An update

[Originally posted at Ana Mardoll's Ramblings.]

After putting up the open thread at Ana's yesterday, I typed up what's been going on with me, since I haven't said anything there in weeks.  It's probably been longer since I said something here, so I figured I'd post it here too.

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I've been bad.

[Depression, sickness, general terribleness at coping with life, goats, sheep, ducks, chickens, and a pig.]

Depression is bad. I thought it was getting better, but then . . . don't know.

I haven't been doing a good job of keeping food in the house,* which has translated to not eating properly. I know I'm not drinking enough. Haven't been getting enough sleep either.

So that's all fun. It all links together and feeds itself with any one problem contributing to the others, and in tern being bolstered by them.

I've been sick. Got the first sinus headaches of my life.† Not fun. I've just realized that it doesn't feel like they've gone away yet. Not sure if they really haven't, or I've currently got a migraine doing a really good impression.

Anyway, I got sick, it lingered for longer than it had any right to, then --just as it was lifting-- I got sick again, and now it's seeming like I might have picked up some kind of secondary respiratory track infection because apparently two annoying and gross sicknesses in a row wasn't enough.

Remember how I talked about bullshit regarding primary computer ages ago? Haven't actually done anything about that since then. Just been depressed and stagnant and stuff.

Secondary computer stopped accepting a charge . . . a few days ago, I think? Need to pop it open and see if it's something I can actually deal with or if it's kaput. It uses star screws. It probably isn't the first time I've encountered something with star screws, but it's the first time I've needed to do anything with them.

There is good news on the computer front. Thanks to a generous and unexpected loan from my mother, a new primary computer is coming. ETA next Thursday. So, that's something.

I've been helping my sister more days than not for I~don't~know~how~long. Everyone's getting worn down to Hell, tempers are frayed, and . . . blah. She lives an hour and a half away. Being trapped in a car any member of my family for that long can seriously deplete SAN points.

I don't remember what we started on. It's been fences so long that whatever came before has been lost. We've got one (pretty damned large) enclosure constructed and functioning, and another that's only waiting for gates. Both are rigged for electric fence near the bottom (to prevent animals from digging or forcing their way under, and the one waiting on gates is at the top (to prevent attempts to go over.)

When I started helping her up there this . . . stretch, I guess, she had a lot of chickens, two ducks, two sheep, and a goat. I've gone on trips with her to pick up an additional goat and a pig. The pig is a black furred and skinned individual Lola. The new goat has giant floppy ears. (It and the old goat are both incredibly soft and pettable.)

The sheep and goats both like to repeatedly express how unimpressed they are with the universe and all its contents by loudly saying, "Meh," but drawn out.

Helping my sister has taken up a huge amount of my time, and it leaves me pretty well spent the rest of the time. I was actually planning on starting to clean my house right around when she first called me in (well, first called me in this year), I haven't had the time or the energy.

I don't even remember the last time I wrote something.

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* Have food right now, since I just stocked up.

† That I know of, could be that I had them before and mistook them for something else.

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Update on being sick: I noticed today that my sister's daughter is responding to sounds of sickness the way she would any other phoneme: she's mimicking them.

Mostly it's been the sound of spitting out mucus.  Thankfully she's doing kind of a crap job; her rendition of the sound isn't disgusting at all.

It's interesting to hear what things sound like when they're being imitated by her.

When we got the pig, she did her best to reproduce pig sound.  If you truly want to reproduce an oink, I'm pretty sure you need to do it by breathing in through your nose, but for my niece sounds are made by breathing out through the mouth.  The results were definitely evocative of a pig, but in a very noticeably human way.