Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: irritation

I’m officially done with 2024

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I’m bringing my car into the garage tomorrow between 7 – 9 a.m. so that they can look at the battery and possibly replace it. That’s irritating, yes, but at least it’s a problem being taken care of. The place is about a quarter mile from my house so I can walk home after dropping off the car. Or see if my brother can drive me back. I am not happy about the multiple car problems I’ve had, but if everything gets fixed, then fine.

However. I got a letter from the county saying that they had not receive my renewal form and my medical insurance was going not going to be renewed. The renewal date is 2/2/24. So a week and a half from now. I called the county this morning and got put on hold. “We are experiencing an unusally heavy volume of calls this morning, and you may have to wait.” That’s what I hear every time I call them, but it probbaly is especially true since the pandemic.

I got a person after an hour on hold. That was actually half the amount of time it took me last time. Let me tell you that I sent in the form three weeks ago (at the beginning of this month). It was a bit after the deadline, but I’ve done that before. I’m not proud of it, but it’s never been a problem. Oh, and this is the first year they’ve made people renew their forms since the pandemic. Which, again, is probably why they’re slammed.

Anyway. They received my form, but apparently, they don’t acknowledge that at all. Because they are behind in processing them, the notices for cancellation went out, anyway. Do you get how fucked that is? I did everything right (mostly), and they HAVE my renewal form. They’ve had it for three weeks, but they haven’t processed it yet. In the meantime, there is a week and a half until my insurance runs out.

The woman told me that if I don’t get a confirmation that my insurance has been renewed by January 31st, I should call back (sigh) and ask for the process to be expedited. But she couldn’t do it today because technically, I’m still covered. How fucked up is that? It has to actually elapse or be a day before elapsing before it can be expedited. This is just bonkers to me. It has to be the pandemic because I’ve never had this issue in renewing before.

I told Ian (before the medical insurance bullshit) that I would rather deal with dying twice again than this drip, drip, drip, of mundane life annoyances. In part because i was unconsicous for much of it, but also because I didn’t really have to do anything other than recover once I was out of the hospital.


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It’s the little things

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I have gone through a serieous medical crisis in which I died twice. You would think that with something that epic in my background (and memorable), I would not be rattled by the little things in life. I should be able to brush them off and just laugh. After all, I beat death with one hand tied behind my back. Twice!

You would be wrong.

For the first six months or so after I left the hospital, yes, I was pretty much immune to the pettiness of life.

I am in the third year of my new life. I can now say that I am more annoyed by the little things than by dying. One, it’s recently bias as Ian pointed out. The little things tha irritate me are now and me dying (twice!) was so 2021. Two, dying has no effect on me now. I am incredibly fortunate that I did not have to do rehab or physical therapy after what happened to me. I’m about 95% of what I used to be. I am so damn lucky, and I know it. I don’t have to think about what happened to me or deal with the ramifications. Well, not being able to drive as well is the biggest one, but it’s not that big a deal because I don’t have to drive much.

There’s something wrong with my phone. It won’t work. This is my landline, by the way. It just says ‘check tel line’. I tried to unplug and replug. I tried the main phone on a different socket. I tried just having the cordless plugged in.

Nada. I talked to my brother (on my cell, which I hate), and he confirmed, after walking me through the steps I should take, that it was the line. He advised me to call CenturyLink. They have work hours, which were only during weekdays. They had a toll-free number for emergencies, which I reluctantly called. I knew what was going to happen, and I was not wrong.

I got a bot. I had to go through their questions, and none of them were exactly right. Which meant I could only give them an estimation because I could not actually talk to a real human boing. The bot said I could have a technician come on THURSDAY (so almost a week later) anywhere between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Come on. Oh, and if I had to cancel and didn’t do it ahead of time ,I could be charged a fee. Same with if it was fixed ahead of time and I did not call them. I could get charged a fee.  Or if they came and no one answered.

This is all bullshit.

Just to add to my minor irritations that really bothered the shit out of me, I bought a magnifying glass from Amazon. It came and the back of it had poppped off so one of the lens was out of the frame. And, it runs on 3 AAA batteries (for the lighting)–which it does not come with. I’m sure it says it somewhere in the description, but nowhere prominently.  I am fine with the no battery thing. I can just pick some up the next time I go grocery shopping–but the lens thing was so annoying. To make matters worse, I put the lens back in the wrong way so everything was upside down as I tried to read it. I had to pry the lens out (and that took some doing–I was afraid I’d break the lens or the frame), but I was also getting angrier and angrier as I could not get it out. I finally did. And I put it back in the right way. But I’m still unreasonably mad. It’s a seven dollar magnifying glass. Calm the fuck down, Hong!*


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Call me Petty Betty because I’m irked

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We all have pet peeves, those little things that irritate us beyond reason. This is in opposition to hills to die on, which are also things that may be petty to some people, but they area big deal to (general) you. In other words, they can end up being bigger pet peeves.

My example is wearing a bra at work. On Ask A Manager, there was a heated (much more heated than I expected in 2023) debate over whether bras should be required to wear at work. By women. I mean, the debate was by women–not the wearing of said bras. Yes, that was also assumed to be by women, but that isn’t my point.

My point is that I stopped wearing a bra for good during the pandemic as many women did. I rarely wore one before that, either, but that’s when I realized taht I did not have to wear one at all. Ever. I don’t work outside the home, but I would absolutely not wear a bra if I did. In this post, a person wrote in to say that they had been taken to task for not wearing one. I fully expected the women who read the blog (mostly progressive people) to be at worst equanimous about wearing a bra to work. At  At worst! But, no. There were many women who were appalled at the idea of not wearing a bra to work. One even went as far as to say nipples were disgusting. I mean, the OP said they (I believe they were nonbinary) were careful to make sure nothing showed, but the fact that nipples existed and there might have  been some jiggle really upset at least one woman in the comments.

I said that if I worked in an office, this was absolutely a hill I would die on. Me wearing a bra had no effect on my ability to do any office work, and I could not stand how they felt. Someone said it was a privilege to be able to say that, and I said absolutely! But I meant it and those of us who had the ability to use that privilege for good should do it! I mean, what’s the point of having privilege if you can’t leverage it in some way?

This is my issue with just telling someone to check their privilege. Usually, the implication is that they are saying/doing something that other people can’t do/say. Which ,ok. That may be true, but what should that person do after checking it? It has become a ‘gotcha’ statement without any meaning behind it. For me, checking one’s privilege should be followed with an action predicated upon checking  said privelege.

For me, the bra situation would be me checking my privilege (I could afford to leavea job for this reason) and then using that privilege to speak up on something that other people may not be able to. In addition, there were several women in the ‘suck it up’ category. They were really dismissive of the whole thing, saying it wasn’t that big a deal to wear one. If that’s the case, then why was it equally not a big deal to NOT wear one?


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Learning to Tolerate Frustration

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I hate weeding. I hate it so much. If I had a top ten list of things I hate to do, well, it wouldn’t be on it, but it would be close. I especially hate it when it’s sunny and dank out as it is today. I sit there, sweating, resenting the hell out of the glowing orb in the sky. Let me be clear. Even though I’m a cold weather kind of gal, I like te sun shining in the sky. However, not when it’s dank. I fucking hate humidity because I sweat like a pig. When I used to read ‘health articles’ , one of the general tips was that you should workout until you break a heavy sweat. I break in a heavy sweat just by stepping out into the sun, so it’s not a good barometer for me.

Anyway, I was weeding today and just thinking nasty thoughts towards the weeds I was pulling out of the backyard. It seems so pointless in that even if you get the roots, there will always be more weeds to take their place. I will say, however, that I like breaking down boxes with a box cutter. There’s something immensely satisfying about destroying boxes to their basics. I also will say that I like manual labor as it makes me Zen in a way. I don’t think about anything as I’m working with my hands, which is a relief for me. My brain is constantly humming, and the more I try not to think about things, the more my thoughts race around in my brain. To be able to have it blessedly free of thoughts is a miracle, but is it worth doing the manual labor? Box-breaking, yes. Weeding, no.

I’m working on being more flexible in general, but it’s difficult. I find comfort in my routines, so anything that fucks with that garners a massive side eye from me. However, doing a few hours of housework every day has been good in that besides giving me time away from my thoughts, it also makes me feel productive in a way that I don’t with doing mental work. Clearing out the garage and seeing the actual progress is satisfying in a way that writing two-thousand words isn’t.

As many of you know, I don’t cook. Many years ago, I did bake, though, and there was something so soothing about handling the dough. It’s tactile, and it feels wonderful to have it ooze through my fingers. Then, placing the lump of dough (or lumps) in the oven and waiting for it to form into something delicious and edible was great, too. The smell wafting from the oven would tantalize me until I pulled it out, all brown, smelling earthy, yeasty, and sweet, and ready to be shoved down my gullet.

I did do a little bit of cooking. I made a seven-layer dip, a potato corn chowder with a whole tub of sour cream that was fucking amazing, and kung pao chicken. They were all tasty, especially the chowder, but it was so time-consuming. It made me feel good, though, to have this huge pot of chowder ready to be eaten, and what’s better on  blustery Minnesota winter day than a steaming bowl of corn chowder?


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