the_rck

I've been working half-heartedly on book logging. Under the cut is the audiobooks I've managed to write up. I don't have detailed comments on all of them, but I have Opinions on at least a few. Eventually, I'll get more logging written up and ready to post; I just don't want to keep waiting with the idea that I should have everything done now.

( Audiobook logging )

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.

My leg is very slowly getting better. It still feels badly bruised, and even light touches hurt a lot, but it doesn't look bruised. When I hurt my ankle, back in May, it also felt (and still does now) bruised but never showed it. I have no idea what's going on with it all.

I can see some swelling but not a lot. I've been using an Ace bandage, off and on. That helps, off and on. My main conclusion is that knees are awkward. I can't wrap the knee proper or anything above it because that will just slide down the moment I stand up. I have this problem with braces/wraps intended for knees, too. I bought some with the idea that they'd help with stairs, and they kind of do, but I have to reposition them about three times for a single trip to the basement. At least, I do if I want them to be useful.

Scott has done the laundry this weekend because neither of us want me to try the stairs yet.

( Meanderings about library books and story structure )

Title: Possessing Nothing but Each Other
Fandom: Romances of Arquitaine Series - Lilith Saintcrow
Rating: T
Length: 3388 words
Characters/Pairings: Princesse Lisele di Tirecian-Trimestin, Duchesse Vianne di Rocacheil et Vinmorecy, Tristan d'Arcenne, one sided Tristan/Vianne
Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Lisele Lives, Coup d'etat, Death of minor characters, Character Study, Shovel Talk
Notes: Written for Yuletide 2022.
Summary: Lisele lives. This changes very little in the short term.
Story on AO3.


Title: Who Have Dreamed in Starlight (series)
Fandom: Dreaming of Sunshine - Silver Queen/Star Wars (prequels era)
Rating: T
Length: Three stories totaling 14848 words (see Notes for specifics)
Characters/Pairings: Nara Shikako, Aburame Shino, Sai, Temari, Inuzuka Hana, Three Haimaru Brothers, Deidara, Choujuurou, Hoshigaki Kisame, Shiho, Mitarashi Anko, Maboroshi Kisuke, Shizune, Hyuuga Neji

Notes:
First story: Daughter of Dreams and Visions. Complete. Two chapters 6813. Nara Shikako & Aburame Shino.
Tags: The Force Is an Eldritch Thing, Friendship, Dimensional Travel, Lying by Telling the Truth, Backstory Reveal, Blackmail

Second story: The Gold Gateway to the Stars. Incomplete. Three chapters. 3066. Sai (chapter 1), Temari (chapter 2), Inuzuka Hana and the Haimaru Brothers (chapter 3).
Tags: The Force Is an Eldritch Thing, Answering the Call, Blackmail

Third story: Sunshine Splintered in Petals. Incomplete. 6 chapters. 4969.
Tags: Reconnaissance, Mission Planning, Team Building, Lying by Telling the Truth

I hope to write more of stories 2 and 3 and some sequels to this trio of stories, but I can't promise anything. I posted 2 and 3 incomplete because I needed to put them aside to focus on other things. I had started them as a treat for an exchange in response to a request for shenanigans with Shikako and friends in the Star Wars universe. This didn't get very far toward shenanigans. Or completion.

Summary: Shikako and several others are coerced into accepting a mission in another universe. The parameters for completion are... vague.

Series on AO3. (All three stories can be found here.)

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.

( Scott tested positive for Covid Saturday )

Scott only worked two days last week. The vacation schedule was planned before he took the second shift job, but he'd forgotten that he'd scheduled Thursday and Friday off. He made some repairs to the ramp from the back porch to the driveway (one of the supports underneath had come loose and tipped over because Scott's father thought that screws down through the ramp to the supports would interfere with the ramp's functionality and therefore didn't let Scott anchor things properly), so there's no longer a soft spot halfway down. We got some things stored and some other things cleaned. I did some moving of books in the basement that I'd been intending to do for literal years.

We discovered during the book moving that three or four books had gotten a little wet and needed to be pitched. None of them are things we particularly care about. I'm just annoyed because, while I knew we were getting dribs and drabs of dry soil through the corner of that basement window, I hadn't ever seen signs of moisture there. We could so easily have lost books I cared about. I also pulled more books to donate.

We discussed trying to get rid of some of the furniture in the basement, and Scott had plans in that regard before he got sick on Saturday. At this point, who knows? I did ask Cordelia if any of that stuff appeals to her for a few years down the road, and she was unenthusiastic. Which is fair.

Cordelia will probably want any of the bookshelves that we manage to clear. At least, I assume so. Everybody needs bookshelves. Right now, though, we need to move the furniture so that I can get at the C-G author paperbacks and the H-S author hardcovers. I haven't weeded them at all. Ideally, I'll be able to shift everything enough to clear the dining room shelves for some of the board games Scott has stacked on the floor. He's weeding those, just more slowly than I'm weeding the books, because he wants to play each of them at least once.

I also need to drag him to the basement to weed his books. I wouldn't keep the Dragonlance books, but he used to run a campaign in college and has major nostalgia about them. There are a couple of other largish sets that are 100% his. I'm not touching them unless he tells me it's okay. I'm also not touching anything that's in that gray area of belonging to both of us. At least, I'm trying not to.

( Talking about Yuletide sign ups )

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.

Long time no post. I keep starting posts and then getting distracted and not finishing. At this point, I don't remember what I've said and what I haven't.

Cordelia is in her second year at university. She's still aiming for a psychology major. This year, she's aiming to stay on campus more weekends than she did last year (last year, she came home almost every weekend). We're only a month in, so it's too early to say how it will go.

My body has continued to disintegrate. I did months of hand OT and ended up with a couple of splints and some exercises. The splints keep my joints from hyper-extending, and the exercises help with the resulting muscle cramps.

I'm using a walker now, at least when I go out. It's a heavy thing that doubles as a portable seat so that I don't have to stand while waiting at bus stops. We got it so that, if I took a walk, I could stop and rest as I needed to. I can't use it for supporting my weight because I can't put that stress on my hands and wrists, but I do use it for balance. It works pretty well for that.

Back in May, I dropped my laptop while I was getting up. I caught it before it hit the floor, but I caught it edge-on on my left ankle. It's still swelling up and screaming at me when I do much of anything. I did a couple of months of PT, but we couldn't find anything that helped beyond ice and compression. I have to ration my time on my feet, so I can shower or do the dishes or go to an appointment. Heat (including warm showers) has tended to make the ankle worse, so the shower chair we got for me has been minimally useful as far as helping my ankle.

I took a lot of cold showers over the summer. I found them helpful for all of my joints. Now that it's getting chilly, cold showers are much less appealing.

I've had a couple of rheumatology appointments in the last year. The official diagnosis is 'benign joint hypermobility syndrome' which is one of those things that, if you google it, will come up with 95% of results saying, "Don't worry. Your child will grow out of it." The joint hypermobility diagnosis meant the rheumatologist I saw shoved me out the door because it's not inflammatory. He said EDS-h but declined to put that diagnosis on my record, just offered to send me some informational urls about it. I think he was mostly peeved that I can't take any of the medications he'd normally prescribe for pain.

I think that I'm hitting a barrier in having my pain taken seriously given that all I take is lots of acetaminophen and occasional naproxen. I'd take naproxen more if it didn't make me sick after about three days. It's just that naproxen is less nasty for me than all the other NSAIDs. Opiates are off the table due to my genotype-- I need higher than usual doses to get pain relief, and I metabolize what I take much more slowly than normal.

If it weren't for the pandemic and my logistical issues, I'd probably be exploring marijuana as an option. It's legal in this state. I just don't have easy access to cash or to transportation to any of the stores. I'm not willing to go online because I've got an extremely long list of things I can't have (when I tried CBD oil products, there was only one thing on the shelf that I could consume without getting ill). I can't smoke or vape due to asthma triggers.

We haven't had anyone in to clean in months. Cordelia's friend quit when her schedule got too full, and Scott said it was better not to spend the money ($20 a week). This unfortunately coincided with me becoming even less able to do cleaning. Scott's too overwhelmed and exhausted.

I suspect that, without the pandemic, I'd have noticed my loss of function/independence as a gradual thing. With the pandemic, I didn't really notice because I couldn't easily run errands or go to appointments or whatever for other reasons. We went out to dinner with Scott's family last week to celebrate our nephew's college graduation, and just sitting at the restaurant wiped me out for three days.

Scott will be going to UCon this weekend; I won't. He was a bit surprised, but when he thought about it, he realized that I was right about me going making both of us miserable. The convention changed their price structure, raising the weekend pass price, doing away with event fees, and doubling the number of hours of volunteering required to get a free weekend pass.

I had been thinking that I might pay the full price, run half the previously required hours of events, and see whether or not I was up to doing anything else. The last time there was an in-person UCon, I ran 8 hours of events and played 2 hours. My energy levels are unpredictable enough right now that running a 2 hour board game might wipe me out. Or it might not. There's no chance at all that I'm up to running a tabletop rpg. I enjoy those vastly more than I do board games, but they require a lot more energy to make them work, and I often don't notice until after just how exhausted I am. I also find hotel beds uncomfortable and can't safely eat the food on-site. There isn't anything I can do in the hotel room that I can't do more comfortably at home.

UCon is less than half an hour away from here by car, so Scott can get back quickly if I need him. It's the same sort of distance he'd have to travel to get here from work. That means I'm not particularly worried about being here alone. Well, not as long as we get a decent bit of grocery shopping in first.

I will have a lengthy post of fic announcements coming up soon. After that, I hope to catch up on some of my reading/watching logging in small bits. If I can post something small every day, I may be able to get back to posting regularly.

I'm not going to try to read things just yet, so I apologize for that in advance.