Monthly Archives: December 2025

busking, panto, players, poop

drng th pst wk

i’m more or less over diverticulitis. i’m still being cautious about what, and how much, i eat, but i actually went a whole week without shitting myself, even once, so that’s something… 😒

once again, our outstanding understudy, chochi, came to the rescue. this time it was no less a personage than macque, one of the founders of the troupe, who plays the lead rôle of “the dame” (in our case, she’s “Esmerelda, The Good Fairy”) who lost his voice, and so chochi stepped up, into a rôle that is NORMALLY played by a man-dressed-as-a-woman… chochi is a somewhat androgynous person, and i don’t know them well enough to posit at their pronouns, but it APPEARS that they were a woman-dressed-as-a-man-dressed-as-a-woman. once again, she had the book in her hand for the first show, and she did the next three shows completely off book, and she only screwed up one line. 👍👍 i have this fantasy of, one day, performing in a group of actors and musicians who know their material SO WELL that they can, literally, change rôles at a moment’s notice, and not have any difficulties. 😉

this coming weekend is the last four shows of this cycle. then we’ll start gearing up for the moisture festival, and the summer’s panto, which has yet to be decided upon.

we’re going busking tomorrow. last wednesday we busked and made over $50 A PIECE for one hour of busking. the hope is that this week will be similar, as it’s the day before a major holiday. i have had to listen to a surprisingly small amount of “xmas” music, this year, but that is, largely, because i don’t subscribe to any streaming services, and, for the most part, i don’t listen to music on my phone, except for music that i already own: i’ve got 3 days of .mp3s on itunes, and just under 1 TB of mostly .flac files on my NAS, which i can access from any of MY devices (computer, phone, tablet). and i have successfully “tuned out” the muzak i experience in grocery stores and suchlike. maybe my attitude will change, next year, but, this year, i am really against all forms of “xmas” cheer. let’s get rid of #drumpf and his cronies, and then we can talk about re-introducing “xmas” — particularly “xmas” music — into my reality again. 😒 even VEWPRF is pushing it.

panto, poop

during the past week…

i appear to be getting over diverticulitis — AGAIN — i’m no longer experiencing bouts of lower-gut pain 30 seconds to a minute or so before i have to rush to the bathroom or else i shit my pants, and i am experiencing FEWER “shit-my-pants emergency” trips to the bathroom, although they are still somewhat frequent, and i have A BIT more control over them, for SLIGHTLY longer than i had last week. i’m still on a more-or-less restricted diet, which is largely liquid, although solid food has become a daily occurrence again, and it hasn’t caused any visible backlash.

…

i’ll be VERY GLAD when i no longer have to worry about things like this, over which i have VERY LITTLE control, affecting my body. 😒

…

the panto is selling out. we have two more weekends (eight total shows), and, so far, they have either been sold out, or mostly sold out before they even opened the box office. the tail-end of the donkey did something wrong, and hit his head (or something like that, i never heard the details), so the understudy was supposed to play the tail-end of the donkey, but then King Oswald Montegue (played by newbie shelley douma) lost her voice, but was, otherwise, feeling fine (a common malady for someone who took on a leading role without much advance preparation or training), so she took over the donkey-ass position, and the understudy (Chochi Smiley?) took over the King’s part, and she actually did really well, including the songs. it’s really good to have an understudy who actually KNOWS ALL the parts! 👍👍

thursday is xmas. thursday is also the day when the trash-collectors normally make their rounds. i’m going to bet that they’re going to bump it to friday, but i haven’t heard anything, yet.

clarice, house stuff, moe, moe's mom, poop

during the past week…

i’ve been dealing with diverticulitis, which means, largely, a liquid diet, and having to shit all the time, sometimes suddenly, and (occasionally) explosively, which is VERY INCONVENIENT… particularly if it is in the morning, before a performance for which the venue isn’t open yet… 🤬😖😒😠🤬 which resulted in my having to sit in my own shit the entire day, through two performances, and pretend that everything is fine. 😵 i have had to get one of my suits professionally cleaned… 😒

i hope i never have to do that again. i would literally rather DIE than have to experience that again. one of the things that my counselor has pointed out to me, is that i have “unresolved grief” because i DIDN’T DIE when i had my brain injury… something i am still trying to wrap my head around… 😖😵

ON TOP OF THAT clarice died (she was a defective bird right from the start, so it wasn’t too surprising), but moe’s boss was so devastated by it that moe, somehow, came up with TWO parakeets (they’re actually budgerigars), which are, tentatively, named Tommy and Tony (after Tommy Chong, and Richard Anthony “Cheech” Marín), but, at the moment, are as yet unnamed. ON TOP OF THAT we’ve been experiencing an “atmospheric river”, which has resulted in widespread flooding that has included our back yard!!

251211 our flooded back yard
251211 our flooded back yard
ON TOP OF THAT, the day after thanksgiving, moe’s mom had an “altercation” with another resident of the old-folks home where she lives, which resulted in the other resident attacking her and another old lady. moe’s mom now has a severely bruised face, a black eye, and both arms in casts, which means that she can’t do important things like opening dog-food cans, which means that her dog (normally called “the unicorn”, but recently we have taken to calling her “the miniature tyrant”… her actual name is “Lacey”) has come to live with us, and we are in the beginning steps of filing a lawsuit against the facility, because the staff basically stood by, did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, and waited for ANOTHER RESIDENT to step in and convince the guy to stop attacking… 😠

i’m not sure, and i don’t know all the details of the “altercation”, but i’m strongly betting that moe’s mom had at least something to do with the start of it. 😒

and ON TOP OF THAT moe has torn her meniscus AGAIN, which increases the likelihood that she will have to have BOTH KNEES REPLACED at some, hopefully, relatively soon point in time. 🤯

is that enough?

i will be REALLY glad when the universe STOPS attacking me. 😠

poop

diverticulitis

so, a couple of years ago, i was feeling increasingly poorly for a few days, and it turned out i have diverticulitis, and ended up in the hospital for a few days, as a result.

when i was in my early 20s, i had an experience with a family friend who had diverticulitis. this was before CT scans — the most common way of diagnosing such conditions, these days — were in common use, and there was a lot of “scientific guesswork” involved in both the diagnosis and treatment of these conditions. this family friend had been “prescribed” a diet of nothing but plain noodles and hard candy for a month, which i thought was both hilarious and ghastly, at the same time. the science of medicine has advanced A LOT in the past ≈45 years, for which i am VERY glad!

the risk factors for developing diverticulitis, these days, include “obesity, lack of exercise, smoking, a family history of the disease, and use of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). The role of a low fiber diet as a risk factor is unclear.” which, generally, does NOT describe me, although, these days, the doctors also say that it could just be “bad luck”, which is a little more understandable.

so, when i started developing symptoms that were ALARMINGLY similar to diverticulitis, again, yesterday, i went into full protection mode, which includes informing my lovely wife, who gave me some “dog antibiotics” (she just “happened” to have them around, in her “dog first aid kit”), because the last two “rehearsals” for the panto are wednesday (today), and thursday (tomorrow), and the rehearsal tomorrow actually has an audience, despite the fact that it is a “dress rehearsal”, and the show starts “for real” on saturday… and i have ALREADY had to bail on the panto because i got sick at the last POSSIBLE moment, once, so it feels REALLY BAD to have to bail on them AGAIN. 😠

the good news is that i am already feeling ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE better, have a strong forward path which DOES NOT include the hospital, and i should be able to make the rehearsals and performances of the panto without further difficulties. 👍👍

cannabis, homegrown, nursery

miscellaneous updatish which turned into a nursery update…

i got some rockwool cubes in which to start clones. they don’t work. 👎 the clones i put in rockwool hadn’t developed ANY new roots in almost a month, but, because of the fact that i had kept them covered, and sprayed them with water, they were still alive. so i took all four of them, re-treated them with rooting powder, and transplanted them into soil, two weeks ago. i’ve still kept them covered, and spray them with water, and they’re all still alive, as far as i can tell. and, at least, in soil, they SHOULD develop roots that make themselves evident after a month or so.

i finally finished harvesting the fall crop, which turned out to be three, 1-quart jars stuffed full of fat, sticky buds of the space queen strain. 🤤 the stuffed 1-gallon ziplock bag i gave to ezra was from the summer crop, was different, random strains from bellingham, and a couple different ones from my next-door neighbour. i got four 1-quart jars stuffed full of space-queen buds from the summer harvest. 🤤

i moved one plant into the nursery, from the light booth, a couple of days ago. this is the “mother” of the four clones that were in rockwool, and are now in soil. it’s a clone of the really vigorous space queen plant i grew from seed, over the summer… from last year’s seed, if i recall correctly… 😉