No Dye

I'm growling (again) about the way people treat me when they focus on my whitening hair. It's not merely that they see it, no... it's all they see.

Even people who have known me for years tend to forget that I was playing with their children - and that, no, I'm not older than their aforementioned children (that happened to me just yesterday, and it was massively weird).

There was this supermarket employee in Chinatown who stared at me because I was checking the different sauces. His eyes (and general expression) seemed to say "Are you lost, lil', old lady?". Seriously, what the flurch?! I had to state "I'm fine. Ta!" for him to stop staring.

I'll admit that I enjoy my depigmented privilege on overcrowded buses as no one asks me to vacate my seat (not proud of it, and if someone who's really, actually old is near me, I do offer my seat - I'm not a monster).

My neighbouring cousin and I have the same depigmented problem at work (not when we work on a book together - though our depigmenting is different, which is funny as it seems to come from the same bit of shared DNA). Our students must think that we were around somewhere when the pyramids were being built - and the oldest amongst the staff, but we're not (I've got only three colleagues younger than I, and my cousin has just the one). Yet, since the wires on our heads are white, some of our students seem to think that we are an inch from retirement - or death.

My poor cousin just had to deal with a student (to whom the administration of her school decided to give another chance to pass) who thought that it could plagiarize "its" assigned work - coz my cousin, being white-haired and all, must be senile and she'd never, ever flurching notice that "it" copied and pasted pages and pages from the Internet. Right?

What's wrong with these people's eyes? Can't they bloody look at our skins? Not a wrinkle, for Merlin's sake (laugh lines don't count - we do laugh, and we're not planning to stop!).

When I get a coat of arm, "Fronti nulla fides" is sooooo my motto.

For the moment, I think I may start asking people if they left their Labrador at home by mistake*.

*: oddly enough, I think I've been going through anger-generated adrenaline rushes recently, and it's a strange state...

Nasty Week

There's nothing tragic or final, but my stress-o-meter went up a notch this week.

I know it's for silly reasons, but when you're fighting PTSD, a grain of sand can feel like a boulder.

There are three things that bugged me:

1) My bank:

A few months ago, they'd tried to make me pay a fee for a service that I've had for years. I told them I was refusing to pay their fee because it wasn't in my initial contract and I got my money back.

End of story?

Of course not. 

The fee was back this week, so I had to contact my bank again, but, this time, I was told that I must trade the service I had for something else, or I must pay the fee. I caved and agreed to have the new service (because I've got better things to do than fight them on this), but I demanded my money back. I'm still waiting - and it bugs me.

2) Twitter (and Fox):

The way things trend there are too cryptic for my taste. I did some research, and the way they (try to) explain their algorithm is messy. I can understand that the name of a singer with too many overenthusiastic fanatics is not trending worldwide day in, day out, but a brand new hashtag to try and save a TV show disappearing after a day whilst I can see new people still tweeting about it... I find it odd, to say the least - all the more since another hashtag to try and save another show was still trending two days after it started (I'm talking about #SaveLucifer and #SaveB99).

I'm bugged because one of the things I use to control my stress is good shows, and I fell in love with Lucifer; it's well-written, consistent (a bloody miracle on American telly, where shows tend to not always follow the story's bible), intelligent, fun, and entertaining. Fox deciding to pull the plug on it shows their stupidity (then again, I was always surprised that they produced a series where Lucifer's the hero).

3) Twitter (and a lying, fascist politico):

This morning, I saw a retweet with comment where the initial tweet shows a politico who'd just angled a small shark.

I briefly considered reporting the tweet, but didn't:

a) even though I do believe that the shark is way more useful than the biped holding it on a ship's deck, what the biped did is not illegal (immoral, yes).

b) since the politico is a big name (Merlin know why, coz he's a deplorable waste of skin), I knew that Twitter would do flurch all because of their "it's newsworthy" smokescreen (either they approve, or they're just spineless).

I think I'm going to turn these into plot bunnies. After all, this is another trick I use to control my stress.

Flurching Strike Update

I ended up completely changing my plans (it turned out that a neighbour could drive me towards home), but... I'd forgotten about road trips:

- it takes a *lot* more time

- you can't stretch your legs whenever you want

- you can't go to sleep or just avoid chatting with the other passengers

I'm not ungrateful (she saved my bacon!). It's a lot different and I'd need "car training" to get used to the differences again - that's all.

Well, I am home, and I can work on finding a bank with my cousin for our publishing company (@EditionsAikyo by the way) ... and I can play with the plot bunnies as much as I want (YAY!!!!!).