the_rck

The cab to the Cancer Center cost $10 and took half an hour to arrive. Fortunately, I'd allowed an hour, so I still had some time before my appointment. As it turned out there was paperwork for me to fill out. They said it was in the packet they sent me, but it wasn't. There were only three sheets in the packet, and the paperwork they gave me ran about ten pages.

The doctor I saw did in fact find the lump, but she told me that the only options we had were immediate surgery to remove it or waiting six months to see if anything changes. She couldn't biopsy it because it doesn't show up on ultrasound. Without ultrasound, she couldn't be sure she was sticking the needle in the right place and wouldn't be able to trust the results. She did say that it was entirely possible that the thing is healthy tissue. Apparently, breasts get lumpy as a woman ages and the tissues change.

She was extraordinarily neutral on the subject of surgery. My impression was that she favored the wait and see approach, but she never said that. I couldn't point to anything that gave me that impression, but it is the impression I got. Perhaps it that, if she favored surgery, she'd have made a stronger case for it as opposed to simply saying that it was, in fact, an option.

I have opted to wait. In November, I'll have another mammogram and ultrasound and then see her again right after. We'll see then if anything's changed. Unfortunately, that appointment is the day before Cordelia's next dental appointment. I'd rather not deal with going out two days in a row, but I'm not sure I want to reschedule anything.

The cab home took over 45 minutes to arrive. I actually called the cab company a second time to make sure they hadn't forgotten me. I'm very glad the weather was good (it was nearly 70F) or I'd have frozen. There was a place to sit, so I did. Unfortunately, it was low enough that I bruised my thigh on the top of my boot in the process of sitting down.

Cordelia did fine during her hour at home alone. Hopefully she'll be willing to do it again. I'm pretty sure, for example, that she won't want to come along for my dental appointment in July, and the mammogram and such in November will run until at least 4:00.

Scott did the grocery shopping on the way home from work, so we have food. Cordelia's been eating cereal mixed with yogurt for her breakfasts, so Scott bought quite a bit of yogurt.

This afternoon, I shall try to bake a cake for Cordelia. I'm pretty sure I can do it. I can definitely stand for ten to fifteen minutes, and that should be all it takes. I still haven't heard from Scott's sister as to whether or not our niece is coming, but we have five other girls coming. Cordelia doesn't want us to refer to it as a 'party.' She says we should call it a 'hang out.'

I had some moments of panic last night-- I downloaded a Flash update, and when I restarted Safari, everything was well and truly borked. I use Safari pretty much exclusively for Google related stuff, and all the Google windows I opened were just jumbled blocks of zigzag patterns and confetti. Firefox was fine, fortunately. Eventually, I restarted my laptop entirely, and that seems to have fixed the problem, but I was very worried that I wouldn't be able to do my metanews work next week. That really works best with two webbrowsers.

Speaking of metanews, one of the new volunteers has said that they want to take on LJ and AO3. I sent them a fairly long message yesterday that detailed how to link find in each place and what to do with the links once they've been found. Hopefully, I wasn't too confusing and didn't forget anything important. I'm also hoping they will start link finding this week.

I remembered to take an Ativan when I got up this morning as part of my preparation for my appointment later on. It's always hard for me to remember that I have the Ativan, and when I do remember, I feel sort of like I ought to power through without it because I know I can. I just will pay a higher price without it than with it. I didn't think I had any medications-are-bad-suffering-is-noble tendencies, but apparently, I do.

I think the Ativan helped with the dread leading up to leaving the house. That's always the worst part of any expedition. Once I'm actually out the door, I'm too busy being hyperalert to process any feeling of being scared.

I did find out when I got to my appointment that they've been billing things incorrectly. For some reason, they didn't record my primary insurance, what I have through Scott's job, at all and so were billing Medicare as primary. I'm really surprised Medicare didn't pitch a fit and refuse to pay anything at all. Usually, they do when something like this happens. At any rate, a whole slew of thing going back into March will have to be rebilled and reimbursed and repaid. I just hope none of it lands on me.

They saw me before my appointment time. I was actually out of the building three minutes after my scheduled appointment time. The PA I saw told me that I only need to come back if I don't seem to be getting better and that I should, as much as possible, stop using the boot. She thought it was still better to use it for going out, but she said that, within the next four weeks, I should start using the brace when leaving the house. She thought that I might need the brace all summer, at least when I'm leaving the house. I might be able to go to bare feet inside the house. I guess I'll be wearing knee socks every time I go out this summer. They're the only ones I've got tall enough to protect my skin from the velcro on the brace (the crew socks I usually buy would not be quite tall enough, and the ankle socks I wore exclusively all last summer... Yeah).

She did tell me I should start exercising but only low impact stuff. Walking is still out. She suggested an exercise bike, and we do have one. I'm just not sure I can use it very easily. It's very awkward to get at. Also, the last time I was doing it regularly, I couldn't manage more than five minutes on it before my knees were killing me. Five minutes is more than nothing, but it's really not very much.

I had to wait about fifteen minutes for a cab home, and they have nowhere for anyone to sit out there (and there's no way to watch for a cab from the waiting room-- no windows). I was pretty chilly because, since I was wearing the boot, I was wearing shorts and knee socks.

I got the same cabbie on both the trip there and the trip home. Both times, he thanked me for the tip of 'two hundred pennies.' I thought $2 was a reasonable amount on a $13 trip. I don't know if he was being sarcastic or if he thought it was funny or what. It's just that calling it 'two hundred pennies' makes it sound like he thinks I was being cheap.

I think I did four or five hours of work for metanews yesterday. Hopefully, doing the same today will get me through most of what needs to be done. I do now have email addresses for the two potential new recruits, so I'll be emailing them later this afternoon with an outline of the jobs that need to be done. I've at least experimented with doing most of them, so I can explain how the various things work.

Scott did not have to work late last night (he expected to), but he will almost certainly have to work late tonight and Wednesday. We're hoping he can avoid Wednesday because his FATE game is supposed to meet then, and we'd be sad if we couldn't do that. I really enjoy both the game and the opportunity to interact with some non-Scott adults. We do think, though, that we've got enough leftovers to see me and Cordelia through two nights of Scott working late if we need to. I'm not sure what we'll do if he works late Thursday, instead. Our leftovers will be gone by then.

I have 20-30 emails that I need to deal with today or tomorrow. In two days, I've gone from 115 items in my inbox to 146 items in my inbox. I'm afraid of things I need to keep track of getting buried permanently. I also need to fill out paperwork for my appointment on Friday, pin down when we're having Cordelia's party and invite everybody.

I need to corner Cordelia to make plans for her birthday. At the very least, I need to know who to invite (and I need to get Scott to pick up invitations). She keeps disappearing into her room and not coming out. Her birthday is a week from Sunday, and we probably ought to send out invitations this weekend at the latest if she's going to have a party. The problem is that the weekend of her birthday isn't great-- There's almost certainly a Girl Scout meeting between 1:00 and 3:00, and Saturday is out because her best friend has religious school and wouldn't be able to come. Maybe Saturday evening? Either after dinner or we serve them cheese pizza. But Scott might be working all day that day. It's one thing to have the party while he's at work; we've done that before. It's quite another to have it while he's trying to get showered and all that. I hate to go with Sunday evening given that the next day is a school day.

I also need to spend a little time with Cordelia's Amazon wishlist and order a few things for her. Normally, by this time, Scott has bought some stuff, but things have been so difficult that I don't think he's had time even to think about it. I rather suspect that this is going to be another year when he doesn't have a present for me on my birthday because he hasn't had time to shop. I'm about 90% sure he and Cordelia haven't even thought about Mother's Day.

The metanews posts are finally up. I broke out all the Age of Ultron meta into a separate post, and that shortened the full post enough that I didn't have to split it on LJ. If there's as much Age of Ultron stuff next week as there was this week, we'll probably break that out, too. It helps people avoid spoilers.

Speaking of spoilers, I'm using the 'warning:spoilers" tag an awful lot on the metanews posts. I kind of think I'm using it excessively and that people ought to assume that any post talking about the latest episode of a show has spoilers for that episode. Heck, most posts about any specific canon contain spoilers. I just don't warn for, say, Harry Potter spoilers at this point. Right now, I'm taking the spoilers warning onto links for the most recent episode of a show (when I can determine what that is. I can't always because I don't follow 98% of the canons we link. Good thing I don't mind spoilers myself) but not for anything older than that. I just felt kind of silly warning for spoilers on Age of Ultron links-- Of course, those have spoilers. Is anybody actually assuming that they don't? Even the bits we excerpted from various articles were likely to be kind of spoilery.

I did, for the first time, have reason to use a 'warning:nsfw' tag. One of the blog entries I linked was talking about the history of sexually explicit comics and was heavily illustrated. I probably should also have put it on the article about how it's still taboo to show a penis on screen and why the author thinks that's so, but that's all text and so less problematic.

Scott's expecting to have to work twelve hours tomorrow, 3:00 to 3:00. That'll probably happen a lot more, going forward, as summer production ramps up. I really hate that production demands are highest during the times of year when the working conditions are worst.

Scott's family is likely to want do something for Mother's Day. I haven't heard anything about it, though, and usually, they'd email me and not Scott, so who knows? I would kind of rather not because I'd like to stay home and try to get things done (or to have Scott get things done since I still can't really help with the laundry), especially if Sunday is Scott's only day off this weekend. He'll need to fit in four loads of laundry, the grocery shopping and enough cooking that Cordelia and I don't have to order carry out when he works late this week (I'm expecting Monday and Tuesday again, so weekend cooking is really essential).

I think I'm giving myself an amnesty on the question of pursuing DW and LJ meta relating to Age of Ultron. I'm simply overwhelmed by the volume of posts (and that's just on my reading lists and links from my reading lists). I've written up nineteen links for AoU so far this week. Most of them are to blogs and similar sites, so I probably ought to get a few more LJ and/or DW posts. I'm just finding myself totally unmotivated.

That's partly because I'm burned out on AoU and partly because LJ and DW posts are a PITA because we always ask permission before linking. That means I have to write up the potential link, stick the write up in a Google doc just for things we don't yet have permission to post, ask for permission and then track the mod in box to see if we get permission. If we do get permission, I cut and paste the link text to the main document. If we don't hear anything, it sits for two weeks, waiting, before we delete the link. If we get a definite no, we delete the link immediately, of course. Most people who want to say no just don't ever answer us. At least, I assume that's why they don't answer.

I slept later this morning than I intended to. It was after 10:00 when I got up. That means that I'm squishing together when I take my morning meds and when I take my lunch meds because we're going to a birthday party at 1:30.

The LJ and DW Metanews posts went up over night. I did the Tumblr post because the other moderator was having issues with a slow connection and couldn't get Tumblr to load. There were a couple of html errors in the post that I've fixed on DW and LJ (I haven't the slightest clue how to fix them on Tumblr). Both were my errors, but I think two errors is pretty good in thirty pages of links.

We do have templates for how to lay out the links, and if I used those, I wouldn't make most of these mistakes, but going back and forth to get the templates takes so long that it would probably double the time I take writing up a link. I'd rather just type from scratch and deal with the occasional error.

I'm torn as to whether I want to write after we get back from the party or whether I want to get started on link finding so that it's not quite as hectic Monday and Tuesday. Writing is definitely tempting. I keep not doing it, and I'd really like to get this chapter moving. On the other hand, the link finding has to be done at some point.

I am thinking to sign up for Remix this year simply because I love the challenge of it. I qualify in Weiss Kreuz and Narnia, so it should be relatively straightforward to find someone to write for me. I'm not sure what to offer-- They're opening things up to any fandom in the tagset this year. I'm not sure how that will work in terms of knowing what to offer since that really depends on what fandoms people want to be remixed in. It would be very easy to offer a bunch of fandoms that nobody's asking for, but at the same time, even a very tiny fandom might be in someone's sign up. I don't know. I think they need a nomination period of some sort.

I have pretty much promised to offer to remix Naruto and Narnia. I don't know what else makes sense for me. I don't feel like I have to know a fandom in as much detail to remix it as I do to write from scratch.

We apparently just had an earthquake. I didn't notice, but Scott and Cordelia both did.

I don't think wearing the brace yesterday did me any harm. It wasn't as comfortable for my foot as the boot but was more comfortable for the rest of my leg than the boot is. I don't know.

I made two phone calls yesterday that I'd been putting off. I called Kroger to ask them to order me a tube of Gel-Kam (fluoride gel for my teeth, helps with sensitivity problems). I also called our dentist to see about changing Cordelia's dental appointment. That was set for the 12th which is also the day when I see the orthopedics people again. I didn't want to do both on the same day. The dentist is actually able to get us in on the 14th at the same time which is really nice. I was afraid we'd end up waiting for at least a month or have to come in earlier in the day (with a 3:30 appointment, Cordelia still misses half an hour of school, but I figure that's better than missing three hours which is what an earlier appointment would likely require). A Thursday afternoon appointment isn't ideal because it means not being here when the cleaning lady comes, but we've done that before. She can lock up when she leaves if Scott's not home yet, and I will be home when she arrives.

Scott worked late last night. I wimped out on dinner and sent Cordelia to Subway. She forgot to have them put the ranch on my chicken bacon ranch sub, and I forgot to tell her that I wanted spinach, so she only got me lettuce. She ate half of her sandwich last night and half for breakfast this morning. I was half hoping she'd save that half for dinner tonight. Scott's supposed to be working late again. Oh, well. We do have enough leftovers for one meal.

metanews seems to expand to fill all my available time. I'm not sure what to do about that. I'd like to do other things than that and my general wandering around the internet. I just can't seem to focus. I do think I'm finding more links on our LJ reading list than the other link finder gets from the DW reading list, so I'm not at all sure why we stopped checking LJ. The rationale, as I recall, was that we weren't getting more than a link or two a week, but I'm finding at least a dozen a week there, possibly more. Have things changed or am I more thorough than whoever was linking before? Most of the links I get are to things off LJ, so maybe whoever did it before was ignoring those?

Scott did discover why he was having so much trouble getting his laptop to back up-- The program was trying to back up both of his hard drives, and one of them, the one he uses for photo and video storage, has over a terabyte of data. Time Capsule was simply choking on the volume. He did a full back up of both hard drives. I think, from here on out, he's going to have his working hard drive back up automatically and only back up the storage drive when he makes changes.

I know there were other things I meant to write about, but I can't for the life of me think what they are. I guess I'll do a supplementary post later today if I remember.

I'm debating whether or not I should go to the library with Scott and Cordelia today. I'm probably capable of it, and doing some walking might be good for me. On the other hand, walking still hurts, so I don't know.

I wore the brace for about five hours yesterday, and that was simply too long. By the time I put the boot on, my foot really hurt. The boot's far from ideal, but I don't bend my foot when I walk in it, and I don't move my ankle as much. I just wonder whether I'm making a mistake in not wearing the brace more-- It may be that those movements hurt because I haven't done them much in weeks and that I need to do them more not less.

Scott and I finished off season 5 of Leverage yesterday. We thought that the season, on the whole, was weaker than preceding seasons, but it was still pretty good. We enjoyed the last episode quite a bit. I may have to go looking for Leverage fic (assuming I get into reading fic again).

I started this week's metanews link finding yesterday and got through about a third of the blog list. I haven't found nearly as many links in terms of just happening on things this week, and I'm kind of glad because it leaves me with more time for other things.

Scott and I ended up staying up way late last night. We usually turn out the light between 11:00 and midnight, but last night we hit 1:00 with the light still on. We didn't get up until well after 10:00. It's a bit after noon now, and we've only just had breakfast. That really throws off my medication schedule for the rest of the day, so I try not to do that, but many Sundays, that's just the way it is.

I'm wondering when I'll be able to go back to volunteering at Cordelia's school. I don't think it will be this week, but I'd like to go back soon. I miss it quite a bit. I'm just not sure how useful I'd be as I couldn't shelve a considerable percentage of the books due to not being able to get down near the floor with my leg in the boot.

I have to call and try to reschedule Cordelia's dental appointment. It's the same day as my next orthopedics appointment, and I really don't want to try to do both in one day. The timing is such that I almost certainly could do both, just looking at that factor. The orthopedics appointment is at 10:30. The dental appointment is at 3:30. Even assuming it takes two hours to have the morning appointment and get home, I'd be in plenty of time to pick Cordelia up from school at 2:30. I just don't think I can face going out twice in one day.

Cordelia and I ate leftover pizza last night, so I escaped having to do any food preparation. We'll have salad tonight when Scott's available to cut up the chicken. Scott picked frosties on his way home, so we had a nice treat after dinner. I should probably see if I can make jello today so that we have something for dessert tonight. Cordelia's not as insistent about dessert every night as she used to be, but it's nice for all of us to have something of the sort.

I poked around on the metanews Tumblr yesterday. I think the reading list there may be too big for any one volunteer. I spent over an hour to go back about 24 hours, and anyone doing Tumblr for us would have to go back a week at a time. That's an awful lot of time for one person, especially given that there's a lot of stuff that we haven't yet found that we ought to be following. The current reading list is mostly Sherlock (with very little meta) and A Song of Ice and Fire. A couple of weeks ago, I added some Buffy stuff, but Tumblr is a fire hose, and I'm not at all sure we can sip from it.

Our cleaning lady is regularly working more than two hours (usually about two and a half), but she won't let me pay her for the extra time. She says it's her choice to do it. And it is, but... Her time is worth money. At least, if I do ask her for extra time to work on the basement (once I can actually go down there again), she'll let me pay her for that.

I think I forgot to water the plants last week. They seem to have survived, but they were very, very dry when I watered them yesterday. I always feel torn about the plants. I don't actually want either of them. Well, the Christmas cactus isn't so bad. It's got a nice, convenient spot, right by a window. The other plant is something annoying that Cordelia brought home from camp two or three years ago. It grows constantly with a singly runner that seems to want to extend infinitely. I've wrapped that around the pot as well as I can. I tried cutting it to stop the growth, but it just sprouted a runner from another point. None of us like the dratted thing, but I can't bring myself to kill it. (I once had a poinsetta that I kept for years. It was green the whole time. I just couldn't bring myself to kill it or abandon it.)

I finished reading both of the books I was reading and have started a new one. The new one is a biography of someone who lived about a century BC, and the author admits that she's speculating a lot because the sources are so thin. This one is an interlibrary loan book, so I'm giving it priority for now. I do, however, need to read the graphic novel that I've already renewed once that's due a week from Sunday.

I canceled my hold on one book that would have had to be picked up Saturday at the latest. I didn't want to make Scott make an extra trip downtown. I put a new hold on it, but I won't get it for many, many months as there are 22 copies and about 200 holds. Oh, well. There are many other books I want to read. I can wait.

Scott is listening to Whales on Stilts on CD. He says it's basically a Phineas and Ferb episode but longer and darker. I think that's fairly accurate. He hasn't decided yet if he likes it. He will probably finish it before the end of next week, and I haven't put a hold on anything to replace it. He says that's okay because he's got an audiobook on his iPod that he wants to listen to.

I've been having a lot of trouble with my mouth being dry. It's been going on for weeks now. I'm a little concerned that this may mean something's screwy with my blood sugar. I don't seem to have other symptoms of type 2 diabetes, but I can't help worrying. That's something I definitely don't need. Ah, well, I'll get my fasting blood sugar done in early May. That will tell me.

I spent about seven hours yesterday on metanews, and I'm not done for the week yet. That adds to the two or three hours I spent on Saturday. I think I'm spending too much time on this, but I can't help wanting it to be done properly, and no one else is currently available to do it. I want those other possible volunteers on board now. I am a little worried that the senior moderator is telling people that this is an hour a week commitment. The blog list, even just half of it, takes considerably longer, and I strongly suspect that doing Tumblr would take a lot longer, too.

I ended up giving myself a headache while working on metanews. It started about midway through the time I spent and went away within an hour of me stopping. I don't think it was purely eyestrain because I kept using my laptop after I stopped link finding. I suppose I'll see if I get a headache again today.

Cordelia was very disappointed that Scott was working late last night. The school actually sent home a coupon for the PTO fundraiser at Olga's, and normally, we'd get dinner there under those circumstances, but there was really no way to make it work with Scott getting home around 8:00. I generally need to eat before 8:00 if I'm going to bed at 11:00, and that's especially true if we go to Olga's.

I emailed Scott's sister on Saturday or Sunday to say that I'd love to have lunch with her and her friend today. I haven't heard back from her which surprises me. Maybe she figures there's nothing to say. I know her appointment's at 11:30, so she's unlikely to get here any earlier than 12:30. I'll just aim to be ready to go by noon, and that should be fine.

I think I overdid somehow yesterday even though I didn't do much. Maybe I should have had Cordelia prepare dinner. When I took off the boot last night, my bad foot really hurt. I still slept reasonably well, thank goodness. I didn't go back to sleep after Scott got up, but that happens sometimes, even when my foot doesn't hurt. I just hope that going out today isn't a mistake in that regard. Well, even if it is, I really need to get out of the house for something that's not a medical appointment. It will be really nice to talk to someone who's not Scott or Cordelia.

I should go back to HabitRPG. I've been on hiatus from that for two or three weeks now because I just couldn't face it right then, and I haven't been able to get myself to go back. I did put my character into the inn, so the other people in my party aren't suffering because of me not checking in.

We ended up solving last night's dinner dilemma by having Scott pick up KFC on the way home. It wasn't ideal since it was nearly 8:00 by the time we ate, but it was a lot better than fighting with Cordelia over what to eat. I had reached the point with that where I was just going to have her make herself some ramen and heat up some frozen green beans. I have no idea what I would have eaten. A bag of potstickers can easily feed five or six, and it wouldn't make sense to cook all of them just for me (I'm not sure how well storing an opened partial bag in the freezer would be. We've never tried it. It might work).

Scott will be working late next Monday and Thursday. The current plan is for him to cook like crazy this weekend so that we have plenty of leftovers for the week. I hope it works. I also probably could handle one of those frozen meals that goes in the oven forever, but I'm not sure Cordelia likes any of the ones we've tried. There's a vegetarian white lasagna that Scott and I really enjoyed, but, although Cordelia tried it (she will try just about anything), she didn't like it at all.

I've been poking at fail_fandomanon a bit. It's an incredible time sink. I think I'll have to be careful only to stop in occasionally and to choose which threads to read very, very carefully. I have other things I want to do, and I don't want to look up at the end of this weekend and find that I've still done no writing. I did find one sub-thread complaining about the SJW tendencies of what metanews links to. I managed not to say anything, but I really wanted to tell them that, if they don't like what the newsletter is linking to, they should volunteer or, at the very least, suggest links to blogs they think we should be following. There's only so much two people can do. Besides, I think the stuff they were complaining about as SJW crap is interesting to read.

It was so warm in our house when we went to bed last night that I asked Scott to turn on the ceiling fan. That helped considerably, but Scott thinks it created problems with water condensation in the hose of his bi-PAP. He had to get up around 5:00 to empty the hose and ended up knocking the entire bi-PAP off his bedside table. I'm not sure of the best solution to this. I've been feeling really warm at night for months now, and warmer weather is just going to make that miserable.

I'm trying to decide if I should risk showering again this weekend or simply take a bath which should be less stress for my foot and ankle. A shower might well be worth the risk of increased pain the next day. I don't know, though. I think I'm not remembering Thursday's pain clearly (though, as I recall, it eased off a lot once I got the boot on).

Scott's sister is coming to town to see her 'doctor' on Tuesday. She offered to pick me up on her way to her appointment and drop me off at Barnes & Noble, but I had to say no. I don't think I could handle walking around the store for fifteen minutes, let alone the hour I'd likely be there. It's a pity because I enjoy bookstores and haven't been to one for months. She's also invited me to join her and a friend of hers for lunch, and I said yes to that. I'll enjoy getting out of the house. It's been weeks.