the_rck

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.

Scott has to go in early tomorrow, so he's already in bed (it's 8 p.m. as I write. He'll be getting up around the time I usually go to sleep.

I've got a test scheduled for the 7th of October to see whether or not I have full on carpal tunnel. It involves needles and electricity and sounds thoroughly unpleasant. I'm not looking forward to it with any sort of pleasant anticipation.

I had energy today, so I did a lot of cooking. Nothing fancy, just dumping things into the instant pot and shoving pans into the oven. I cooked some cod, two types of chicken (I can't eat chicken thighs without reflux issues; Cordelia hates chicken breast) with potatoes and mushrooms. I found some brussel sprouts in the fridge, so I steamed them in the instant pot. I microwaved two ears of sweet corn (I don't eat it, but Scott and Cordelia do). We had a huge sweet potato in this week's Imperfect Foods box. I washed it, wrapped it in foil, and shoved into into a corner of the oven while the chicken cooked.

We got food delivered from Evergreen Wednesday because we had a Firefly session that evening. I still have leftovers and might eat them later this evening.

The Firefly session was fun. I was feeling reasonably good and awake, so I was able to think. My character was trying to investigate an artifact we'd found. She lacks the skills to do any sort of testing, but she could explain what she was looking for and why she wanted to know. The characters who can actually do the testing weren't quite sure why she wanted to do it, not at first.

Today, I mixed a can of Zevia ginger ale with a can of carbonated water and about three tablespoons of lime juice. The goal of this was to make the Zevia palatable to me, and I succeeded. Previous attempts haven't gone really well because they've usually intersected with migraine days. I was almost certain that the migraines were't caused by the Zevia because each occasion had other fairly clear explanations and because there's nothing in the Zevia that ought to give me trouble.

I did wonder if I had an upper limit for the amount of stevia I can handle in one day, but it seemed improbable.

( UCon related )

Cordelia's had a week of classes now. Most of the instructors are still figuring out how to make things work and are finding their planned lessons either much too short or too long for the scheduled time.

Cordelia's really missing the social interaction. It's not just the between classes chatting. Normal classes include some time when the kids can talk to each other or, at the very least, exchange glances. Right now, Cordelia's crocheting during some lectures. She's done some classes in bed (which is apparently common) and some in the dining room (also common).

The dining room had the downside that the chairs are all terrible, so she and Scott went and bought a new chair. Scott put it together last night; Cordelia used it today and gives it two thumbs up.

Choir is going to be an issue for me because I wake up and want to make tea halfway through the period. I can be in the kitchen during choir, if I'm quiet, but I can't use anything that whistles or dings.

Skyline Blues poses a similar problem to food preparation because the rehearsals run two hours and put the kitchen off limits. For Blues, Cordelia wants us in our bedroom, the bathroom, or the basement for the duration because being reminded that we're in the house increases her anxiety about doing well.

I think the Skyline Blues stuff is mostly a matter of me and Scott adapting. We can make sure we have food before practice starts. I'm less sure about choir. The classes run just short of two hours, and I need 10-15 minutes to be able to make my tea. If I set an alarm and get up at 10:00, I can do it before choir. Otherwise, I can't do it until after 12:10. I'm mostly waking up between 11:00 or 11:30. Sometimes, I sleep as late as 1:00 (having gone to bed between 3:00 and 4:00 a.m.).

I keep meaning to work on shifting my schedule to an earlier bedtime, but my body keeps wanting me to stay up later every successive night. I think my internal clock might be expecting a 24.5 hour day or something.

I've leveled up in Ingress. Almost all of the points involved in that came from recharging portals since I haven't gone out much in the last several months. I need one badge in order to attain level 16 (currently working on 15, so it will be a long time). At the beginning of this year, I assumed that I'd be getting the 4th level in Trekker for distance walked sooner than any of the other options, but I think I'm going to have to try for one of the others (I think it's called Sojourner), the one for playing daily for so many days in a row. I hadn't wanted to commit to 360 daily treks to the nearest portal, but I'm more than halfway there because of how they shifted what counts toward it.

I'm just concerned that I'll miss a day and have to start over. 360 consecutive days is a lot. I'm at 184 days now, and it's something I'm currently capable of doing, but...

I've put in a grocery order for pickup. I'm not sure whether the substitution thing was toggled on or off because the state wasn't marked in either position. The last time I ordered for pickup, I said no substitutions, so I'm hoping that will hold.

In many cases, it's better to get nothing at all than to get whatever the Kroger employee thinks is the closest match. I mean, the half and half would be fine, but the wrong hummus cups would mean I couldn't eat them. I picked a loaf of bread that didn't contain anything that would make me sick, but some other whole wheat breads do and so do other breads from the same company.

We actually got our Imperfect Foods box this week. Given that we didn't get a box last week, we weren't sure we would.

I've almost finished a draft of one of my lingering WIP. It's kind of skeletal in terms of sense of place and of anchoring sensory details, but it's more than 11000 words so far. I may edit for description, but I also may not. I think there are only about a dozen people who'll read this one because it's a crossover of two of my previous long series (the two Sky High series) and won't make any sense without those. It's a fairly self-indulgent thing but also fun for me to write.

I'm thinking that I might make a list of my WIP again and ask you all if any of the stories are of particular interest. I think that knowing that a specific person was interested in a specific story might help me finish it. Maybe I'll just stick with the stories that I think will be short(ish) standalones. I'd like to feel like I'm finishing things rather than starting and abandoning dozens more things.

Today will be a day for cooking, I think. Well, some cooking. We haven't finished last week's pot pie yet, so making more has to wait for the dish to be empty and clean. I can bake the squash today, though, and get Scott and Cordelia to chop up the other ingredients. I also want to change our sheets and run 2-3 loads of laundry.

I've been trying to read some of the fics and ebooks that I've previously downloaded for later reading. I've got nearly 600 things that I either haven't read or am not sure whether or not I've read. Some of them are relatively short while others really aren't. I made a bad indexing choice when I created my spreadsheet of ebooks, however, so I can't sort by length right now.

Basically, I appended 'words' or 'pages' to all entries in my length field so that I could distinguish what metric I was using. Ordering things by that field doesn't treat the numbers as numbers, so '197 words' indexes after '18444444 words.' (The fields are author, title, fandom (using Gutenberg as a fandom), length, series, read (y/n/?), and notes.)

( Sleep, GERD, and sinus trouble )

I hope to be past this tomorrow and to get some good sleep tonight. Right now, I really and desperately want a large glass of water. Preferably two or three. I just know that even one glass will prolong the misery.

My eyes are doing much better than they were, and I suspect that the fact that I've stopped eating rosemary and that we've stopped cooking with it may have some bearing on that. I still have patches of eczema in other places on my face, neck, and arms, however, and those don't seem to want to go away. For now, I'm just happy to be able to tolerate light again.

We had a campus tour scheduled for mid-June, and the university in question has already canceled it. Scott and Cordelia were going to combine that with seeing a play on campus. It's one that Cordelia really desperately wants to see, so we've been hoping that it will still be possible but kind of expecting not.

We made a pot pie yesterday. It involved a lot of me standing next to the stove and stirring things, so I think that we need to plan better. I had Cordelia working on the green beans because I didn't think my hands were up to the fussy work, but she took a very long time. I managed the carrots and potatoes and mushrooms.

We used ground turkey because I didn't want to try to work with raw chicken. I did the squash/Bisquick/shredded cheese mix for the topping. It all came out tasty.

I was extremely shaky by the time the soupy part of things was done. I had to drink some orange juice and then do the topping while I was sitting down. The OJ stopped the trembling. I was still exhausted, though, so I was extremely glad to get everything into the oven without my having dropped anything.

During that time, Scott was cleaning the dryer vent and all of the furnace filters. Replacing the filter for the humidifier needs to go on the list for once we can go out again. We shouldn't need the humidifier again for several months, so it can be put off. We just don't want to start it up again without a new filter.

Tomorrow morning, it will be two weeks since I interacted in person with anyone but Scott and Cordelia. That's not entirely weird for me, but I keep thinking that I'd like to go to the library or to get bubble tea. The fact that I can't makes those impulses feel more important, less fleeting.

I made biscuits in the toaster over today. Well, more like one big biscuit that we can cut pieces off of. I didn't want to have to bake more than one batch, so I flattened the dough on the pizza pan that came with the toaster oven. Scott now thinks that I should put pizza toppings on it next time.

I had trouble with reflux Friday night into Saturday morning. I think it's because Cordelia and I had ground turkey with Alfredo sauce as part of our dinner. I'm not sure if the issue with Alfredo sauce is the fat content or the seasoning. Possibly it's both. At any rate, I don't think I'll risk it again. That was fully eight hours before I went to bed, and that wasn't long enough.

Scott and a couple of friends managed a video chat yesterday to play Flash Point. They had a lot of issues with the video of the game board not updating and with the audio being staticky. I had intended to participate, but I was feeling too terrible from the lack of sleep the night before.

I'm trying to listen to Paradise Lost via Overdrive, but I keep losing track of what the words mean, not the individual words as much as how they're strung together. The reader is pleasant to listen to, but I think the text needs more focus than I've got. Odds are that I'd follow best if I listen while simultaneously reading the text. I don't know if I'll try that or not. I don't know if I care that much.

My breathing was fine all day yesterday and then abruptly got bad again just before Scott got home (so shortly before midnight). It remained bad for a little more than an hour and then abruptly resolved itself. It feels like an allergic reaction to something, but there isn't anything new. I had avocado with lime juice and salt just before, but all three are things I consume regularly. Also, the avocado is generally a once a week thing and can't have had anything to do with Monday's issues.

I've had a headache all day. Nothing I've hit it with has helped. I'm hoping that a night of good sleep will help.

I haven't been wearing my thumb splints because, while they're semi-washable, they're not that washable. My hands are unhappy about this choice, but I haven't been able to think of a workable alternative.

I'm pretty sure we'll be out of toilet paper before the end of the weekend. I'm not looking forward to that, but I don't really see what we can do about it. Scott looked every day for a week, and now, the stores all close before he gets off work. He's reluctant to go out before work just for that, partly because he can't predict how long a stop would take and partly because he can't pick up other things (perishables) before work. They'd go bad, sitting in the car for 10 hours.

Also, I think he's convinced that there's no way he'll find any even if he looks in every store in town.

Scott's employer is encouraging people to eat their lunches in their cars. Scott didn't mention if breaks in cars were suggested, too, but it wouldn't surprise me. I think the concern is that the break room can't be reliably kept as clean as it needs to be. Probably also that there's not enough space for social distancing otherwise.

I've been making biscuits with mashed squash, Bisquick, and shredded cheese. I can't give amounts because I just mix the squash and Bisquick to the right texture and then add cheese. My best guess is two parts squash, two parts Bisquick, and one part shredded cheese, but that may be more than a little off.

I'm the only one in the family who really loves squash, and I can't eat all of a standard sized butternut or acorn squash, so this is a good way to get Scott and Cordelia to eat some, too. I baked an acorn squash, uncut, on Sunday, and put away the pulp. I used half of that today. Probably I'll make biscuits again on Thursday or Friday.

I have a story in the All the Nice Things flash exchange archive. Author reveals won't happen for a couple of days yet, and I'm curious as to whether or not the story is identifiable as mine. I suspect it might be, but I'm also not sure how many people who read here also read in that fandom. I'm not necessarily good at the follow through, but if anyone (bar my beta reader) guesses which story it is, I'll at least try to write something for them.

The exchange was entirely about having nice things happen to the requested characters, so the stories in the archive ought to skew toward being happy for those characters. Revenge was one of the 'nice things' a person could request, though.

I haven't back read completely and probably won't. I stopped reading Thursday some time and have only just come back. Friday, I was focused on getting an exchange fic in by the midnight deadline. Yesterday, I was catching up on sleep because a bunch of tiny, unexpected things had kept me from a full night's sleep Wednesday night or Thursday night.

I was very cranky about not sleeping well Thursday night because it made getting things done on Friday about seventeen times harder. The sleep interruptions were mostly bad timing in terms of me getting jolted awake at a point when I'd need meds to go back to sleep but couldn't afford to sleep even another four hours.

We had lunch out on Friday. We went to Saica and then to Coco, the bubble tea place next door. I prefer Totoro and Bubble Island, but they're both in areas where parking is difficult. Cordelia and I brought home leftovers that served us for dinner as well.

Scott had to work yesterday. They're still being vague on when he'll go back to first shift, and I suspect that they're going to stay vague. They've hired someone else for Scott's scheduler job. Scott knows the person and suspects that they won't stay. I think part of him wants the chance to go back to the scheduler job (which he was good at) while part of him is terrified of it still having all of the problems that led to his panic attacks.

( If I ran the circus... )

I finally heard from our cleaning lady. She didn't come the day after Christmas or the day after New Year, and she hadn't mentioned that she wouldn't be. In years past, she hasn't taken time off in December, so I wasn't expecting it. I worried when she didn't come on the 26th, and I got much more worried on the 2nd. I ended up texting to ask if she was okay and if there was anything we could do to help. She texted back this morning to say that she's okay.

I had considered walking over to her place which is near where we vote, but while I know the general part of the complex she lives in, I don't know anything more precise than the nearest parking lot. That would mean knocking on a lot of doors.

Yesterday, I changed our sheets and did some cooking. I made rice with butternut squash and spinach in the Instant Pot. I couldn't get the Instant Pot to seal, though, so I ended up with a layer of burned rice on the bottom. It's a good thing I had a lot of extra liquid from the spinach and the squash.

I also made chicken burgers, experimenting with baking them instead of cooking them on the stovetop. That worked nicely and will be my go-to as long as it's cool enough for using the oven. Stovetop preparation requires that I stand there for quite a long time. Scott will prepare them for me, but he adds oil and tends to brown and char far beyond what I enjoy eating. (I use water to prevent sticking and add more as it's needed. I also flip the patties frequently.)

( More about my eyes )

Ingress has rejected Robert Hayden's grave as a potential portal. The acceptance process seems to be pretty random as to what they'll take and what they won't, and they just send a rejection form without specifying why they rejected the place. Out of the eight potentials I sent in last week, two have been accepted. Three have been rejected. The others are still pending, but none of them are things I think are very likely to be accepted.

Today feels very weird because we did the library run yesterday. That made yesterday feel like Sunday. Right now, I feel like it's much later in the day than it actually is. Scott and Cordelia are supposed to meet her friends at the movie theater at 3:30. They'll pick up one friend on the way, and another is already here so that she can ride with them.

I gave Cordelia's friend the package of hair rubberbands that I bought 2-3 weeks ago. I used three of them before I got my hair cut, but I don't expect I'll use them again. If I do, it won't be for months into years. Might as well buy new at that point.

Scott and I are three episodes into season 2 of She-Ra. Scott remembers seeing episodes of the original, but I don't think I ever did. My younger brother watched He-Man occasionally, but I didn't have a TV between fall of 1985 and some time around 1990. When I did get one, I mostly watched videos.

I have banana bread in the oven. I had just enough resources to manage it and just enough time while Scott was out getting bread and while Cordelia and her friend were out getting bubble tea.

I nearly didn't, though. I kept finding additional things that needed doing that I hadn't expected. One of the loaf pans I needed didn't get entirely clean last time it was washed, but it got put away as it was. There wasn't enough sugar or all purpose flour in the bins. We had a bag of sugar, but I had to open it. We also had an unopened bag of bread flour; again, I had to open it. I also had to open a new container of canola oil. My hands are very unhappy with me now.

My intention is to send one loaf home with Cordelia's visiting friend. Her mother sent us spring rolls for lunch and gave us some canned goods that they don't expect to use. I'd have wanted to anyway because I like her family, but giving food is one of the few things I can offer.

Cordelia's cold has gotten worse, so I'm glad she'll have the three day weekend to sleep and recover.

Scott and I did the shopping last night because Scott was worried about the weather forecast. I'm not sure how much snow we got overnight, but we need to go out today or tomorrow anyway to pick up Cordelia's new glasses. She needs them, and I'd like to have mine back.

Scott wants us both to do the shopping from here on out. I'm not sure it will happen, but I understand why he wants it. We can't go out to dinner together unless I have pancakes which seriously limits our options as to where to go. Also, Cordelia usually wants to go with us. I can't handle plays, movies, concerts, etc. Physically active undertakings carry rather vast risks for my joints. Maybe we can start short walks again when the weather's better. I don't want to walk without light because ice on the sidewalks has given me some nasty falls.

I wrote about 200 words yesterday but am running into problems with making the POV character coherent. I need to write the second section from this POV instead of the one I used at first, but I think I'm starting at the wrong point. Possibly I need to handwave some time in order to jump over the tedious bits.

I figured out a way to make that old bean salad from the downstairs freezer edible. The problem was that the beans had absorbed too much vinegar while frozen. To address it, I made rice, drained the bean salad, and then mixed the beans into the rice. I wasn't 100% sure it would work, but the results are actually fairly tasty. I think the dish will have to be a breakfast or lunch food because it's still very acidic (I needed ice cream last night to deal with reflux. That hasn't happened in weeks or even months).

Today, I need to watch the last 15 minutes of a DVD I have to return to the library tomorrow. I've got a couple of books that are due tomorrow that can't be renewed, but I'm not sure I care about them enough to push. I'll just feel silly renewing a season set of DVDs for 15 minutes (or returning it without watching the last bit).