the_rck

I have an unexpected free afternoon today. I was supposed to have my first appointment for vestibular PT today, but they called me to say that the therapist, after looking at my file, thinks they don't have the right equipment for my issues. So I'm being referred to still another clinic. I'll have to wait and see when that clinic can fit me in.

I wish they'd given me more notice, but I suppose I should be glad they let me know before I got to the hospital. Once I was there, I'd have been waiting for an ARide pickup almost three hours later.

At least it's at the same location. Technically, the Med Inn Bldg is separate from the main hospital, but logistically speaking, I get off the bus at the same place, go in the same door, do my Covid screening in the same place, and don't go outside again. I just have to go to a specific elevator that only serves the Med Inn Bldg. It's like how Taubman and the main hospital are technically different even though they're just two different directions from the main desk with no doors or separation. If you're in one or the other, you turn the corner and are suddenly officially in a different building.

I have purchased a pair of knee high compression socks and am wearing one on my left leg. They're toeless, so I don't think they'll give me athlete's foot (I can't wear anything but cotton around my toes if I want to avoid that; I also can't go without socks, even with slippers or sandals). Today is my second time wearing one, and the difference for my ankle and shin is immense. I'm still trying to figure out how to deal with things closer to the knee. The upper cuff for the sock lands awkwardly high (in terms of length, they had regular and tall but no petite) and presses on some parts of my leg that have been excruciatingly tender for years. At the moment, I've got some folded wash clothes in there to try to cushion things. One is definitely working; the other is not as helpful but is still better than without.

My first day wearing the sock was Saturday, and my ankle hasn't felt better at any point since the original injury last May. That carried over to yesterday, even without wearing the sock. I needed to ice parts of my knee yesterday and again this morning because they'd gotten very angry about where the cuff fell. I'm going to experiment this week to see what I can make work. I don't expect to be going out for any appointments until the 27th, so I might experiment with walking up and down the driveway just to see how it goes.

Because of my hand issues, the sock is difficult to get on and off. Otherwise, I'd be tempted to experiment a lot with cycling it on and off. Ace bandages are easier to put on and take off (while still not being easy), but much less comfortable to walk in and harder to place correctly.

Part of my reasoning for trying a compression sock is that the radiologist who read my x-ray (taken about 10 days after my fall) commented on the lymphedema. Since he only saw the x-ray, I take that as a sign that it was particularly noticeable.

My primary care doctor wants to try to get some PT set up in my home. The problem is that I'm in that horrible gap of being able to manage some trips out of the house but not enough trips to keep up with what I ought to be doing, appointment-wise. The Michigan Visiting Nurses don't work with people who can still physically go out for appointments.

Cordelia was home most of last week. Scott drove her back to campus today. Her morning class today was canceled, but she had rescheduled her dinner with my aunt and uncle for this evening (it was supposed to be last Thursday), and the last I knew, she still hadn't heard what was going on with tomorrow's classes. It's now at the point of being up to individual instructors with them having the option to go online or partly online. The university is also setting up to let students request medical withdrawals for the rest of the semester if they need them.

We had a friend over on Saturday. She and Scott watched a couple of episodes of TV while I sat off to one side and did my own thing. I listened and looked up occasionally, but I didn't want to risk actually watching because no show is worth a migraine.

Scott's birthday is this Friday. He floated the idea of me going with him to pick up Cordelia. Michigan State has a dairy store (it started as a primarily agricultural college and still has a lot of programs aimed that way) that apparently has amazing ice cream. Scott and Cordelia have been there, but I haven't had the opportunity. I don't think this is about it being The Best Ever as much as simply something that we wouldn't ordinarily do (since I don't drive up there with him, usually) but could without a lot of extra effort.

I took a bad fall yesterday. I tripped over my laptop power cord as I was getting up to head for the kitchen to prepare food. I went down hard on both knees with a twist to both feet. It took me about five minutes to manage to get up (and, of course, it happened less than an hour after Scott left for work). My left leg took the brunt of it and is pretty badly bruised. My right ankle and foot are still cranky, but it's fading. There's no visible bruising, but I am getting swelling on my left leg an inch or so below the knee and down.

We got some new Ace bandages earlier this week, and I ended up using both of them at once. We're ordering more because I kind of needed at least one more. I can't wrap my knee or anything above my knee because even things that are meant for knees slide down rapidly; the best I've gotten is to have something stay in place for long enough to go down the basement stairs to deal with laundry but not for coming back upstairs.

Yesterday, I still managed to feed myself and to get dressed, and today is slightly better. If I have unexpected problems, I have someone to call. I'd rather wait until after 5 p.m. to call her, but that's less than two hours away right now, and I'm not expecting to need her (she knows about this; Scott let her know yesterday so I'd have help if I needed it. At that point, I had no idea how things were going to go).

( Cut for discussion of covid )

The uncle who had the double lung transplant is recovering. I haven't visited, and I'm still putting off calling because phone calls are hard. My father says, though, that my uncle is really enjoying phone calls. My uncle also has a long course of rehabilitation because, as of mid-November, he was still at the point of three steps being a major accomplishment.

We spent Thanksgiving with Scott's family. Our niece brought her roommate and her roommate's boyfriend with her, and all three of them wanted to talk to me about D&D. They all use 'D&D' as a generic term for all tabletop role playing games. It was nice but kind of weird; I'm used to sitting quietly and reading during the social portions of those gatherings.

We had dinner with my aunt and uncle (different uncle) and one of their sons on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. They live within walking distance of the campus where Cordelia's taking classes, and they've offered her a room for next year if she wants it. It's a huge house because they have money and raised three kids there. This came up in the context of them thinking about moving to be closer to their grandkids.

Which probably means the offer for housing Cordelia is a little wobblier than we might prefer. Or, rather, may be for just one year out of the remaining two she'll be in East Lansing.

They also offered her access to their laundry, and she seemed quite interested. Apparently half of the dryers in her dorm are broken at any given moment. I think doing that might be a way for the three of them to figure out if they actually would enjoy sharing a house.

Cordelia doesn't really have friends on campus, just one high school friend, last year's roommate and that former roommate's friends. (Her current roommate is very hesitant to be friends with someone who's not sufficiently Christian because she doesn't want to risk friendships with people who might go to Hell.) Cordelia thinks this is fine, but I'm sad about it. Making friends becomes so much harder as one gets older.

My uncle mentioned something that slightly disconcerted me-- One of his sons has a kid and other on the way. I hadn't heard that, and I'd expected that I would. I suppose I shouldn't have assumed that my mother would remember to tell me. I also hadn't heard that any of those cousins got married, but it's as possible that they didn't-- or that it was a Time of Covid tiny thing-- as that I didn't hear.

Cordelia's choir concert is tomorrow evening. Scott's parents and his sister will be going. So will two of my uncles and their wives and two of Cordelia's high school friends, one of whom will be driving up with us. There will be four different choirs performing, so it will be a longish evening.

I'm currently trying to pull together some foods we can all eat in the car. I think we'll be hungry after the concert, but I also don't think anything much will be open. The girl riding up with us is a vegetarian, so that will complicate 11 p.m. options. It'll probably be almonds, cheese, and carrots as those are the things I know we have that will travel well without needing a cooler or anything. I think we only have enough almond butter for one sandwich.

I suppose I can send Scott to the store tomorrow afternoon. He's taken the whole day off, so it's possible.

I'm still testing negative for Covid, but I'm also still definitely sick with something. Earlier in the week, it was headaches (probably sinus) and exhaustion (on the level of 'why are the muscles in my torso wobbling when I'm on my feet more than 30 seconds?'). Right now, both of my ears ache, and I'm unsure of my balance. I've taken sudafed and mucinex and am hoping things will drain soon. Today's the first day when sitting in the living room wasn't an option.

Scott is recovering. He'll be going back to work tomorrow. He'll also have to figure out which of his scheduled vacation days between now and 31 December he'll be giving up. We already knew he'd be working Black Friday because that was part of his deal for having last weekend free.

Cordelia decided not to come home. She had a five day weekend, so she'd been planning to visit. She made the decision based on not wanting to risk getting sick as she had two different offers of a ride. She says that campus feels empty. MSU scheduled tomorrow and Tuesday off for 'fall break,' and Cordelia's Friday class only meets some weeks.

I just got my Yuletide assignment, and I'm excited about it. I'm probably going to end up buying the canon so that I can take proper notes without worrying about due dates. I'll be returning all of the other things that I borrowed from the library before offering them; getting stuff that way helps me feel able to offer more things. That way, I know I'll have access if finding a copy to buy takes longer than I expected.

I finished filling out my ballot last night. We'd been planning to take them downtown today, but I wasn't up to it. Either Scott will drop them off tomorrow, or we'll put them in the out-going mail.

We did a grocery pickup at Meijer on Saturday. Unfortunately, one of the items they didn't have was the tissues I ordered. My suspicion is that they didn't have the exact size of package I ordered. They have a single toggle for substitutions, and I always set it to 'no substitutions' because of the risk of getting things no one in the house will be able to eat. Also, for things like tissues and soap, I have to have unscented, but there's no way to specify that.

We just got back from an afternoon trip to East Lansing. We took Cordelia out to a Panera that has outdoor seating. Unfortunately, there was someone smoking nearby, but they left not too long after we sat down. No one else was in the seating area, so the smoking thing seems less inconsiderate to me than it might otherwise. They were sitting at the table furthest from the entrance to the restaurant.

After we ate, Scott and Cordelia walked a couple of doors down to get some things at a Kroger. She needed tissues, granola bars, and some beverages. She's been putting off buying things because her dorm room this year is much smaller than the room she had last year. Her bed technically can be set up as a loft, but there are pieces missing, so she has to wait for maintenance. She's been waiting since 27 August and has called more than once, but they keep saying that they will call her to tell her how to set up an appointment. This sounds suspect to me, but she's the one who'll have to do whatever pushing is involved.

She's finding her archaeology class less interesting than she'd hoped which, I think, is more about her expectations than about the class itself. She's bored by learning all of very specific terminology while also admitting that an intro class needs to explain all of specialized vocabulary that will be assumed in later classes.

I did not get to see this year's dorm room. It's on the 4th floor, and the elevator only goes to the 3rd. My ankle is not up to that flight of stairs (particularly not given that there's laundry to do here at home today which requires me to deal with stairs). I suspect that the room is fundamentally like other dorm rooms. Apart from the fact that my daughter lives there.

Cordelia wants to start some new crochet projects, but she doesn't currently have space for yarn in her room (a third of the stuff from last year's room is still in the basement). Part of wanting to do new projects is that she's joined an unofficial knitting club that meets once a week, and part of it is that she's starting to get that she can make gifts for people. She made herself a laundry bag last year and another this year. This year's is a different pattern that addresses the problems she found with the first one over months of use.

I played some Ingress as we drove. I commented to Cordelia that everything on campus was green, and she told me that no one at Michigan State would dare play blue on campus given State's colors (white and green). She laughed a little and said that you can find State fans in Ann Arbor but not University of Michigan fans in East Lansing. I am not 100% convinced by this explanation, but who knows?

I don't get the impression that Ingress is nearly as active as it used to be. Part of that is just that the game is old, but also participation fell during the early days of the pandemic and hasn't bounced back. Because I can't really walk right now, I'm not doing much but drone hacking on a day-to-day basis. I do other things while taking the ARide to appointments and back, but that's very sporadic.

The drone was introduced early in the pandemic to let people play without leaving their homes. Most of the time, a player can move their drone at 1 hour intervals. Other times, the interval can get as short as 8 minutes. It's most helpful for people who, like me, live in an area with a lot of portals. I think the original idea was that drone hacking would let people continue hacking streaks toward badges without taking undue risks. Hacking 365 days in a row is hard under normal circumstances, and people who were close-- or even halfway-- there didn't want to have to start over.

At this point, I have more unique drone hacks than I have unique hacks (that is, I've visited more unique portals by drone than in person). I'm actually keeping a list of where I've been because otherwise I'd go in circles and/or skip over places I haven't yet been. There are a lot of portals with similar names and, sometimes, clusters of portals with identical names. A park with multiple entrances might have a portal for each but have all of those with the same name; it becomes confusing. This is not helped by the fact that the program won't display the entire portal name. It cuts off at different points depending on which screen I'm looking at.

But I am vastly amused by the existence of a portal called 'First Church of Christ Baseball.'

Based on the photo, I'm quite sure it's a baseball diamond on a church's property, but... That's not how my brain parses it when I see the text. Scott was vastly amused when I showed it to him because that was how he read it, too.

This posting regularly thing is harder than I remember it being. Some of that is that my sense of time is kind of screwy these days; some of that is being out of the habit; some of that is simply not having much going on.

I've been trying to tidy up my reading/watching logs for posting, but while my lists are (probably) complete, I simply don't recognize many of the titles and need to look for blurbs to remind myself which story the title goes with. I recognize the stories most of the time, but the library catalogue blurbs are often kind of terrible and/or misleading.

Next week, Scott will be going back to 2nd shift. That means he'll work 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. instead of 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. This will put the two of us back on more or less the same schedule. I'm not sure how that will go. I'm definitely better off on several fronts (digestive issues are most immediately obvious that way) when I stay on that schedule, but I'm also out of practice at going to bed when Scott does.

Also, my body really, really wants the day to be 25 or 26 hours long. Maybe even 27 or 28 hours long.

The other complication of 2nd shift is that it will make Scott driving to East Lansing to bring Cordelia home considerably more difficult. He'd get there after midnight, and she's unenthusiastic about trying to deal with that because it will be past her normal bedtime. She's also unenthusiastic about looking at bus options because that would leave her and her stuff downtown and needing to get here somehow.

I think the problem here is, first, that she's never done it before and would rather not have to and, second, that she'll have to carry everything between the bus from East Lansing and the bus from downtown to here. I'm not clear on where the former might drop her off, but the most likely options involve either a few blocks and/or street crossings between or a mid-trip transfer once she's in Ann Arbor. Getting to our house from the nearest bus is two blocks by one route and four from another. The four block version involves a busy street and a quite steep hill, but has the advantage of running more often.

None of this is impossible, just less convenient for Cordelia. I expect that Scott would still drive her back on Sunday if he's not working, but we couldn't count on that. He will miss the driving time with Cordelia in the car. That's been their father-daughter hanging out time for the last year.

I keep having the impulse to go to UCon. I think it's mostly me wanting some of the things that con gave me when I was healthier/more energetic. I also keep thinking that maybe I could do something there to help Scott with all of his board games and such which is... I can't walk well, and I can't carry more than about 10 pounds. I'm pretty sure I'd be a hinderance in that respect. Also, all of the points I made to Scott about me getting upset and being miserable if I go are still valid.

I had been enjoying the convention less and less over the years. Scott has still really enjoyed it. There are games he only ever gets to play at the convention. We own a lot of board and card games, only a handful of which Scott's ever gotten to play. Cordelia dislikes games, generally, and I get so tense that I shake and, eventually, sprout a headache when I try to play anything competitive or that has a lot of time pressure.

(My sister and I both react this way, and we think it's shared trauma from our grandfather having attempted to teach us (ages 4 and 5) to play euchre and yelling at us for every mistake. We were both fine play Authors (effectively Go Fish but with matched sets of cards representing books by specific authors) with our other grandparents, and we both played gin and gin rummy with our parents.)

I think the convention thing is kind of akin to how I feel when the ARide drives me past neighborhoods I haven't explored but thought I would one day. I can't. I don't know that I'll ever be able to. It's a loss.

Scott will go, and he'll have fun. It won't be everything he hoped for, but it will be a thing he's doing that makes him happy. He needs more of those.

I went for a 30 minute walk Thursday evening. That was the third time I'd taken the walker out for a real walk. I discovered a bit of pavement along one of the better walking routes that the walker can't handle; it's asphalt rather than concrete and is, I believe, owned by the city. The wheels of my walker got jarringly stuck more than once (and I dropped my phone, cracking the screen protector); I came back on the other side of the street which has normal sidewalk, and that was fine.

There were a lot more mosquitoes out than I really expected. I should have considered the fact that I was walking by a wooded area and prepared with insect repellant.

The phone thing is frustrating since part of going for walks is being able to play Ingress.

Scott has looked into replacing the wheels of the walker. He says it's prohibitively expensive. If we hadn't had to shop online, that might have come up as a feature, but, as it was, this was the only walker with a seat that I found that was up to my weight. (Also, Scott saw it on my wishlist and didn't realize that I meant it as a 'save for later' and had put it on the wrong list. He bought it for my birthday).

The first time I took the walker out was with evalerie in mid-July. We walked over to the park by the school and sat outside and talked. I sat on my walker. She sat on the ground because none of the benches have shade.

She gave me some peaches from her tree. I ended up cooking them in a skillet with margarine honey. They were excellent that way. I've been cooking Imperfect Foods peaches and nectarines that way since. Sadly, they don't reheat well. I mean, they're fine reheated, but they're actually amazing when they're first heated.

A couple of days later, I walked more than that distance after an appointment so that I could meet Scott in an area with less traffic than the main entrance to the hospital.

The walk with evalerie required rest stops for me to catch my breath which I think is entirely down to me having talked while we walked because I had no such trouble on the walk two days later even though I moved faster and went farther.

Wearing my bright pink thumb splints helps a lot with the vibration pain from the walker. I have to keep them tighter than is comfortable, but they help enough to outweigh that.

( Discussion of different thumb splints, including links )

Cordelia has become more comfortable with her job. She doesn't love it by any means, but it's no longer new and scary. She's added a shift so that she's working five evenings a week across two locations, but she no longer shares a shift with her friend.

I've hired that friend to come over to do some house cleaning. I need the help, and she lives within walking distance. It's not easy walking distance by any means, but I could probably manage the walk (though part of the shortest route is dirt road, and I'd be unenthusiastic about moving the walker over it). I told her that I'd match her hourly rate at Jimmy John's. Hopefully, I can go better than $11.25.

She came over Wednesday, and she and Cordelia did some basic cleaning. We need to replace our mop because, although they mopped in the kitchen, the condition of the floor doesn't reflect that work.

I've written twelve fics for We Die Like Fen so far, and I'd like to do more. The archive won't reveal for a while, and it'll be even longer before author reveals, so I can't really talk about what I've written except to note that I picked up a pinch hit for myself (assignments and pinch hits are kind of random. Ish).

I've got 500 words toward my Crossworks assignment, but that's only the first scene. I think the story will run considerably longer than the minimum word count. I've been doing canon review in order to get the characters right.

I keep starting things to post here and then not finishing them because they get tangled up in my health and loss of function and fears about the future. So I'm going to try starting with some bits about things that don't relate to those. I'll try to post most of them over the next couple of days as they're all written now.

*Cordelia turned 18 in May. She was very puzzled by how Scott and I reacted with a We Did It! She doesn't feel different, and it's not like we think we're done parenting, but we got from infant to legal adulthood. Milestones. They're a Thing.

*Cordelia got her driver's license two days after her birthday. This required multiple trips to the Secretary of State because she had to have a learner's permit to test. The first one expired on her birthday and couldn't be replaced until after it had expired. Fun times with bureaucracy. Because she's 18, she has no curfew on the license.

*Cordelia graduated on June 7th. The ceremony was on the school's football field. It had rained all afternoon but stopped early enough that the seats in the bleachers were only a little bit wet. We'd brought towels and umbrellas, so we were set. Each graduate got four tickets. There was supposed to be separate seating for vaccinated and unvaccinated (or mixed) groups, but I couldn't see that. There were a lot of people because there were 330 kids getting diplomas (and some who weren't there but had to be named). The guy announcing Cordelia's part of the class mispronounced her last name.

We were lucky. It was a rain or shine event. At least one of the other local high schools had their entire ceremony in pouring rain.

*There was a post-graduation upset due to the school removing some already posted photographs from Facebook and then editing the video of the ceremony online. One of the graduating students carried a Palestinian flag with her (they searched the kids for 'contraband' before letting them put on their gowns, so someone official knew in advance). The superintendent tried to tell everyone that that footage 'distracted from' the proper focus of the occasion. The student had been allowed to walk across the stage with the flag without interference and had their official diploma; their 'right to free speech' had been respected. A week or so later, the photos and footage were restored. As far as I can tell, a handful of parents complained to begin with, prompting the removal, and then a rather larger number, including members of 'the Jewish community' (which is not small enough here to have a single opinion on anything). The superintendent sent out an email about how, after consulting with 'our Arab community leaders and our Jewish community leaders,' she'd decided that she'd been wrong to yank the footage.

I came very close to going back to Facebook entirely to express disapproval about removing the photos and footage.

I talked to my stepfather on the 11th (his birthday). He told me that my mother is scheduled for surgery the first week of March and that they don't yet know what will come after. I suspect a lot will depend on whether or not her lymph nodes are clear. Mom's apparently very adamant that she doesn't want to do radiation. I didn't ask about other treatment modalities.

My stepfather confirmed that they're not heading up here when they usually would. They're still not sure when they'll be up to making the trip as they have to drive (because of having two large dogs).

Mom has had both doses of the vaccine. My stepfather has had the first and is scheduled for the second. He told me that my brother has had both doses and got sick for about three days after the second dose. (My brother is a social worker who works with people who have some intersection of developmental disabilities, substance abuse issues, and mental health issues. It requires a lot of in person interactions with his clients.)

My right hand isn't quite as bad as it was on Monday. Both hands and wrists are worse than they were at the beginning of the month, though. This may be, at least partly, because I pushed to get back to being able to prepare things like instant oatmeal for myself. I feel like this injury is going to happen again. Probably not often but still inevitably.

It's like how walking on ice over and over and over leads inevitably to an occasional fall. I can minimize some of the risks, I can try to be careful, but it only takes a moment of inattention to cause injury. There's no guarantee that any such injury will be minor, either.

I've been doing more than the usual amount of typing as I try to finish my long term disability review paperwork. That typing doesn't help, and the need to get this stuff done is also leading to migraines. I'm glad I'm not committed to writing for any exchanges right now.

Maybe next year I'll remember and leave February as a deliberate gap. This year was accidental.

We got delivery from Totoro for dinner on Wednesday. I didn't get what I usually would because that involves a lot of stuff that I can't reasonably eat without utensils. I got edamame, a vegetable tempura side, and some very tame sushi. I shouldn't have gone with the tempura because the batter gives me reflux; I just keep forgetting because I like it. I ended up with enough leftovers for a couple of small meals that got me through Thursday.

( Cordelia college stuff, including discussion of racism )

Anyway, we're in a holding pattern while some of Cordelia's friends decide where they're going. There's one member of the group who hasn't been accepted anywhere yet, and I think that the others are waiting to see what happens with her.

I'm concerned that I'm not going to finish my Fic in a Box assignment. I'm at 2400 words out of a minimum of 10000, and the characters aren't cooperating. I can't find interesting things for them to do. I'm doing procrastinatory house cleaning and cooking rather than writing, and my body is extremely displeased about it.

I'm also feeling generally down. It may be hormonal. It may be anticipatory stress about having to wait until January to find out what the hell is going on medically that makes my doctor thing I need an urgent neurology appointment (experience suggests that, whatever it is, the specialist will shrug and say that it's some other specialty's problem). It may be having just listened to my daughter and her friends do a lunch Zoom thing with one of the girls sounding desperately depressed. It may be me working on my Christmas list for Scott's parents and realizing (again) that it grieves me that my parents are insufficiently interested in any of us (including my siblings and my nephew) ever to ask what we want or need.

There's also a certain amount of me knowing that Scott's parents will look at my list and buy something that's almost what I asked for but sufficiently different that I can't use it all while congratulating themselves on having found something better for the purpose. I have four things on the list that I need and will have to buy for myself if I don't get them for Christmas and three things that I'd like to have but won't buy for myself.

I've showered to try to break my mood, and I might go for a walk. We have a tele-appointment in an hour, though, so a walk might not work since I can't be sure how long I'd be out. After the appointment might work, but it will be close to dusk. I don't know.

Cordelia went to a socially distanced gathering for choir last night and had a lot of fun. This is the first time she's gone to a high school social gathering that she enjoyed. I regret the three years of her not having that but am grateful that she has it now.

We've gotten notice that the high school has sent out Cordelia's transcripts, but we haven't yet heard confirmation that any of the universities have received them. I'm assuming that notice will come in the next day or two.