makes spur of the moment plans that either compress the amount of time I spend with my partner or force a change in the plans with my partner. I would help a family member do this, talk to friends longer than I thought, go out to do something and badly estimate how much time it would take etc.

What helped me realize that I needed to change that habit of seeing the plans with my partner as the last priority was hearing how excited my partner was about spending that time with me, how much it hurt them to have to cut down the time again and again for others, and how they felt really bad about being the last priority and the one who will forgive the other person despite being hurt.

It doesn't feel good to come home to a partner who is really hurt and disappointed that the plans aren't happening because of decisions made unilaterally by the person who was out.

It really meant a lot to me that my partner was mature enough about this to talk it out with her therapist and talk to me about her feelings rather than say I was an asshole about what I was doing. I could connect to her feelings and realize that my few minutes of fun had routines around it that needed to change.

I needed to prioritize her higher and protect the time with her better, even if that meant declining plans or cutting things short. I needed to communicate with her when things came up and to accurately estimate how much time something would take (my hardest skill to improve). I also needed to generally be home when I said I would be home because in a shared life, especially with kids or family commitments, a schedule becomes very important for everyone. A fuckup once in a while is alright, we're all human, but being roughly on time is important to everyone and leads to a much less stressful environment for everyone.

So when talking to her about it, I suggest staying centered on your feelings, on how you were excited to have time with her, the hurt of feeling last place, and about what you need from her.

Then it's on her to respond. I hope she rises to the occasion.