We are having an ongoing drama trying to return a washer dryer, the company is being difficult. But besides that, one of their workmen came to our house at 8.30am unannounced!!! My wxfe let him in because they didn't know what else to do. Men really don't know/care how creepy they are do they.

ALSO three grant applications are due around the same time, two on the same day. All open for a short window of time, all the while I've been sick. We've managed one of them, have given up on one for now and the third is tbc. I love trying to run a company while disabled.

We've sent out about a gajillion work emails this year and no one is getting back to us, even when they asked for the emails. Can we de-normalise professional ghosting. But also please don't all reply at once 😩

So I am slow to new things and the second I finally realised what substack is and then wanted to use it, I found out about the huge problems. What do people use instead? Are there any non-US equivalents that habe good quality content?

PSA: 1. If you are not silly, it is vital you become silly 2. If you are silly, you must stay silly 2. If you used to be silly but have stopped, you must make all efforts to return to silliness

Some of my favourite foods and recipes have come from friends. I first had chicken and sweetcorn soup at my best friend's house when I was like 12, a Spanish friend taught me to make tortilla when we both briefly lived in Prague, and most recently my adobo fixation c/o @elainagmamaril.bsky.social 🥰

🦉 Oui, nous avons un chat

I don't think I fully realised how deeply upsetting I find eating out of a bowl with a knife and fork is until today. It's like nails on a chalkboard to me. 🤢 And no one seems to agree with me!!

I've been in bed for three days with a cold. Today I managed to walk, masked, to our very good local store (The Green Shop wooo!). I saw no fewer than four dogs and a savannah cat being walked!!! What a delightful interlude. Now back to grant writing 😩 #SheffieldisSuper #Sheffield

@lingopie.bsky.social has introduced an ai generated easy news and it's a hot mess of US propaganda and non-news. It's also talking about the US 2024 election cycle in the March 2025 news bulletin. I'm out.

My vinted algorithm remains unmatched

I'm re-listening to my all time comfort podcast The Baby Sitters Club Club. It's a masterpiece. (Find it under Strange Bedfellows then sort by oldest. Thank me later.)

Can someone please point me towards UK bluesky that isn't about football. I've taken Instagram off my phone again but replacing it with a diet of blue maga Americans saying basically nothing isn't any better.

In that stage of crisis where I feel like I need to be actively working on a solution all the time or I'll forget something and it'll get worse. So I'm just spinning my wheels and compulsively checking emails. Doing my best to fight it.

This has been going on for almost a decade. I decided to study to become a psychotherapist (I didn't finish) because I had worked for a local charity that was running group wellness sessions and the groups included people with severe OCD who were rejected from the NHS.

Combine that with gutting access to work (access support) for disabled folks who are in work, make sure folks have absolutely no support on any front ✌🏻

Ok so in the last week or so we've had our washing machine break, a leak in the house, 1/3 of our income cut but what's hit hard is Stardew Valley on switch has a glitch where it takes your pets away. We've lost 3 pets now. Literally just closed the game, I don't know if we'll go back for a while.

One of those days that has really sucked but probably good(?) in the long term. Too boring to write it all out but a major income stream is gone (until we claw it back) and we have to focus all our energy on fundraising for the foreseeable. 🫠 We knew it was coming but it's been worse than expected.

I feel like the raw milk/meat people are the (online) far right reaction to the real world decades long efforts to preserve language and unwritten craft/handmaking culture. I can't make a good coherent argument for this, it's just a feeling and might just be more about what my algorithms show me.

We got locked in an arts centre today. They didn't check before closing. We got out but couldn't lock it again. No one around. Cue me tonight imagining they'll get robbed, look at the footage and decide it was me. I am already hypervigilant about getting blamed for shit I didn't do. Thanks brain.

I feel like Aus is a testing ground for how to manufacture consent in the public. Living in the UK I think that Murdoch tested so much on the Australian public before going wider. I've heard stuff in the 'news' here that was tried when I lived in Aus 13 years ago.

"Daylighting" is the practice in urban design of restoring buried rivers to the surface. The River Sheaf been unburied in Sheffield city centre, after 100 yrs in the dark. Fabulous. A small light in the great gloom. “It is starting to make its own meandering path…” www.bbc.com/news/article...

The UK could easily give £13.4 billion extra a year to it's military budget, if we actually tax the rich, we could then fix NHS as well. Can be done with this government. Will they? No because they're capitalist scum.

Do white men realise they look weird wearing a cap inside? Or is it just me that finds it weird? Like not the cool stylish guys, just the normal men.

Also the way that every single UK political post I've seen has been completely overrun by Americans making it about their stuff reminds me of how ADHD folks railroad Autism activism IJS.

I'm struggling with bluesky. My feeds are still white guy hot takes and nothingy comments from Americans with anime profile pics. My localised and specialised feeds barely update, my home town one has had the same post at the top for a week...

Today @badassblindy.bsky.social and I went and did real world stuff with @scowny.bsky.social and @elainagmamaril.bsky.social. Scowny and I spent no less than 5mins of the 15min drive lolling at trying to pronounce number plates and trying to guess if the guy with the JPG numberplate was cool...

We're ok we just can't handle anything remotely medical to do with the cats. Noodle (black and white, OG cat, mystery age) is going for blood tests next week to check if she's losing weight (very slowly) for any reason or if it's just anxiety because we got a second cat (3 year old tiny ragdoll). 🫠

'Balsamic' is an adjective, stop saying 'balsamic' when you mean 'balsamic vinegar' aaarrggghg

Before I nixed the discovery tab I would see sighted folks being sassy about including alt text and how they won't interact with you if you don't do alt text, and then I'd check and their own image descriptions were pretty bad. As the partner of a blind person I find this unsurprising and annoying.

Come on spring let's gooooooooo

Another example of Schrödinger’s leftist: so marginal as to deserve no electoral pandering nor voice in opinion pages, so ubiquitous and powerful as to be able to change the course of history with a suffix

When someone/a system is so disrespectful and there's no willingness to understand and there's no consequences for them, you look petty if you hold on to it or repeatedly try to command some respect that you know others receive. This is one way power structures reinforce themselves at all levels.

First they came for people and I wrote a poem. Then they came for more people and I’ve got nothing. I just point to the poem and shrug.

cis people will quote the poem and not actually speak out for us in any meaningful way first they came for the trans people, and I said okay, those uppity trannies are erasing women

I just don't think it's unreasonable to have expected someone to send the host of the British Podcast of the Year awards some flowers and a card or something, you know? Especially as they were prevented from attending the ceremony.

I feel like awards have lost their perceived prestige since they've been publicly made to be slightly more inclusive. Down to the tiny ones. My wxfe won a big UK award last year, the event was inaccessible so we couldn't go...

Sleeve one of the Partner Pullover is done. Yes I have made it way more complicated by adding stripes and fluff.

The BBC newsfeed mentions that people had to leave their pets behind, it's been 24 hours. I hope they have been allowed to return to retrieve and care for them. 😭

Almost there, guys. 😮‍💨

I'm being an adult and running cleanmymac on the new laptop and trying to ignore the news.

Some internet cats I love have got ill or passed away in the last week or so, we also lost our in-game cat in Stardew, a known glitch. I've just been cuddling our real cat Noodle and telling her how much I love her... she has responded to my affection by sticking her head in my armpit 🫣

Ok but @elainagmamaril.bsky.social doesn't fit in my sleeve tho (queer joke)

Thanks for having us @vixleyton.bsky.social 💜 Photo of @badassblindy.bsky.social 🕺🏻

My latest special interests that are brewing are noodles and breeds of sheep (for making yarn).

I'm now 7 months into recovering from getting COVID in summer 2024. My fatigue levels are improving but I'm still having horrendous days (like today), especially after stress and exertion.

It's been A Day. I'm so so grateful for these systems, I get to work full time as access support with my favourite person, as well as being a company director. But I'm now looking at no payment for an unknown amount of time because of previous administration errors on their side.

Vote YES for dogs on trams! My points are: - I can more easily spend time with friends who have dogs - the tram is expensive, at least let me see dogs - Shelbyville (Rotherham) already allows dogs on trams!

That when they were building (New) Parliament House in 1988 they found an Indigenous Australian burial ground and instead of preserving it or doing literally anything respectful, they just smashed it up. And the city is built on a lot of 'sacred geometry' nonsense. 🇦🇺👎🏻