Spontaneous Musings

1. Talked to Babs, who is having the same issues that I am in regards to sleep. Goes to bed too late. And if she's really lucky? Gets 6 hours and some minutes of sleep. Is a lazy slug on weekends. And tired a lot of the time.

We have a difficult job - it's basically pushing a boulder up a cliff while people throw rocks at you. Or as Babs puts it shoveling shit against the tide. Mother calls it trying to pull jello off a wall.

I like aspects of it, of course, or I wouldn't do it. I don't hate my job, I dislike my management, which isn't quite the same thing. As long as management leaves me alone - I'm okay. They are for the most part this year.

I told Babs I felt bad about New Gal. But Babs told it wasn't my fault. I didn't do anything but try to help her. We both did. It was outside our control. Babs really despises BYT. And was sick to her stomach about what happened to NG, who she tried to help. She's seen BYT treat ten of her colleagues in this manner, along with herself. I honestly think Babs would push BYT in front of a train if she could get away with it.

I've found a way to get along with BYT, I'm basically handling her the same way I did BOSS, and hoping for the best. At least she doesn't sneak up behind me and tap me on the shoulder like BOSS did, giving me an anxiety attack. Actually that isn't happening much if at all this year. All the people who did it - have moved away. Leaving behind those who have no need to. I do not miss that - that's a blessing.

2. Had Vegetarian Chili with cheese and crackers tonight - hopefully it won't cause too many issues? Also had chocolate for desert (which I shouldn't have done) the two together was well a spike in the old blood sugar. It sucks growing old. I've decided to purchase two supplement packages from Winged Wellness - Hot Mama (Menopause) and Balanced Baby (estrogen hormonal balance) - in the hopes that it will help with the hot flashes and night sweats. Both Babs and FM are sympathetic, they have them too. We're all close to the same age. I'm the youngest of the three of us. FM is 58, I'm 56, and Babs is around 65. Everybody else, outside of BOSS and Breaking Bad, is well under 50. I think some are between 45-50. But most are under 40. And they all tell me how they are going to retire at 56.

Yes, we'll see if they last that long. I'll be gone. That's ten to twenty years for most of them, and I plan to be out in 4-6.

(And saving money towards that goal. I don't live highly, never have.)

3. Contemplating some day trips or hiking trips...- hiking trips around NY State. If I can talk Wales into doing them with me. Unlikely. I may have to do it on my own. Also going to the American Natural History Museum.

4. And seeing Oppenheimer by Christopher Nolan. (Mother is going on Saturday with Mean Girl Friend, they both adore Cillian Murphy (Peaky Blinders) who stars as Oppenheimer.)

I like Nolan films - he is excellent at visuals, and explores interesting and complex themes and characters. Granted they are very male centric films, but that doesn't bother me.

Barbie, I'm wary of...however, it is tempting based on Rolling Stone's Review header.. Barbie the Most Subversive Blockbuster of the 21st Century. (I'm leery, because I do not like broad satire or broad comedy. I like subtle dry witty comedy. Absurdist. Gallows humor. But big in your face comedy often annoys me. If you see it? Let me know how broad the comedy is?)

Per NPR... Go See Oppenheimer and Barbie in Theaters, Double Header or Not, it's your call. Oppenheimer is three hours, no. I can't do a six hour double header.

(I need to take a day off soon...or a couple, I am resenting the folks taking vacations again. If I see one more out of office on vacation notification - I may spork someone.)

5. I'm in the mood for a horror novel. I suppose I could read a Colleen Hoover Romance - which are in reality contemporary anti-romance horror novels. It's a sub trope in the romance novel category - that non-romance readers know about. Where basically the woman falls in love with a powerful and insanely abusive guy, who rapes and beats her, but says he loves her, and sometimes the rape is seduction, mostly brutal, and the suspense is - will she escape him?

See Stop Praising Colleen Hoover's IT ENDS WITH US


hough cocky and manipulative from the start, Ryle is portrayed as a man who desperately wants to be good but is tormented by inner demons. This is, of course, a tired cliché that’s too often applied to abusive men. The first two incidents of abuse occur in “heat of the moment” scenarios in which Ryle loses his temper. Lily suffers cuts, bruises and a concussion severe enough to render her unconscious, but tells herself that “all humans make mistakes” and that “everyone deserves another chance.”

The third incident, however, reveals Ryle to be sadistic, pre-meditating and cruel. It is not an example of a poor tortured soul who loses control; on the contrary, it’s a chilling portrayal of a calculated and violent sexual attack.

Ryle discovers Lily has kept a small gift—a refrigerator magnet—given to her by her high school boyfriend. This enrages him with jealousy, and when she returns home that evening, he is waiting for her in the dark, holding the magnet. He initiates a sexual encounter with Lily, and while digitally penetrating her with one hand and pulling her hair to the point of pain with the other, demands she tell him who gave her the magnet. She asks him to stop because he is hurting her, and he responds by choking her and forcing himself upon her. He then pauses and directs her to take her shirt off and read aloud to him a recent newspaper article about the ex-boyfriend’s current success; this is frightening and humiliating for Lily, but she is too afraid to disobey. What follows is a rape attempt that results in multiple physical injuries including a scream-inducing bite and a head-butt that knocks Lily unconscious. Throughout the attack, Ryle is “disturbingly calm.”

During the time Lily is unconscious, Ryle “snaps out of it,” then expresses remorse. But there’s a logic problem here: Ryle never “snapped into it.” He planned this attack. He set it up, waited for Lily, then carried it out almost methodically. He even claims, during the rape attempt, he is doing it because “I haven’t proved to you how much I love you.” This is not a good guy with a bad temper—this is a monster. And now, there’s a complicating factor.

While being treated in the ER for her injuries after the attack, Lily learns she is pregnant. She enters another cycle of agonizing over what to do, whether there’s any hope for their family, how to reconcile the fact that she still loves Ryle with the knowledge he will turn on her. Ultimately, Lily remains strong and decides to divorce Ryle, to break the cycle (thus, “it ends with us”). If the book ended there, we could cheer her survival and courage.

But at the end of the novel, which takes place a year later and which Hoover clearly intends to be a redemption scene, we see Lily and Ryle, amicably divorced and co-parenting their daughter. In that scene, Ryle, who is a violent sex offender, is picking up the baby for “his days with her.”


Then What's the Story with Colleen Hoover's Romance Novels?

Over a million reviews and ratings on Good Reads for It Ends With Us. Dear God, why? I told this to a co-worker, who was shocked, after I also told him what they were about. He was surprised. I wasn't. Also, it's not new. Hoover didn't create the trope. Rosemary Rodgers wrote it before she did, as did Richardson with Clarissa. I have a long essay about it on Ao3.

I'll pass. I've already read far too much in that particular trope - enough to be happy that I'm single. I swear these books are written to encourage me to stay single and not date. That and Ask Aubrey columns. You want to despise heterosexual men? Read those books. Although they are oddly appealing if you are single.

Found in my email... Best Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror so far according to Good Reads

Flirting with Episode Thirteen by Craig DiLoui

and...The Last Tale of the Flower Bride

Okay, it's late off to bed.