Duchess of Umbrage

Real good-lookin' rural antifascist rosé grower posting from Dreadful Acres Farm in the Texas Hill Country. Blurry iPhone nature photos my specialty. Beard Award-nominated food writer (ret.), feminist blogger (ret.), punk rocker (ret.), bartender (ret.), spinster aunt, atheist, home chef AF, TV liker, gadget accumulator, sci-fi absorber, horse haver, goat herder, dog lover & appreciator of wild entities. Due to user error, I also have a Pomeranian. 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦 🖖🖖🏼🖖🏾🖖🏿

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npub1puu2frkddjkwcf5zxnnd92kyv9sg6gup0mm6vruwvah006qxe09q6dj6mc

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iBlame_at_kolektiva.social@mostr.pub

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nprofile1qqsq7w9y3mxket8vy6prfekj4tzxzcydywqhaaaxp78xwmhhaqrvhjspz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0wd68ytnsw43q835e3d

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npub1puu2frkddjkwcf5zxnnd92kyv9sg6gup0mm6vruwvah006qxe09q6dj6mc

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Last Notes

2024-08-08 00:11:44

Welp, my AC crapped out just in time for triple-digit (39 C) temps here in the TX Hill Country. We had an unusually forgiving July so I thought I was home-free. But no. Forecast is all bad. All the local repair crews are booked solid for the next week so I’m screwed. I would move into my guest pod, which is cooled by a separate unit, but it is currently occupied by my quarantined niece who was recently exposed to covid. These End-Times are a logistical nightmare! Thanks, Exxon! #ClimateDiary

2024-07-30 01:51:52

What is up with my niece’s cat? Has this dog bed — which he often sleeps in without issue — suddenly become a gateway to an alternate universe?
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/112/872/935/211/130/596/original/b9ea8e00c9ea9f69.mp4

2024-07-28 04:32:39

Y’all, here’s the baby dillo you need. It was born in March with 3 other identical quadruplets, and is ready to walk over your foot if you don’t move too much. If they’re startled they jump straight up about 3 feet then take off runnin. I’ve picked a couple of these absolute units up before and they weigh about twice what you expect they will. They often just sit up on their haunches and sniff around. Love these solid, funky weirdos.
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/112/862/243/002/721/762/original/18d5a9e6ccaad613.jpeg

2024-04-10 20:14:24

Lifehack of Umbrage: keep a fork in the old chipped coffee mug of pens on your desk to use as a back-scratcher.
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/112/248/754/249/764/753/original/926f98dc84421b8b.jpeg

2024-03-12 18:07:01

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@npub1zt3…0v09 Yeah, we’re out too. Niece is done competing but still teaches tiny children at a lesson barn. Me, I don’t miss the boarding barn/competition scene one bit. Most of the people were garbage, and it’s nice to be rid of them.

2024-03-12 14:21:06

As someone who hasn’t eaten at an indoor restaurant or gone to a concert in four years, I endorse this piece. As even my once-careful friends abandon masking one by one, citing it as “impossible,” I have written off any possibility of a return to public life. https://mastodon.social/@harold/112079786501308005

2024-02-22 00:46:35

If only frozen embryos WERE “children”. Then us ladies wouldn’t have to spend 9 months risking life and limb gestatin’em. Just pop’em out of the freezer and chuck’em straight into nursery school.

2023-11-10 00:25:13

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UPDATE Niece is bringing him home on Saturday! I admit I’m hella jazzed. I don’t get a new horse all that often, like maybe once every ten or twelve years, so every time I do it’s better than sex with a Beyonce impersonator in a vat of champagne at the top of the Eiffel Tower on Armistice Day. Look at this teddy bear goof!
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/111/383/407/058/935/653/original/c192065dccef38bf.jpeg

2023-11-06 19:54:06

Lard help me I just bought a fucken Friesian.
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/111/365/354/025/416/677/original/6ff5ad451fb5d640.jpeg

2023-10-03 18:34:23

Noly, until he got all his incisors removed, used to be a stealth prank-biter. But now, with no front teeth to hold it in, his tongue hangs out when he tries to gum you to death, accentuating the silliness factor. Eventually he just gives up on his attempted chomps because he gets no reaction anymore, and turns it into an adorable, tickly, lip-wigglin’ nuzzle. #TongueOutTuesday
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/111/172/521/854/103/611/original/6bf9aa1751e580e8.jpeg

2023-10-02 02:28:18

Just had a discussion with Mosca about her habit of storing her gross tennis ball collection on my bed, and it went just about as well as I expected.
“You are high,” she said stiffly, “if you expect me to keep my balls on the floor like a common Labradoodle .”
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/111/163/060/908/764/444/original/d86c5a510a320ead.jpeg

2023-09-29 18:30:06

Somehow the 4 giant margaritas I had instead of dinner last night left me with a slight ‘gover this morning. So let me tell you that when my Excellent Niece unexpectedly showed up at my door with breakfast tacos and donuts, I wept brokenly. Shoveling these life-giving restoratives down the Umbrage maw, I vowed to make her the sole beneficiary of my will.

2023-09-18 03:03:17

Oh hai, Biff!
#DogsOfMastodon
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/111/083/926/100/759/320/original/1b58ea2a510a4005.jpeg

2023-09-17 10:54:09

My mom was a rabid, MyPillow-buying consumer of Fox News until a couple of years ago, when she moved in with my sister and her Fox access was cut off. Since the stemming of the indoctrination tide, she has miraculously returned to her pre-trump self and regular non-fascist pillows. Like the rest of us normal people, she even held her nose and voted for Biden. It is truly astonishing what that network did to her. I can only imagine what would’ve gone down if she’d gotten hooked on Christian nationalist TV instead. https://assortedflotsam.com/@politicsbot/111079909147438603

2023-09-15 22:52:15

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@npub1u0p…enmz @npub19fc…ay3c @npub189n…satx Wait what happened? Something to do with Led Zeppelin?

2023-09-15 19:05:32

I have a talking rice cooker. I didn’t go looking for a talking rice cooker, it just happened that way, the way things do. About 4 or 5 times during the rice cooking process a very nice lady’s voice will suddenly make an announcement in Korean, and it jump-scares me every time. Supposedly I can change the language to English, but I’ve lost the manual so no idea how to do that, and anyway, sudden remarks in my native tongue would startle me just as much, possibly more. My question is, why should a rice cooker talk at all?

2023-09-01 15:09:57

Welp the Texas Supreme Court just signed off on a law withholding gender-affirming care to minors and criminalizing doctors who do the right thing anyway. Texas is a shithole country run by sadistic deviants.

2023-08-25 00:20:44

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@npub189n…satx My extensive medical team always used to. Now they’re all just following “CDC guidelines” which we all know are a joke. Clearly the world is no longer sane.

2023-08-24 21:34:28

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@npub189n…satx I’ve been going to the same oncologist for 16 years. Everyone used to mask up in the waiting room bc, duh, all our immune systems were shot! But now that there’s a pandemic they’ve all stopped. Yesterday nobody, including staff, had a mask, save for a lone phlebotomist, who was chin-strappin’ it. It’s truly Bizarro World.

2023-08-22 12:04:30

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@npub1zt3…0v09 A BEAR???

2023-08-21 16:55:12

For those mornings when I miss the UVI window for radiation-free dog walkin’ I have this whole route mapped out where we just hot-foot it from shade tree to shade tree to minimize sun exposure. It involves squeezing through fence rails and short sprints across sunbaked clearings over crunchy brown grass. It’s ridiculous. But here we are.
A newer anxiety is that if this hellfire weather keeps up much longer there aren’t gonna be any shade trees left.
101F this morning at 11:30AM. Fire watches across the entirety of Central Texas. Hasn’t rained in 2 months. My rainwater cistern is runnin’ on empty. It’s fuckin’ apocalyptic.
#ExxonHeatWave #ClimateCrisis

2023-08-21 01:28:41

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@npub1zt3…0v09 Ha! I love this story! And I concur that adult goats, especially the males (even when castrated), are a handful. But the year we had the orphan triplets was the cutest year of my life. They’re all grown up now and I really miss their younger, pocket-sized selves. Closest I’ll ever get to empty nest syndrome.

2023-08-21 01:16:31

I would just like to reiterate that there is nothin’ on this planet cuter than a day-old goat.
You are welcome to refute my claim with your own cute animal pics, however.
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/110/924/961/612/071/007/original/da8949ae429bd9d4.jpeg

2023-08-17 15:33:49

1/2
So this weird notification just popped up on my phone. At first I was all “what the heck is a ‘Blue Alert’? Is that like when a cop goes rogue, disavows white supremacy, and stops shooting unarmed citizens in the back?” But no, it turns out it’s when a regular civilian shoots a cop. As the ruling class’ special enforcers, cops get their own special alerts!
What happened was, in an ironic turning-of-the-tables, some dude capped a Houston deputy during a traffic stop. The sheriff’s department is in a tizzy over this intolerable show of disrespect to their trigger-happy street gang of state-sponsored henchmen, and have put out a contract on the guy. Quoth the sheriff:
‘“They shot a deputy and it’s unacceptable,” Gonzalez said. “We’re not going to tolerate it now. Not now, not at any point. We’re going to do everything we can to bring them to justice. ... Our focus, law enforcement’s focus, is to go out there and make sure we locate the persons responsible for this and bring them to justice ASAP.”’ 1/2
https://news.yahoo.com/harris-county-authorities-issue-blue-043623108.html
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/110/905/688/935/113/301/original/af5d277640929889.jpeg

2023-08-17 00:11:21

Classic reply to a toot about how we should make oil companies pay for the climate crisis 👇 My guy is very intelligent.
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/110/902/056/038/143/074/original/08619593e01df829.jpeg
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/110/902/056/122/010/101/original/82d86afa5ede20b7.jpeg

2023-08-16 23:41:01

Just took a big swig of 16 yo Lagavulin. Imagine if you poured a crap-ton of eel oil on an ancient bog full of iron age peat mummies, sprinkled it with malted Band-Aids and caramelized harness leather, set it on fire, and somehow made drinkable booze out of the remains; that’s the flavor profile, and it’s a fecken doozy. #TastingNotes #SingleMaltWhisky
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/110/901/936/835/771/161/original/67bee93026f55c02.jpeg

2023-08-14 22:39:10

Wow. This white savior story always seemed off to me and now I know why. https://flipboard.social/@CultureDesk/110889253721407104

2023-08-14 22:06:40

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@npub1zt3…0v09 Thanks! Ordinarily I’d be over the moon at canceling a dentist appointment but I really NEED to get this crapulent tooth fixed. It’s a misery.

2023-08-14 18:42:54

So I just found out I was exposed to the ‘Rona over the weekend. Entire extended family, plus a few wild cards, all up in my grill exhaling and hugging and whatnot. One of’em is now down for the count and confined to barracks.
I was scheduled for a root canal tomorrow but obviously have had to postpone so I don’t potentially infect anyone else, and meanwhile my tooth is KILLING me. Even more meanwhile, the new booster won’t be out ‘til mid-September and will cost an eye-watering $110.
I absolutely cannot BELIEVE this is all still happening. It’s just grotesque.
(We were all outside, btw. So hopefully nobody else caught it)
#CovidIsNotOver #CapitalismKills

2023-08-11 18:46:22

Currently tallying 2 full-blown panic attacks per week, up from about 4 per year in the Beforetimes; how YOU doin?

2023-08-10 14:40:04

Dirty-bird sex-pest Clarence Thomas livin’ larger than previously thought on the oligarchs’ dime. New bribes unearthed by ProPublica:
“At least 38 destination vacations, including a previously unreported voyage on a yacht around the Bahamas; 26 private jet flights, plus an additional eight by helicopter; a dozen VIP passes to professional and college sporting events, typically perched in the skybox; two stays at luxury resorts in Florida and Jamaica; and one standing invitation to an uber-exclusive golf club overlooking the Atlantic coast.”
My favorite is the time an oligarch sent an entire empty 737 to pick him up.
https://apple.news/Avqadt4-HSNyrRV4KkR7g9Q

2023-08-10 02:32:49

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@npub1zt3…0v09 Equines are hilarious

2023-08-10 02:10:48

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@npub1zt3…0v09 Ha! I keep a box of gloves in the grooming stall for this activity, and naïvely trust that no casual onlookers misconstrue.

2023-08-10 01:00:35

This is what a horse looks like when he’s happy you’re scratching him between the glutes.
Our favorite Holsteiner Noly is recovering nicely at the clinic after having all his front teeth pulled — upper and lower— owing to a degenerative condition. He was in a lot of pain, we hope this oral surgery, and the buttcrack scratches, will improve his worldview. Sadly, losing his chompers may impact his favorite hobby, which is stealth-biting people as a prank. Undoubtedly he will still try to gum everyone; stay tuned for a report on how bad that hurts.
#horses
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/110/862/613/058/550/450/original/5fa3424cf154c916.mp4