The Victorian Liberals must be real nervous about the polling in their “blue-ribbon” seats in the lead-up to next month’s state election. My absolute dipshit of a local MP sent me a birthday card with my name hand-written in texta at the top! My birthday’s not even for three weeks… and I don’t vote for people just because they send me birthday cards 🤣

Although I had my own medical appointments today, I also got a text from my dad with some more concerning news about him. He’s been suffering from what seemed like a recurring infection, which would start with lower back pain, progress to fever and vomiting, and clear up after 48 hours (until the next time). I had insisted that he go to the doctor, and finally he did. They sent him for an ultrasound, and the results of that were what dad texted me about this morning. Apparently, his left kidney is looking highly abnormal, with multiple cysts. He has a CT scan next week and also has to see a urologist, but it is possible that that kidney will need to be removed.

I’m genuinely a bit shocked because, even though I knew there was clearly something wrong, that all made it sound more alarming than I’d expected. Obviously my dad’s very important to me, and I just want him to be well! Whatever treatment ends up being required, I hope it makes him so.

Probably everyone who already wore glasses when the pandemic began has talked this topic to death, but I have to say it anyway: MAN is it annoying to wear glasses and a facemask at the same time. The fogged glass effect means I’d see better not wearing the damn glasses 😶‍🌫️

There are seriously a lot of American Shavianists who are like “oh, my accent doesn’t distinguish between father/bother or cot/caught, can I just use any letter I like in a really haphazard manner for those?” IDK dude, if I as an Australian can fill my writing with multitudes of silent Rs, I think you can learn the difference between father/bother and cot/caught. It doesn’t really matter if you just want to write private notes to yourself, but if you want to communicate with other people it is absolutely bewildering when I see 𐑔𐑪𐑑 and realise the person meant “thought”, or 𐑢𐑭𐑑 and then realise they meant “what”.

It’s Caturday, once again! Here’s Gidget, soaking up some of today’s sunshine in our little courtyard. (Well, actually this photo was taken in a shady spot, but she had been soaking up the sunlight.)

For the last few days I’ve been playing Idle Acorns . It’s an idle/incremental game for iOS with a bright, cartoony aesthetic. Probably the best thing about it is that there are no ads and no IAPs: just pay your A$2.99 upfront and you’re good to go! 😅

It’s really good to have open while writing, because every time I hit a momentary block I can spam-press “Shake Tree” until I get an idea of what to go on with, instead of doing something like opening up Reddit and getting side-tracked reading posts. There’s something to be said for mindless ways to occupy yourself with like that!

Update: I realised the game’s also available for macOS , if you’d prefer to play it that way!

Gidget says I can’t use my computer chair today 😢

Update: The computer chair situation has been resolved. At 9:16am she got the zoomies and bolted to the kitchen 🤣