the_rck

Cordelia's choir concert is this evening. I expect every bit of the day after noon to be stressful and overwhelming because it's also Thursday which means the cleaning lady will be here. (She'll also be going with us to the concert. She considers Cordelia something akin to a granddaughter and had asked me to let her know when the next concert would be.)

I still need to call Totoro about my glasses. If they're there, I should go downtown and pick them up. I need to empty the dishwasher and tidy a bunch of things.

I've got another couple of phone calls I should make, but I'll probably put them off until tomorrow. I could make banana bread and then manage the tidying while it bakes. What I do after that will depend. Right now, I want sleep, but that might be me not having had a proper breakfast yet. If I'm energetic, going for a walk might make sense. I just need to be home by 2:00.

I took a two hour walk yesterday. My intention was to go to north campus so that I could see about Ingress missions, but I got side tracked by a nature trail that I didn't know existed. I got to north campus in the end, but I didn't have time to do much. I got eleven unique captures, but I still need almost three hundred more for the badge. I didn't get anywhere near any missions, though.

Scott picked me up from north campus on his way home from work. I wasn't able to reach the spot where I'd hoped to meet him because it turned out that the path my map showed wasn't actually there and that the intervening terrain wasn't pedestrian friendly. Scott found me via Life360 in much less time than it would have taken me to get to a landmark we'd both recognize.

I claimed a pinch hit that'll be due in May. That gives me two stories due then. I've started both, just barely. I think the pinch hit is something I could very nearly write in my sleep. I have a nearly complete first draft for a thing that isn't related to any of my open assignments. I'm not sure what I'm going to work on first. Finishing the nearly complete story might make senses because then it's off the list; then again, there's no one waiting to see this one.

I overdid yesterday and was hurting and shaky by the time I got home. Resting for several hours got me steady enough to bring laundry up from the basement, but I had to have Scott and Cordelia take out the trash and recycling because of the ice by the back porch (the pavement there is lower than the drive way or the yard and doesn't get much sun).

According to the Ingress tracking I went from 1011 km toward my Trekker badge to 1017 km, so... Erm. It was too cold for that, and I was carrying enough that my lower back got seriously stressed.

I had lunch at Totoro (part of the too much that I was carrying was food for Scott and Cordelia from there), and I delivered the disability review paperwork. Part of the walking around too much was me keeping busy while waiting for the doctor's office to call and tell me if I could drop it off. The other part of me walking around too much was me doing Ingress missions in hopes of getting one of the gold badges I need.

I have a referral to the Kellogg Eye Care Center. They got me in on Monday because they had a cancellation. The doctor at UHS said that I may simply never be able to use progressives and will have to change glasses every time I change distance or do without glasses altogether. The referral to Kellogg is because part of the problem is that I can't make my eyes focus downward and close in. I can get there, but I can't hold it more than a few seconds because it makes the muscles around my eyes (and in my neck) hurt. I'm pretty sure that that is also why I can only make one lens of the progressives work at a time.

At any rate, Scott has Monday off, so he'll be able to take me to the appointment.

My iPhone keeps popping up a request that I log into iTunes. I have no idea what's going on with that. I don't use iTunes on my phone. I very specifically don't want to.

I ache all over. I'm pretty sure that it's from getting two vaccinations yesterday. They did them both in my right arm, and that hurts a lot. The rest of me aches like I have a fever, just without the fever part. If it wasn't Thursday, I'd probably try to sleep. Maybe I can get enough done now to get away with it.

I walked for about an hour after my vaccination appointment. I'd have walked more, but I completely ran out of charge for my phone, so I couldn't keep playing Ingress. I had a charger in my purse but no cord.

When I left for my appointment, Scott father was eating lunch at our dining room table while Cordelia did her math homework across from him. I missed the bus I'd hoped to catch because there was construction at an intersection where I needed to cross. The guy controlling traffic ignored me and wouldn't interrupt traffic to let me cross (one lane of a two lane road was blocked, so he was stopping flow in one direction for a while and then switching). I couldn't bypass crossing the intersection that way there without going back up the hill to the crossing by the school. That would have taken even more time than waiting to cross ended up doing.

I've started catching up on The Good Place. I'm not sure what I think of season 3 yet. Before I got to last week's episode, Riverdale came on, and Cordelia banished me from the living room (she doesn't like me making snide comments about plausibility/characterization/whatever.

She told me a couple of days ago that she likes watching The Office because it reassures her. Any mistakes she makes aren't going to be on anything like that scale of terribleness. I suppose I can see that. I just react to things like that with the sitcom equivalent of screaming at horror movie characters, "No! Don't go into the basement!" or "No! Never split up the party!' and then have to leave because it's too much.

I've definitely got Cordelia's cold. I can't stop sneezing. Last night, my chest felt tight. This means probably not using my c-pap tonight. I'm very tired, and everything seems out of focus. I don't have a fever, but my knees and hips ache, so I expect I will have one by tomorrow morning. I've got heavy blankets piled over my knees but am trying to keep other parts of my body room temperature (73F according to our thermostat).

We had lunch in Brighton yesterday. The menu was extremely trendy for a place calling itself a 'bar and grill.' There wasn't much on the menu that I could eat without major fuss about modifications, so I ended up with a burger and fries. The fries were a mistake, even though it was only noon. I think I may just need to put fries on my don't-eat-that list. I'm not sure why fries are worse than plain potato chips, but they seem to be. (The restaurant offered chips but only 'cracked pepper chips' which would have made me very sick.)

Scott's mother and our sister-in-law from Seattle took a very short after lunch walk with me. If we walked as long as fifteen minutes, I'd be surprised, so I felt a bit dissatisfied with that. Of course, Scott, Cordelia, and Scott's father were hanging around, waiting for us, so I suppose a longer walk would have been inconvenient on that side. I hadn't realized they were waiting. I assumed that, since we were all going to the same place, our SIL would give me and Scott's mother a ride after our walk.

I'm still feeling cramping pain in my lower abdomen. Now that I know what's going on, it's a little less frightening. I have to go out today, though, and it's raining, so I really, really don't want to deal with it. I just also don't want to miss my appointment.

I need to do laundry today. I also need to rummage in the basement to find the queen sized air mattress. I both need to see if it will hold air and to figure out where to put it so that there's space to move around it.

Scott got Cordelia an iPhone 7 yesterday because her old phone was dying abruptly halfway through her school day even if she minimized use. Her phone was older than the one Scott passed on to me.

Scott also made a brief trip into work because the warehouse guys gave him a heads up about not having some labels that they'll need this morning. They're doing some inventory tagging changes this year due to equipment changes. I don't understand why having new equipment requires renaming things that are being used in the same way now as they were with the old equipment, but they have, and it's creating chaos because people keep using the old numbers and then the warehouse people think that they're asking for something that's gone out of stock due to error on that side of things.

The car insurance is due this month. Scott hasn't worked out how tight that will make our budget, but I'm going to be trying not to spend unnecessary money. That means that, if I'm going to wander around after my appointment, I need to pack food. I had thought to walk beforehand, but it's raining. It might clear up later.

I’m in the waiting room at UHS. I have a uterine ultrasound at 10:15. I’m hoping they’ll take me early because the full bladder part is already miserable. Guess I’ll see.

Cordelia wanted to go ‘somewhere’ last night, so I suggested a park with a lot of Ingress portals that I’ve never visited. I got about a dozen unique hacks and some unique captures. We didn’t stay long, maybe 20 minutes. I’d have enjoyed staying longer, but it was past 8:00, and we all needed to go to bed.

I’ve finished another short story in Not Ready to Swallow Oblivion, one that follows “You Cannot Fold a Flood “ and “Locked with a Twisted Key.” It’s about 3k words and might reflect getting better being a thing that the characters could manage. That is, I still think “...and then they got therapy” is the happiest outcome for these characters.

I meant to work on my DCU mini bang story, but Sky High happened instead. Today for sure.

Except that I want to write down the things I’ve figured out about the characters and world. That won’t take long, right?

I had a meeting this morning and ended up wandering around downtown after it ended. I got lunch and then missed my bus by about 30 seconds. Rather than sit at the bus station for half an hour, I started walking. I didn't catch the next bus because I diverted a bit to play Ingress. I caught the one after that.

Yesterday, I managed to knock a few things off my to-do list. I've still got things that need to get done. I'm hoping that I'll get more of them done tomorrow as I didn't manage much today but the meeting and the walking.

We still have to collect the trash and get it to the curb. My feet and ankles are complaining, and I don't much want to deal with the chore. Apparently my body's only okay with all that walking sometimes.

I walked to my appointment yesterday. It took just short of two hours. Some of that is that I played Ingress on the way, but some of it was just that I walk slow. It got gradually hotter as I walked. My phone claimed it was 73F when I left home, and my doctor told me low 90sF when I got to her office.

I made it to my appointment with about ten minutes to spare. That was long enough to use a wet paper towel on my face and neck but not long enough to really cool down. I was very red faced at that point, and as I'm pale again this morning, I don't think any of it was sunburn.

I ended up buying lunch at Which Wich because I looked at the timing on the buses and realized that getting home within my window for taking my with-food lunch meds wasn't going to work. The Cloverleaf Diner would have been cheaper, but I don't like going there alone unless I have cash to cover the bill and tip.

Cordelia's English class will be reading Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, some poetry by several different authors, 12 Angry Men, and Octavia Butler's Kindred. I have queried the teacher about what plans are in place for helping kids deal with the trauma in Kindred. It's not that I think that the book shouldn't be taught; it's that I think it's a book that will really upset some readers because it really is upsetting.

When Cordelia's class went to the local Holocaust museum a couple of years back, the museum staff had plans in place for what to do when somebody fainted or broke down in tears because both are things that people do. Not all people, not necessarily even one every day, but enough people for it to be something predictable that could be accommodated rather than an out of the blue emergency.

We did an 8 p.m. run out to Plum Market to see what they had in the way of half-price baked goods. They put a lot of stuff that is about to expire out at half-price at 8:00 each night. What's there varies a lot. Last night, it was mostly pies with no bread or bagels. We snagged a pecan pie (which is something I love and don't get very often) and a couple of single serving cake type things. They had only one gluten free item (one of the folks who comes for gaming on alternating Wednesdays is GF), a brownie. We grabbed it but had been hoping for more options in that direction.

I don't think we'll play Scott's Firefly game tonight. Most likely, he'll get home around when our friends arrive and not have the brain power for GMing but still welcome playing a board game.

He's getting a lot of night time calls from work to tell him that one line or another has broken down or that they've run out of something they require to complete an order (this tends to be running out of things the customer supplied/ordered that the plant uses, generally labels or special caps, that sort of thing) or that someone has called in sick.

Calling Scott for all of this is protocol so that he knows when the production schedule is going to need reworking and so that he can tell the shift supervisor what has priority if only some things can get done. It's stressful because cider season is the part of the year when there're many complicated things that all need to work in a short period of time. Each hitch means rejuggling everything else later in the schedule to make the pieces fit again, and Scott knows that he's going to have to keep that up until all of the orders are done and delivered.

I'm going to need to go out again today. Cordelia and I both have prescriptions needing refilling, and Scott bought the wrong pain killer last time he went. Instead of getting straight up naproxen, he got naproxen with benadryl. The combination is intended to help people fall asleep when they're taking the medication at night. I don't take it at night and really don't want to add benadryl to the set of meds I take at night. Nine times out of ten, benadryl doesn't make me sleepy, but I really think me combining it with Halcion would be a terrible idea. I'm trying to make a list of other things that I might want to get in order to make the trip worthwhile.

I'm thinking that I'll take the Pontiac Trail bus to Kroger and stop at one of the parks along the route that has Ingress portals I've never hacked. I'll just have to track time so that I can catch the next bus, half an hour later. There's a university research complex across the street from Kroger that also has Ingress portals I've never hacked. Maybe I'll go after those.

I need about 750 more unique hacks to get the gold badge for Explorer. I need about 400 unique captures to get the gold badge for Pioneer. I don't really expect that I'll get either any time soon because they would require me to travel a lot. I can pretty certainly find a lot of new-to-me portals around Ann Arbor and Ypsi, but I'd have to take bus trips, lots of bus trips, and do a good bit of hiking to get one or two portals at a time.

I'm the only person I know who plays but can't drive. I also am not really able to overcome my agoraphobia to the point of making expeditions entirely for the purpose of playing Ingress. If I had someone else I could go with, that would help, but I don't know anyone whose schedule would fit.

I'm more likely to manage the 12000 more resonators placed or the 2400 more mods placed or the 13000 more hacks made or 1200 more portals captured (unique or not). I need two more gold badges in order to get to level 12. I'll need more for level 13. I'm pretty sure that I'll have most of the AP I need for level 13 before I have the badges for level 12.

My body is being thoroughly uncooperative. I haven't had a period this bad since the first one or two after I got off the Tamoxifen last year. I'm pretty sure that part of the problem is that I didn't plan my food properly in terms of having access to what I needed actually in our room. I kind of ran out of spoons on the planning side, and most of what I planned needed a freezer or a can opener.

Scott keeps running aground, regarding my food needs/scheduling, on the fact that I'm still figuring out what works and what doesn't and on the fact that my needs change depending on other factors like where I am in my cycle and what I expect to need to do in the next few hours and what time of day it is. I told the extended family that I'd manage my own meals because there really is no way anybody but me can track everything I can't have.

Last night, my sister-in-law (the one from Seattle, not the local one) took great pains to try to cook a meal I could eat. She just didn't ask me and therefore had an out of date list. Everything was cooked with oil. I ate it for breakfast this morning. Dinner for me was instant oatmeal and some shredded chicken with ranch dressing (not the oatmeal and the chicken together). Everyone else had roasted potatoes, grilled salmon, stir fried pea pods, and grilled asparagus. There were portions of each for me seasoned just with salt and rosemary.

Sadly, there was olive oil even on the veggies. Salmon would be a risk at dinner time, but without the oil, I could have microwaved the veggies a bit and eaten those. There were carrot sticks and celery sticks on the table, but they were jumbled in together. I've discovered this week that carrots that have been stored in the same container as celery make me sick.

Scott set aside yesterday afternoon for me, but I was too sick to do much. I slept a lot of the day. We went for a brief walk after dinner. It was sprinkling when we started and raining moderately hard when we headed back about fifteen minutes later. It wasn't much of a walk, but it was very nice to get some time out. I'd have liked to walk longer.

Scott's brother's family flies out of an airport half an hour away at about 5 a.m. tomorrow. They'll be taking our 16 year old niece's car and leaving it at the airport to be picked up at a saner time of morning. We all have to be out of here at 10.

Scott and I have had a couple of talks. I'm not sure that he completely understands that the underlying issue isn't my health so much as the ways that my disabilities mean that I'm dependent on him and on other people. He doesn't notice it because it's alien to his experience and because working full time eats his time and energy.

I think he and I need to have some talks. It's just hard to do when we have zero privacy at home. This is not something that can happen when Cordelia is around, and I don't see it working well when we're strolling through our neighborhood or any of the other out of the house options. I'd opt for text, but Scott has a very difficult time with writing due to a learning disability. He's fine with reading, but he takes a paragraph or two. I'd be monologuing.

I might be monologuing anyway. We don't have the same approaches to figuring things out. Writing/talking and finding things through that is my approach. He's more prone to fixing on something as The Problem and fixing that. If the problem isn't concrete, he can't address it. Fix one thing then go on to the next. If something can't be fixed, everything breaks down because he doesn't have a script for how to deal with that.

I saw the nutritionist yesterday, and she and I decided that there's no reason for me to go back.

The medical campus has a lot of Ingress portals. They've been high level for the other team for months now, but someone in the Slack channel put in a request to take some of those portals down because they were being used to anchor links and fields that were in our team's way. I managed to take down quite a few portals around there. The person from the other team who's usually fast to take portals back hasn't reacted yet, so I'm wondering if they're on vacation. They pretty much only play around there, but they're very thorough and, usually, very fast to respond.

Cordelia and I met for lunch at the Northside Grill. I walked from my appointment. She walked from home. She commented that it wasn't nearly as bad a walk as she thought it would be.