Vibrator with a happy ending

Yep, my toothbrush for the win. My ear was once again stubbornly stopped up after the pool and a shower. This time it took less than 10 seconds with the handle end of the vibrating tooth brush to knock that water out. I now keep a toothbrush in my swim bag. Oddly, however, I just put in the morning ear drops and no clogging at all. Maybe I didn't do them right. Oh well, only 2.5 more days. It's a tiny bottle that just keeps giving drops - kind of a loaves and fishes thing.

Today's another hot one. I keep hoping they will end and they keep coming back. On the up side, it's saving me money. I had a couple of shopping things in mind for today but with the sun out full and the heat on, I think I'll just save me cash and stay here.

I gave up on Acorn TV and signed up for Britbox TV. Britbox is $2 a month more expensive and the app sucks majorly. I thought it was going to be good because it has lifestyle shows but none of them turn out to be interesting. I did find one season of Silent Witness which I really like so I'll watch it and then cancel before the 7 day free period ends.

It does have a feature that I never knew I wanted and now really want everywhere. I keep closed captioning on for everything. But it's particularly important for shows with accents that I'm not used to. Britbox's CC is color coded by character! I've never seen this before and it's really really good.

My very strange next door neighbor is getting stranger by the day. Last week, I was in the lobby taping down the cable for one of the webcams. I put my large roll of tape down on the edge of a planter and then I went to get the step ladder from the garage. When I got back (less than a minute) the tape was gone. One of the other cameras shows the whole lobby so I checked and could clearly see that my neighbor had come in the front door and picked up the tape and then gone to the elevator. WTF??

So I knocked on his door and asked for my tape back and he handed it over. He said he thought it was his. ??? This morning I saw him wandering across the street next to the baseball stadium, looking at his phone, at 4:45 am. Of course, it was a nice, cool time to take a walk and the streets are certainly not crowded. But, still he's really more than a few pixels off, I think.

This morning I need to semi permanently mount the third webcam. I thought it was ok until it fell down twice this weekend. I think it's absolutely a Sugru candidate.

I heard on NPR a month or so ago that one of my blood pressure medications is disappearing from shelves. I thought at the time that I should make sure I reorder as soon as my insurance lets me. And then I totally forgot about it. Today I get a note from the insurance/pharmacy that they are out and have no clue when they will get more and I should contact my doctor for a substitute. Fuck. oh well.

I think I'll go fix the cam and then sew something.

My tweets

• Mon, 11:50: There is not much I like about the @BritBox_US app BUT the color coding of the closed captions is amazing - why doesn't everyone do that??

So Susan, What would you change about yourself or your life? Is there a way for you to change it?

There are a lot of little things but then, if I tweak those, what would happen to the others. I've made a lot of giant errors in my life but pretty much grew roses out of shit every time so I'd be a little anxious to change much.

What I would like a mulligan on is how I treated my parents. I never had a good attitude about them. At 18 months, they brought home a new baby and I think I stayed pissed about that for a long time.

I totally won the parent lottery and never appreciated it enough.

My Mom was hard to get close to but always a kick and a half to be around. She was a straight shooter who took no prisoners. And she had the fastest tongue in the west. I spent the last six years of her life in very close contact and we shared amazing and wonderful times. I just wish I'd started that earlier.

My bother says that the problem between me and my father was that we were too much alike. He might be right. My dad gave me oh so much. Some of my very best childhood memories are of me and him or just of him in general. As I grew into adulthood, he made sure I had the best best starting block possible. He taught me how to deal with money and how to consider and recognize success.

But he was such a bigot. A closeted bigot but a bigot nonetheless. It grated on me constantly. He had black friends and gay friends and lots of Jewish friends and always always thought they were broken people. He assumed that everyone who was poor was that way by choice and/or bad decisions that they refuse to fix.

He had a great singing voice and always sang in the church choir. One time when I was an adult visiting them in their tiny Southern town, after dinner one Saturday night, we went to a gospel sing in an outdoor theater. It was wonderful except, we had to sit in an obscure corner way in the back "I sure don't want anyone to know I would come to something like this," he explained.

I didn't 'get' him and I couldn't understand how he could sit in church every single Sunday and feel such hatred and disdain for so many.

For many many many years we never saw each other and, when we did, it was strained and not that much fun. We did have a great trip to New Zealand about 5 years before he died so that's better than nothing but still not great and I regret so much where he is concerned.

So the things I would change are things like I would like to have been kinder to him and to them both. I would like to have shown them how much I appreciated them. And I would like to have mined them for more good stuff.

And, no, there's no way to change it. Daddy died of heart failure in 1999 and Mom died of heart/lung and old age in 2005.