Couch 238: Appreciating Small Progress Couch

As anticipated, my Mom isn't thrilled about me getting a tattoo, but she didn't chew me out or anything. I didn't speak to my Dad but I know he will be okay with it. I really wanted to get it done before my birthday but it is going to happen after. My goal in Aftercare last night was to have this conversation with my parents. I hope it counts that I started the conversation on text message and then followed up with a phone call! The therapist didn't know what the conversation was going to be about but he was like very much encouraging me to talk to my folks.

Artie - I think each square is the number of guesses it took you to get that word.

Oh my goodness. Still like 50 minutes left of work. Can't wait for it to be the weekend. TGIF!

I am eating chocolate currently. Chocolate makes everything better, especially watching the clock at the end of the day!

You're holding out on us, Kit?

What kind of chocolate are you currently enjoying?


I am trying to practice self-control with a bar of Milka Alpine Milk chocolate, but I don't know how long that will last.

No, not holding out. I will gladly share.

I am just eating a common milk chocolate Hershey's bar. Not my favorite chocolate but it will do in a pinch!

I am listening to the book Wild about a woman who walked the pct alone after her mother died (my personal approach was to curl up in a ball in my bed for a month-only getting up to feed the dogs/cats twice a day and to walk the dogs and then back to bed -so we all approach such a thing in our own way). Basically she is a very lucky person whose lack of preparedness somehow didn't get her killed because other people saved her. But the thing I started laughing about while walking my dogs and listening to the book was that I realized how if I wrote a book about a walk it would be about 2 pages long for the whole thing. This woman is waxing on about the forest talking to her, spirit animal dreams, becoming one with the bark kind of thing (not ever my favorite thing so I am fast forwarding it a lot to just hear about the actual hike) - but laughing about her description -"aching quiet of the snow with purple shadows from the mountains wrapping the mountain..." and my own way of describing something "some snow and rocks that were cold" -why I am not a travel writer.

SD I am not only the most unobservant person on the planet, I am also the least eloquent. My book would be more like a paragraph of filler, and I'm sure I would mention how hot it was.

So, where are we stopping on our book tour?

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Thanks - the flowery language is just a bridge too far for me. I have friends who keep sending me pictures of the cascades where they are camping and all I can think of is how cold and wet they look. I prefer hot. But they get all excited about the mountains. I like them okay but I don't find them that compelling - just don't get all wooie about them. I have fun hiking but I don't generally get all new age bad poetry about the experience

I found h's hiding place for the remaining reeses miniatures and just polished them off. (i told him to hide them, he wasn't being selfish. Thankfully there were only 8 left so it could have been worse!) I've been feeling sad again this evening, the good feelings from last night's drum circle didn't last, unfortunately.

I need to stay off of Facebook.

It IS about to storm - and I do love monsoon - I am going to go for a walk before it breaks open the skies.

Couch road trip! Ex-hankster will be your agent.

Today I went through my mother's old medicine bottle collection, during which I found:

-100-year-old bottles of cough syrup with cough syrup still in them (alcohol, heroin, and chloroform among the ingredients)
-an 85+-year-old pill box with the original pills inside
-a powder that may or may not be arsenic
-a(n empty) bottle of strychnine

Sounds like your mother was fascinating. I'm sorry for your loss.

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I cheered up again a little on my walk. There was a beautiful rainbow, very tall, beyond the railroad tracks, before the rain got here.

That medication list made me way more excited than it should have, my mind went immediately to all the Agatha Christie books I have read as a child and thought about how you could kill somebody with them... maybe I need to sleep some more.

That’s where my mind went too.

Perhaps you and StressedMess could develop a series of no-nonsense, just-the-facts travel guides.

Good morning, couch. I just got back from another walk this morning, this time I decided to follow the trail that I suspected leads up to the railroad tracks near my house, and it does! I was too silly to try it before haha. Anyway I got a couple pics because it is an absolutely gorgeous morning outside and I feel a little ashamed of myself for losing hope yesterday. I'm going to print the railroad tracks one and frame it for my office.

The pics are beautiful Artie.

I took a bike ride to the nearest psych ward, because I wanted to ride my bike and because I had planned to drive past there for ages, in case I ever end up there.. It's situated in the most beautiful landscape, surrounded by green hills and a beatiful view. It's not the worst place, from what I can tell without going in.

It took me all 37 guesses again today but I did it.

I finally understand this grid too, it's confusing cuz it looks like "1 and 6" instead of 16. It is the number of guesses it took you to get each word.


Daily Duotrigordle #115
Guesses: 37/37
1️⃣6️⃣ 1️⃣8️⃣ 1️⃣9️⃣ 2️⃣0️⃣
1️⃣7️⃣ 2️⃣1️⃣ 3️⃣2️⃣ 2️⃣2️⃣
2️⃣4️⃣ 2️⃣5️⃣ 2️⃣3️⃣ 2️⃣6️⃣
0️⃣4️⃣ 1️⃣3️⃣ 0️⃣6️⃣ 1️⃣4️⃣
0️⃣7️⃣ 2️⃣7️⃣ 2️⃣8️⃣ 2️⃣9️⃣
3️⃣4️⃣ 3️⃣6️⃣ 3️⃣1️⃣ 3️⃣0️⃣
0️⃣8️⃣ 3️⃣5️⃣ 1️⃣1️⃣ 3️⃣7️⃣
3️⃣3️⃣ 1️⃣0️⃣ 1️⃣2️⃣ 0️⃣9️⃣

Congrats! I also took all 37 guesses and got it.

I would annoy SD horribly within the first chapter. How many times can one mention the heat?

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Artie your pictures are gorgeous!

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As long as you didn't talk about the heat searing your heart, soul, or burning off the layers of built up internal scrub brush from years of empty meaningless encounters and blind living with its cleansing harshness sort of thing - I could probably go up to 3 mentions. I can compromise.

I went straight to Sherlock Holmes