Alternative social network

Today, I got my phone repaired. Again.

And I had decided to try a few alternative social networks, since lately my sister and I have become rather fed up with Facebook. My sister was attacked by a troll who wished her dead. My sister replied that the troll should get its anger managed. Wham. Facebook suspended – my sister. She filed a complaint against the troll, who – surprise – hadn’t broken any rule.

So we’d like to find something else. Unfortunately, the best thing about Facebook is the fact that everyone’s there. Family, relatives, friends. If we leave we’ll lose touch with many of them.

Of course we could keep in touch with some by phone, text or email, but not all, and even the ones we can still keep in touch with will be more distanced from us.

So today I signed up for Friendica. It was complicated, but so can Facebook be at times. Friendica is also a very bare bones community.

I’ll see how it goes. If I can get some of my friends to join it might be more fun. Except apart from my sister I only know of one friend who might agree to join. Also, I guess it’s possible I could find a few new friends.

Or I could just back off Facebook and spend more time here and on Tumblr and Dreamwidth.

Since my phone doesn’t work as a phone and can’t make or receive calls or send or receive text messages, the Messenger alternatives won’t work, at least not until my sister can help me fix the phone bit. To be clear, at the moment my phone can use wifi so I can surf, chat, email etc, just not the rest. It needs to be wiped and restored to factory settings and for that we’ll need a computer, which we don’t have access to at the moment.

So, like I said, I’ll see how it goes. I don’t really like Facebook. I wish there was a vegan community. Oh, well.

Second shot

Last Friday, my mother, sister and I got our second shot of Covid vaccine. We, at least my sister and I, got really tired. In fact, we’re still more tired than usual. I wonder if it might be a side effect.

Electric

Yesterday and today, or rather, since it’s past midnight, the day before yesterday and yesterday I got shocked (by static electricity) by just about anything I touched in the shop where I shop right now. It was weird. I wonder why that sort of thing happens.

Please help if you can

Could you try to help in some way? Some dogs and cats need to get safely out of Kabul, Afghanistan. The situation is desperately urgent. Donate or share this link.

First shot

My mother, sister and I just had our first shot. Now we’ll have to wait four weeks for the next. It’s such a relief that we expats were able to get it. Hopefully, it will make a difference.

At my wits end

I never post negative things about my family. It’s not fair. This time, though, I have to vent a little. My mother is completely impossible. Considering her age, you might think she’s going senile, but all I can say is she’s been, well, excentric, or even bizarre, for ages. I remember her from the time she was in her mid thirties and, sure, she’s been getting worse, but basically she’s always been a bit like this.

On the one hand, she hates me or rather everything about me. I used to think that she was the best mom in the world. She was great until I became a teenager. From then on everything about me was wrong. She’s quite harsh to my sister too but I guess she finds her more useful. I get called the worst, meanest words in the dictionary. I’m stupid. I know nothing, since I don’t think like she does. What she found out forty years ago is more valid than what I found out this year.

Also, she hears a snippet of something we say or something on the news then misunderstands competely and blows it out of proportion. What she makes up turns into the truth. I have so many examples of this but I never call attention to this even when she tells her friends about her bizarre fantasies. It would only make things worse. Plus, my dad used to do that all the time when he was still with us. It always reflects badly on the commenter, not the one who made the original statement.

Also, she constantly talks negatively about my dad and my grandmother (her own mother). I know what they were like. I remember them quite well. I was nineteen and thirty five respectively when they passed away. Despite certain negative personality traits I loved them. I’m a lot like them. That’s probably why she can’t stand me.

I really shouldn’t post this but like it says in the title of this post I really am at my wits end. At this age my mother shouldn’t live on her own. She needs help. But by now, I can’t stand her either. It wouldn’t be fair to leave my sister to take care of her. Our mother makes our already complicated lives miserable.

Vegan café

The other day we stumbled upon a vegan café. We had started checking the listings on Happy Cow, when I spotted one of my favorite words – Vegan. In this case Vegan Inspiration.

We investigated (in person) and found that they offer both food, like burgers, wraps, bowls etc and cakes. We picked cakes, because it was quite early in the day.

These cakes were truly delicious and rather fancy. You eat them with a fork! I wish we’d stopped to consider and taken photos before we tucked in. 🙂 Another time.

Vegan Inspiration

We also tried the food, a few days later. My favorites were two of the wraps and one of the burgers. The rest of the family seem to have favored a soup and a potato salad.

A Witch’s Hat and a cat

The Witch’s Hat

Pretty Iron Cat

Fail

We wanted to try Randonautica again today. Though we didn’t get any coordinates under water, this was almost as bad. The app directed us to a spot in the middle of a closed in yard. There was no way we could get in there. And the package we had hoped to pick up at the post office wasn’t there. A totally failed day. Or close enough. We might have found a place to live, but so far we don’t know if we can get the land.

Randonautica

For a while now my sister and I have been meaning to try the mysterious app Randonautica. If you’re not familiar it, it’s an app that sends you to random coordinates. You may, if you like choose something you’d like to experience. In our case we said we wanted a sign, a message from our late father. A nice message, just in case.

Now that we’re in a big city we thought we might finally get round to testing the app out. The first two attempts would have sent us into the sea so we tried again. Eventually, we ended up near a building that houses a company that lets apartments. Maybe that’s what our dad wants to tell us. We are, actually, looking for a new home. Oddly fitting, in that case. I wonder if he was trying to tell us we’ll find it soon, or just urging us to keep looking. It isn’t impossible that he might have wanted to tell us that.