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We had a generally good anniversary yesterday, with a few blips. I spent most of the morning trying desperately to jump start myself somehow. I was kind of mentally hazy, and physically, I felt like I’d already pushed my muscles to the point where they couldn’t do anything more.

Scott and I ended up getting lunch at McDonald’s, partly in hope that that would wake me up (whether due to being out of the house or due to the calories) and partly for nostalgia. We went through a McDonald’s drive-thru pretty much immediately after our wedding reception because there hadn’t been much food there that I could eat, basically just plain bread and the wedding cake. There had been supposed to be food I could eat, but Scott’s mother misunderstood what my parameters were and decided, without telling me or Scott, that the special arrangements weren’t necessary.

Scott and I did the grocery shopping after eating at McDonald’s (the Kroger and the McDonald’s share a parking lot). I’m not sure I should have done that because my ankle really ached by bedtime last night, but it was nice to spend the time together, and it gave me the rare opportunity to look for things that appealed to me in terms of canned soup and such.

We went to the library an hour or two after we got back from shopping. Cordelia came with us (she had two interlibrary loan holds that she was very eager to start reading), and we got bubble tea afterward.

Scott and I listened to about an hour and a half of Furiously Happy. He’s bothered by the amount of swearing and references to genetalia, but he does find it funny and worth going on with.

About 6:30, we got in the car to go get dinner at Palm Palace. They were very much not crowded, but it still took forever for our meals to arrive. We had soup (me) and salad (Scott and Cordelia) and bread, hummos, and garlic spread pretty much immediately, but the meal proper didn’t arrive until late enough (7:56) that I really shouldn’t have eaten any of it. The server was pretty attentive and brought us more bread and more water whenever we needed it, but the hour long wait for the main course was frustrating.

When we got home, Scott and I watched part of season three of Teen Titans, Go! The library had it, and I thought that something silly to watch might be a nice break. And it is really, really silly. I miss the old Teen Titans show which was much better, but I can still enjoy this very, very occasionally.

Scott realized, right before bedtime, that he needed to wash his uniforms or resign himself to wearing dirty clothes to work tomorrow. I was having enough hints of reflux that I thought staying up a bit longer was a good idea anyway, so I told him I’d stay up and put his stuff in the dryer. I got to bed a little after midnight.

I had dreams that there were things wrong with the world that I needed to try to set right, and for some reason, that involved sleeping in a particular (and uncomfortable) position and getting rid of the pillow under my knees. I was just awake enough to do all of that but not enough to be puzzled by what on earth my sleeping habits could have to do with— I don’t even remember what. Discrimination of some sort? Global warming? I think I remember Miss Marple, played by Joan Hickson, being involved somehow (I watched some of that on Saturday, so I guess it was in my head).

I’m a bit worried about the idea of dreams that make me do real physical things. In this case, it only resulted in back pain that made walking difficult for about ten minutes, and I don’t think that I could actually get out of bed without waking up fully enough to question what was going on, but… I’ve had dreams for months, going back to radiation, about needing to sleep on my left side or not on my left side for fear of terrible (unspecified) things happening. That seemed trivial enough because it’s just a matter of rolling over in bed. Are things escalating? Do I need to, for example, put my meds somewhere more difficult to get to when I’m mostly asleep? My meds come up in dreams pretty regularly, mostly in terms of anxiety about running out or about forgetting to take them. This is new territory for me.

I’m awake now because my legs ache. I’m not sure how to address that. It’s something I lived with during my high school, college, and working years, but it’s been about fourteen years since I consistently had trouble with it, and I no longer know how to sleep with it. When it was a constant thing, there wasn’t anything that I found that would help. Painkillers never did. Massage helped while it was going on but not after.

My hips, knees, and ankles want heat pretty constantly, and the rest of me, including the other parts of my legs, wants things to be on the chilly side. It’s the sort of thing that has me constantly shifting my legs around in search of a bit of bed that’s cooler than where I’ve been. Of course, that coolness only lasts a few seconds.

Right now, I’m applying heat to my bad ankle and a cold pack to the insides of my thighs. I don’t know that that will help when I go to lie back down, but I’m quite sure that I can’t deal with today on less than five hours of sleep.

(no subject)

Well, I got more sleep, but I also got a spam phone call and had Cordelia come in to cuddle for a while, so it wasn’t unbroken sleep. I think it helped, however. I went back to bed around 7 a.m. and got up for the day at about 11 a.m.

I came across this at the NPR Science Blog. It’s a little quiz that offers sonnets written by people and sonnets written by computers to see if readers can tell them apart. I thought the difference was clear, but I also thought that comparing the two was fascinating. My suspicion is that the programming will get there eventually, but it’s a long way yet.

I’ve also been poking at the SCOTUS blog. I’d seen that they’d ruled in three cases today, but I’d only seen information about two of the three cases and was curious about the third. The first case had to do with restrictions on abortion clinics in Texas. The second had to do with whether or not the federal government can use a state level misdemeanor (for domestic violence) as grounds to forbid someone from owning a gun. Both of those went in the direction I was hoping for— The clinics can stay open. Folks with misdemeanor domestic violence convictions can’t own guns.

The third had to do with what exactly constitutes actionable corruption by an elected official. That last is one of those rulings that is right, long term, but is being applied in a case where, despite the evidence not being sufficient, the person being prosecuted was doing something solidly on the dubious side of the right/wrong divide. But the justices were unanimous in the ruling, and when that happens, I look several times at the case. I have the impression that the court was concerned that any government official taking action on constituent concerns could be open to corruption charges if that constituent had ever made any sort of gift/donation. That interpretation could certainly be used to harass and destroy people, and I don’t want that as an option even if, right now, it’s being used on people I don’t like. My hope is that the ruling will result in clearer legal guidelines so that everyone has a better idea of where the line is.