I am still enjoying Silksong and I will continue playing, but for now I need to put it aside. I'm getting way too stressed out, and since I usually play in the evenings, that's right before bedtime. I've even been taking my Garmin off when I play because it senses the rise in heart rate when I'm in these arena battles or boss fights. Tonight I'm going back to South of Midnight, which I was playing before we left on vacation. I was enjoying that a lot - good story, good gameplay, very engaging, likable player character, giant talking catfish.

I understand the why of Silksong being as challenging as it is, but I also don't think I need to keep banging my head against it every single night. I appreciate the reasons, and I enjoy a difficult game - I did Hyper Light Drifter at 100%, got most of Owlboy, Hollow Knight's Path of Pain, etc. I need a break :D

In other news, the replacement power box for the tower should be here today. We'll take down the dented one and if everything goes as planned (LOL) we'll only be offline for an hour while we swap over all the equipment. We'll need to run out to Home Depot tomorrow for bolts and anything else we might wind up needing, but with me assisting, it should go pretty quickly.

My neighbor now has one more chicken, making five. She keeps apologizing to me for how they roam into my yard, but I enjoy watching them scratch around, and they aren't hurting anything.

And I have noticed the weather station nearby that was reporting negative amounts of humidity has either been repaired or, more likely, replaced.

A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a ... doctor who isn't a dipshit.

Actually my current PCP isn't exactly a dipshit, he's just not really the right doctor for either me or Fox. Yeah, we see the same guy. But Fox actively dislikes him, and I'm just tired of dealing with him, so we're finding new ones to see. Fox found someone in literally the same office, and I'll be calling the office next door, which has two likely candidates.

Ideally I'd like a doctor who is athletic, but I'll settle for someone who at least acknowledges that *I* am and that my activity levels can make me a little different from the usual run of 49 year old women. I'd personally point to the time my current doctor suggested I get out an walk, and then said there's a mile loop around the complex, and I should try doing two loops for two miles in under thirty minutes. And he said all this without ever asking me if I exercised and/or what I did. He also apparently doesn't acknowledge or can't remember that I do strength training.

Finally, I'm fed up with the liver biopsy push. I saw a liver specialist and had extensive blood panels done on top of a deep tissue ultrasound to look for scars and hardening, and they found exactly nothing wrong. But the current doctor just looks at lab results, makes recommendations on that, and doesn't bother asking questions about lifestyle, family history, or anything else. He just sees that ALT is 40 when it should be 25 this time around, ignores that it was normal last time, and I'm so tired of arguing with him. I'm not going to stop working out for a week to ten days just to have "good" blood work.

Anyway.

I have never really wanted a ball cap, I suspect I look like a massive dork in them. However, I have done some soul-searching and made peace with the fact that ball cap or no, I am actually a massive dork. And I have never needed or wanted a ball cap the way I need and want this one.

I wrote my thesis on Anais Nin's diaries. (Sorry about the lack of umlaut but I don't feel like switching to the international keyboard.) I can still talk the bark off a tree about interiority, exhibitionism, and the importance Nin placed on erotic episodes in her journals. Unfortunately, I no longer have the collection of books I used - that all got left in Louisiana when I moved, and Ex Husband likely tossed out or sold them. It would probably be worth my while to start rebuilding that portion of my library.