- Sorry for the unexcepted interruption.
- Moose out front should’ve told ya.
- Shit just happens sometimes.
- Immune systems get interrupted.
- Compromised.
- Mine’s on strike, apparently.
- Which resulted in a two-day stay at Ches St. Francis South.
- And here I thought we’d be five days into the Reclamation Project.
- Alas.
- Two days on, two days off.
- Maybe three off.
- Dammit all.
- During this health odyssey, I’ve experienced exhaustion so deep I could not do anything.
- Most the time, even feeling awful, I get up and do what I have to do.
- I’ve learned there’s another level of fatigue.
- The kind where you lay in bed and stare at the wall and do nothing.
- You know how I am with boredom.
- These few times in hospital rooms in the aftermath of something, I have not read, not watched television, not listened to music.
- Just laid there, drifting in and out.
- Not talking.
- Nothing.
- And you can’t even remember what you thought about when you’re through it
- Or I can’t.
- Health Time Theft.
- Wasted days.
- Wasted time.
- Wasted Years!!!!
- And yet, it’s the price of continued life.
- If your body isn’t in tune, you’re shortening your timeline.
- And even then, doing everything right doesn’t mean you’ll avoid shenanigans.
- It’s important to remember what you can and can’t do in these situations.
- What you do and do not control.
- There’s no capitulation.
- No surrender.
- Do or die.
- (Sometimes literally.)
- It wasn’t the entire time I was in the hospital for the brain stuff, mind you, just that first couple of days.
- Then came The Manifesto.
- Anyway.
- Been the longest gap since we started the public List.
- Was not intentional.
- This is my first time even holding a laptop in three days.
- (Let me get my notebook. I had some notes over the weekend.)
- Oh, right.
- Mom’s staying with us because she’s had her hip replaced.
- She’d mentioned before her favorite Star Wars movie is Rogue One.
- Caught me off guard, really.
- But honestly, I get it.
- It’s probably my favorite, too.
- So Saturday noonish, I threw it on.
- Told her she needed to watch Andor.
- We had a cool conversation about “most watched” movies.
- Hers are Star Wars flicks, the Harry Potter movies, The Lord of the Rings … and I forget.
- There were others.
- I’ve mentioned it before, but Mom’s a nerd, too, apparently.
- I would not have guessed it from my youth, except …
- She took me to see Empire Strikes Back in the theatre.
- And Raiders of the Lost Ark.
- And out early on the last day of school to see Return of the Jedi.
- (Yes, I know I’m leaving words out of those titles. Idgaf.)
- We take her with us to Marvel flicks.
- She, the kid, and one of the kid’s friends went to see Thunderbolts* without us (because I couldn’t go, obviously).
- She’s recently been reading some sort of epic post-apocalyptic series I’d never heard of (pretty sure she found it on Kindle Unlimited).
- I know my kid is a nerd, but I’ve used my influence for that outcome.
- I’d never considered it might be in our DNA.
- Though she took me to movies, we never talked books or anything.
- It could all be I didn’t pay attention.
- Because now that I think about it, I know she loved Ladyhawke and Princess Bride.
- (Not starting now. There’ll be many missing Thes today.)
- And now we have a grammar question.
- The only time, pretty much, you use apostrophes to make something plural is if it’s a letter.
- Like the A’s.
- This error stands as one of my most hated grammar mistakes, because it’s either willful disregard or ignorance, but if you can make a sentence at all, it leans toward the former.
- And I’ll be goddammed if I endure the language acceptance of something because people are lazy.
- Get off my blank white pages with that nonsense!
- So.
- How to make The plural.
- Just add the S?
- Add the apostrophe and S?
- It does not reconcile that my anti-rule following nature follows most the grammar rules.
- I had multiple instructors in college throw out the “you must know the rules before you can break them” cliché.
- (Adage?)
- Clichadage!
- Wachow!
- Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me.
- Sigh.
- Ain’t none of us consistent.
- Especially not English.
- I never dug into why Rage broke up … until today.
- And it’s mostly speculation still, which I admire.
- The leading theory: creative differences.
- Zack wanted to stay more political.
- And is a perfectionist.
- Like, did you know … he worked on an album with Trent Reznor, but never released any of the music because “it was not right?”
- Tom and the rest of the band had no problem with increased commercialization.
- And this is why I don’t really follow artists as people.
- Like, I don’t want to hear Hetfield’s opinion about much of anything.
- Don’t ruin things for us, bro.
- I’ve forgiven you for St. Anger.
- Shhh. Don’t mess it up now.
- Same with Bruce from Iron Maiden.
- I actually did read some opinions from that guy.
- I’ll stick to the music, thanks.
- Dude’s got a bit of a superiority complex.
- To be fair, I might too if I were in a pretty big band for more than four decades, a trained pilot, a skilled fencer (like could’ve done the Olympics I heard) and other things.
- Maybe it’s just the Britishness?
- I dunno if he’s from a landed family or anything like that.
- Okay, gonna stop.
- Getting the pump primed.
- …
- I don’t even know what day it is.
- F.
- Have a whatever.
Face Up, Make Your Stand
skepticlysm 
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