ravan

Summer used to be one of my favorite times of year. No school, my birthday was right in the middle of it, etc. Bracketed by Memorial Day on one end, and Labor Day on the other. Parades, barbecues, etc. were the rule.

Then, I grew up. I still had my birthday, and various conventions between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Not always other vacations, especially after the stroke. My anniversary was August 1, and my spouse's birthday was in late June. Pride month is June. All good.

Fast forward to now. My late spouse's birthday was in late June. Ouch. Pride is bittersweet with all of the anti-trans cruelty from the administration, and Project 2025 wanting to take away non-het folks right to marry. Baycon is now July 4th weekend. My birthday is still in the middle of July. My anniversary is still August 1, and SJ's deathiversary is July 26. So now summer is a roller coaster of emotion.

I'm still going to Baycon, although I am not dealing this year. Too much scramble from SJ's death to get registered, plus my roomie Fuzzy has had health issues of his own this year. It's hot enough that even with a bit of A/C I still get heat rash under and between my oversized boobs that I wish I could be rid of. (I've been trying for years to come up with good sweat absorbers for D+ cups. If I could patent a thing that actually worked, I could probably make a mint.)

I despise the twice a year switch of the clock. It's stupid, and creates more problems than it ever solved.

For those of you who have to drive, be careful because when you fuck up people's circadian rhythm, even by just an hour, they can get easily distracted or inattentive.

Not a usual celebration for me, as I celebrate Samhain. But Sarah was Catholic, kinda sorta Celtic Catholic. So Today is more fitting to write their obituary. She used she/they pronouns, so I'm going to alternate what I use for them. Sorry if it's confusing.

Sarah Joan Hersha was born 6/1951 and died 7/2025. She was 74, and died after nearly 2 years of fighting the cancer - leiomyosarcoma - that ultimately took their life. Her first degree relatives - parents and brothers - all predeceased them. While she has nieces and nephews somewhere, their older half brothers had divorces and whatnot, and they all lost touch. Her parents were Basil and Sharoo Hersha, and yes, their mother's name is Sharoo, not Sharon. I met them both, and I swear her mother knew we were a couple before we really did.

Sarah went by SJ, for a multitude of reasons. Both of us worked in tech, which was, and still is, a very male dominated field. She at first got into databases, but when a piece of garbage called Access drive Paradox out of the market, they pivoted to doing macro development for small businesses People didn't want to hire an older female full time, even those she could work rings around the younger punks. Still, they loved computers, and tech, and she had lots of gadgets to play with. They also sewed, tried her hand at weaving, and enjoyed storytelling in a shared universe.

SJ also collected things like filk CDs, various other music CDs and DVDs, and books. Near the end, they read mostly on her tablet, but we still had a prodigious library together. Their tastes were eclectic, from things like Danny Kaye to Hu. She like Celtic Rock, Elvis, the Beatles, Viking Metal, Yanni, The Village People, Classical, Country, and a bunch of other stuff I've probably forgotten. About the only thing they didn't have a taste for was rap and other edge cases.

After the first chemo failed, and put her in the hospital for ten days, she was too weak to withstand the second best option chemo, and they knew it. We sought second opinions, and they all said the same thing - chemo to "shrink" the tumor, then surgery. But the tumor didn't shrink. Sarah elected to have home hospice, and live longer, than be killed by a longshot chemo that would realistically shorten her live and probably not succeed. So we had a year and a couple months to say goodbye. While cancer treatment has come a long way in the decades since her mother died of cancer in 1993, it hadn't come far enough. Sarah started treatment at over 200 pounds, and was maybe 125 when they died - a skeleton with a big lump in the abdomen. But at least she wasn't in any real pain - the hospice people made sure they had all the pain relief she wanted, which actually wasn't much.

Needless to say, I miss my spouse. They were a complicated person, with depths and dimensions that I can't even begin to touch here, but she was loved and cherished, even if only for a little while. They officially moved in with me in 1990, we got a DP in 2011, and got officially married in 2013.

...Has left the building.

SJ Hersha, aka Datawolf, died sometime between midnight last night and 11 this morning. The hospice nurse declared ToD to be 12:10 pm.

Our 12th anniversary would have been on the first of August. But we'd been together for decades. IIRC, they moved in with me full time in 1990. We met in late 1987, at a science fiction convention (Octocon, IIRC.)

I'm still pretty numb. This was the natural end to being on hospice for cancer. They died at home, not in pain. For the last day or so they weren't really here. The last words I said to them was that I loved them.

I don't know if/when the celebration of life will be.

Welp, my most immune compromised roomie brought Covid home, now everybody but me is testing positive. I am now masking at my desk, and elsewhere. I am so mad I could shit a brick. The only "good" thing is that my spouse is not on chemo, but on hospice instead. So she has a semblance of an immune system, but still.

My roommate suggested a filk...

Filk Concept:
To the Tune of Jolene
So Lean
In Rebuttal to a "Lean" Diet...

( here it is )

In all the years I've lived in this house, we never had a new washer. Well, both of the former owner's bought used washers died.

With five adults and at least as many cats, we needed a new one. So I bought one - new, not used or refurbished. I got a big one with a separate delicates wash area. It theoretically can do two loads at once, and the big front loader can wash bedding. It was delivered yesterday. We are still learning how to use it.

Well, after three years we finally got it. Somehow I was unmasked and eating at the wrong place and wrong time, and I got Covid, and so did my spouse and upstairs roomie. I am beyond pissed - that means someone at the hotel for Consonance, probably an unmasked hotel employee, spread covid around to a bunch of older people.

Since I'm vaccinated, it has been pretty much an upper respiratory "cold from hell", lots of snot and need to sleep.

Well, this year has started out very mixed.

The good:
* I went regular at my job, which seems to be doing okay, but the company is a little weird.
* The new job has real health insurance, not the joke that the agency had, and not the screwup that my job from 2021 die to me.
* My spouse is getting social security and medicare, being over 70. This means my health insurance is less.

The bad:
* My roommates car got stolen, from right in front of our house, probably because of an unlocked door.
* Our remaining washing machine died. Now, the previous owner bought two used washing machines and two driers. The water heater in the garage died a few years ago, and we have had a problem getting the demand heater installed. So now we don't even have cold water wash.

I do not want to get another used washer. I want something new, Energy Star, high efficiency with a warranty.

I'm over sixty, I just want shit that works.

Our household is still masking and applying full Covid precaution because one of the roomies is immune compromised. This is not negotiable.

Read this, and stop listening to the right wing idiots minimizing the problems from Covid:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1595244093126463488.html