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.

We've gotten me a walker with a seat. I only found one model that could handle my weight, and it has a lot of drawbacks that we're still figuring out how to work around. I suspect that we aren't going to find anything with fewer issues, different ones, maybe but not fewer.

I'm not using it as a walker. I can't because I can't put weight through the palms of my hands or my wrists/elbows/shoulders. I'll never be able to use a walker or a cane or crutches of any sort.

The wheels move well enough that I can keep it going with my index fingers. The difficulty is that, no matter how I push the walker, the vibration of the wheels on concrete and asphalt hurts every joint in my hands and wrists. I have one set of splints that helps, but they hurt differently and are both bright pink and difficult to wash.

We've added padding to the handles in hopes of mitigating the problem, but I can only walk for a few minutes before I have to stop and rest my hands. I can limit the vibrational pain by placing my fists on top of the handles and holding my wrists rigid directly over them, but my elbows and shoulders don't like the resulting awkwardness in how I stand. I can't tolerate that contortion for any longer than I can tolerate the vibration. I suppose that combining them extends my pushing time.

I'm pretty sure that rubber wheels would help at least a little. The current wheels are hard plastic. I'm not sure replacing them is feasible, though. I'll ask Scott to look into it because he'd have to do the work.

The walker doesn't have any sort of brake that can be set before sitting. There are hand brakes that are for-- Well, I have no idea what. Do people actually use walkers in a way that would make hand brakes (which are not reachable when one is seated) a desirable feature?

Pulling the walker along after me by hooking fingers on the crossbar involves a lot less vibration (but not none) but decreases my ability to steer and to otherwise control the walker. It ends up banging into my heels a lot.

I've taken the walker out four times since we got it, and I really would like to use it more. Having the ability to sit whenever I need to would help vastly because sitting for a while and then walking again is the best way to tell the difference between my muscles being wobbly but more or less fine and my muscles being wobbly because I'm on the verge of longer term damage. I won't be able to use it on grass (which I hesitate to walk on anyway because I turn my ankles way too often) or on any of the walking trails around here (those are too narrow). Part of the reason for the ramp out back is for me to be able to get the walker to the driveway without having to pick it up.

(I probably could if I didn't use my hands, but it's heavier than I hoped for when I started looking.)

I don't think that me taking walks again will do anything about my blood sugar; it never did before. It's just that it would be amazing to have the option to walk without worrying about getting stuck three blocks from home because I had to sit on the ground and now am not sure I can get up and walk home.

The walker also won't be useful if there's any ice/snow as I won't be able to rely on clear pavement for it unless I'm in the street (and even then...). The lack of brakes will mean that parking it for sitting can only happen where the pavement is completely clear.

I ordered some rubber doorstop wedges to put under the wheels for when I stop and am not sure of the incline (one of the necessary Amazon purchases last week). Friction is of limited help if the incline is more than a few degrees. There's a storage bag under the seat, and I'm thinking I could carry the wedges there. They're not that expensive, not for proof of concept. If necessary, I can get something better once I know that wedging the wheels is feasible.

My feet don't reach the ground when I sit on the walker seat. They do land nicely at the right height to rest on top of the wheels on that side, and I'm hoping that that will also provide some braking.

Using the handles and pushing the walker in front of me, even if it's with one hand or with a single finger on each hand, helps my balance a bit. Usually, for that, I rely on the weight of my purse or a bag hanging from my elbow, forearm, or hand. Three plus pounds on one side or the other or on both keeps my mid-back from wobbling in ways that make each step considerably harder and increase the odds of negative post-walk effects.

I haven't worked out the best way to carry my purse with the walker. I can tell that it will be a challenge, so I haven't tried it yet. I expect to need to tomorrow.

Most of the last several years has been my physical functioning declining steadily but in ways that either don't respond to normal treatment or that have treatments that that aggravate other physical problems I have.

Since 2016, I've lost somewhere between 70% and 80% of my hand function. I can still type, and I can still do some things on my phone, but my ability to do anything at all goes downhill as the day progresses and my pain levels get higher. I don't think that my doctor is actually listening about the hand function because she's chosen to focus on my blood sugar as the primary thing.

My hands, she says, will feel better if we get my blood sugar under control. I do not think that's how osteoarthritis works. I really don't.

Also, I think that, if she were actually serious about the blood sugar control, she'd have given me a testing kit years ago instead of just assuming that my a1C tells all. I can't tell what helps/hurts in the short term, and I'm prone to physical exhaustion and mental issues that are helped by food (exponential improvement from food relative to improvement by sleep or rest) and not affected by caffeine or by hydration.

I've asked about a testing kit, but she keeps putting me off. Right now, she's saying that only an endocrinologist can do something in that direction. I'm pretty sure that's bullshit because the prick the finger testing kits are pretty basic equipment.

I don't particularly want to have to prick my fingers, and the hand issues might be a problem, both the tremor and the osteoarthritis, but we need more nuanced information. I'd really like to know where my blood sugar is when I'm experiencing certain physical and mental symptoms.

( Cut for discussion of medication side effects, both physical and emotional )

Scott has been playing a lot of board games online. He's also playing a Sentinels of the Multiverse rpg online with a group that, apart from him, is all somewhere in Canada. He's very happy about that.

He and I have been playing Suzerain (solo, text game) together. The idea is that the player(s) make decisions for the head of state of a small and not very stable nation. The options are limited, and we've discovered that the game doesn't give any chances for partial compliance with things we've agreed to. That is, agreeing to turn back 'armed insurgents' fleeing another country becomes 'nobody whatsoever crosses the border because that country considers them all armed insurgents.' Scott and I had assumed we'd be able to give orders to our troops to let refugees cross in anyway, but the game didn't offer that option.

The game is also pretty clearly drawing on real world history but blending multiple eras and conflicts. There's a cold war with a not-the-USSR and a not-the-US option, but a lot of the internal economic/social issues are Europe between WWI and WWII. There are groups that are oppressed minorities in territory that crosses national borders (not-Kurds?) and arguments about national language (both for education and for religious services). There are young fascists and young not-Communists. 1930s levels of unemployment and of men with military training and access to old weapons. We're trying to get a new constitution through and to update education and medical care and transportation infrastructure. We're also facing a very real threat of invasion that will steamroll our existing military. We've chosen not to put money into the military yet as a gamble that our economic plans will give us more options soon enough.

Our character has split his political party in pursuing constitutional reforms and alienated a lot of very wealthy people who're used to having politicians in their pockets. Our VP (long time best friend, per the game) is very clearly on the take and also prone to showing up to things either drunk or hungover. The game offers no options for replacing him, and he keeps trying to pull us into parties with imported booze, imported food, and vast numbers of prostitutes.

I quite expect that one faction or another, foreign or domestic, will end up murdering our character. We might muddle through, but history shows that most countries going through this sort of thing end up with the attempted-to-do-the-right-thing governments failing repeatedly. Possibly the game is more optimistic about such things than I am?

We've been nice enough to the people around us and good enough at trying to take care of our family that we'll be remembered as tragically incompetent or as having tried very hard to do the right thing but having had it spoiled by Evil People.

I keep wanting this to be a tabletop game where we can actually change course and/or lie instead of having a script that limits our choices so much.

Our Firefly tabletop game continued meeting online during the last year and a half, using Bluejeans and then Vorpal Board. We're hoping to have a face to face session soon.

I'm not happy with Vorpal Board because the interface is not tremor friendly, generally, and not even the slightest bit intuitive. Also, three of us have connection issues where we'll suddenly no longer be able to hear one of the other players while also having no way to know it happened unless we notice weird gaps in the conversation. There are six of us, so sometimes any given person just doesn't talk for a while. Also, the other three players don't lose sound from anyone unless everyone does.

The very puzzling thing is that Scott has zero problems in that direction. He's in the same building I am, and we have a signal relay thingy in the room where I am. We can't be on the same screen because he's the GM and has information I can't see.

At any rate, I'm looking forward to having an in person session again. We're all vaccinated, and all of our family members are vaccinated, so the general consensus is to try it two weeks from now (two of the players are currently visiting family and weren't local last week). The four of us who will be in Ann Arbor got together to play Betrayal Legacy. I had to have the other players do all of the hand related stuff for me, moving my game piece, writing required things, picking up cards, rolling dice.

I probably could have done some of it, but the amount of pain involved would have taken away any pleasure in the game or in the social time. There really isn't a bearable number of times to smash one's hand with a hammer, not if there's no reason to do it but pride.

My hands are giving me a lot of trouble. I keep misjudging how much I can do in terms of typing or stirring or holding a book. Tiger balm helps, so does soaking my hand in room temperature water. I don't do the latter nearly as often as I'd like because I need at least one side of the kitchen sink to be clean and empty. I can't get the depth in the bathroom sink or the width in a big pot. I can keep using the same water as long as it stays reasonably clean (which is why I use room temperature water).

Sadly, when there are dishes in the sink, I'm stuck because the dishes are Cordelia's job. Of course, they're Cordelia's job because we're afraid that I'll end up with shattered glass all over the floor if I do them.

The lighter weight dishes that we've bought to replace the stoneware that I can no longer manage are glass. It's a difficult spot because the intersection of light enough for me to lift, microwave and dishwasher safe, and unlikely to break if I drop it is... kind of tiny. I'm sure something must exist out there, but we haven't found it yet.

I think I need to work on remembering to put on my heavy duty splints before I read paper books. I have less pain after reading when I do that. I've got about a dozen hardcovers from the library that I've been putting off because of weight. Four of them have waitlists and can't be renewed, and one of those is due next Saturday. All of the ones with waitlists are by authors I know I'll enjoy, so I'd prefer not to wait six months to a year.

The heavy splints also help with pain from typing but are not compatible with touch typing on a laptop. Anything that involves stretching an index finger or that using the space bar ends up clicking the trackpad and/or pushing fn, control, option, or command (possibly all four at once) which gives me new and exciting typos, deletes characters, reverses the order of characters I've already typed, etc.

Hunt and peck typing takes 10x as long as touch typing.

After my walk to the eye exam at the beginning of the month, my legs took several days to recover and didn't really start to feel better until Scott spent some time massaging them. They only needed between five and ten minutes each, but neither of us expected it to help, so we hadn't prioritized it. Next time, I'll remember.

During the last few days, I've figured out that I can help the pain in my right shoulder by lying on that side for a while. It's not great from a reflux point of view (which is why I don't normally do it), but I only need to manage it for a few minutes every night to get some relief.

I have finished my A-Ride renewal paperwork. I need to hand it over to my doctor, but she's unavailable all of this coming week. I need to get it to the AAATA office by mid-April so as to have six weeks for them to review it before my card expires at the end of May. I'm going to want the A-Ride a few times in June, so I'd prefer not to have a gap in coverage.

I'm taking naproxen three nights a week. I seem to be able to tolerate that amount, and I sleep much, much better those nights. I wish my body could handle it more frequently. Well, or that I slept better without the extra painkiller. I have to remember to take the stuff 2-3 hours before I go to bed because I need to eat with it and because I take Tylenol right at bedtime every night.

I've experimented a little with food this month, trying to find things I can prepare even with my limitations. Nothing has worked quite right, and at the moment, I'm not remembering details (I should have written about them here, but...).

I talked to my stepfather on the 11th (his birthday). He told me that my mother is scheduled for surgery the first week of March and that they don't yet know what will come after. I suspect a lot will depend on whether or not her lymph nodes are clear. Mom's apparently very adamant that she doesn't want to do radiation. I didn't ask about other treatment modalities.

My stepfather confirmed that they're not heading up here when they usually would. They're still not sure when they'll be up to making the trip as they have to drive (because of having two large dogs).

Mom has had both doses of the vaccine. My stepfather has had the first and is scheduled for the second. He told me that my brother has had both doses and got sick for about three days after the second dose. (My brother is a social worker who works with people who have some intersection of developmental disabilities, substance abuse issues, and mental health issues. It requires a lot of in person interactions with his clients.)

My right hand isn't quite as bad as it was on Monday. Both hands and wrists are worse than they were at the beginning of the month, though. This may be, at least partly, because I pushed to get back to being able to prepare things like instant oatmeal for myself. I feel like this injury is going to happen again. Probably not often but still inevitably.

It's like how walking on ice over and over and over leads inevitably to an occasional fall. I can minimize some of the risks, I can try to be careful, but it only takes a moment of inattention to cause injury. There's no guarantee that any such injury will be minor, either.

I've been doing more than the usual amount of typing as I try to finish my long term disability review paperwork. That typing doesn't help, and the need to get this stuff done is also leading to migraines. I'm glad I'm not committed to writing for any exchanges right now.

Maybe next year I'll remember and leave February as a deliberate gap. This year was accidental.

We got delivery from Totoro for dinner on Wednesday. I didn't get what I usually would because that involves a lot of stuff that I can't reasonably eat without utensils. I got edamame, a vegetable tempura side, and some very tame sushi. I shouldn't have gone with the tempura because the batter gives me reflux; I just keep forgetting because I like it. I ended up with enough leftovers for a couple of small meals that got me through Thursday.

( Cordelia college stuff, including discussion of racism )

Anyway, we're in a holding pattern while some of Cordelia's friends decide where they're going. There's one member of the group who hasn't been accepted anywhere yet, and I think that the others are waiting to see what happens with her.

I wrote this the afternoon of the 10th and neglected to post it, so please mentally re-date 'today' references.

( Hands/wrists )

Since it's February, I have to do the long term disability review to deal with. It's anxiety provoking and otherwise challenging. My brain's not working linearly, and I'm not sure I'm writing the right things in the right places. I'm not sure what I'll do with the bits that I have to sign. Right now, I can't possible manage that. Well, maybe with my left hand? I can sort of print with that hand.

I saw a neurologist the last week of January. This visit confirmed that whatever the hell is going on with my hands/wrists, it's not carpal tunnel. The doctor I saw was a resident who spent a lot of time with me. My assumption is that there aren't many patients coming in for face to face appointments.

( A-Ride related stuff )

Cordelia had a choir concert last week. It was a big Zoom lecture set up and only ran about half an hour. Usually, the in person concerts run more than two hours, but each number in this concert represented many hours of work by the instructors to combine the audio recordings made by individual students.

(I think there are also copyright/performance and student privacy issues that are still being worked out about this sort of concert, issues that differ from what a high school choir doing an ephemeral performance would usually need to consider.)

Cordelia has auditioned for and gotten a solo for an upcoming Blues piece. It's not the solo she wanted most, but she's thrilled to have gotten one at all.

I haven't heard anything further from my mother about her prognosis or treatment options. I also haven't talked to her about anything beyond making sure she had the link for Cordelia's concert. I want to know what's going on, but I don't want to push too hard given that I can't offer help in any way that she would accept. Even if I was physically up to travel and such, I don't have the necessary i.d. for flying. I've been waiting to try to get a copy of my birth certificate because it doesn't feel important enough to ask somebody to commute to an office for that.

I suppose that, after a year, those offices must be functioning to some extent because people are still being born, dying, marrying, and divorcing, but... It seems like trying to get my birth certificate ought to be low priority since it's not really safe to fly right now anyway.

I'm trying to come up with ideas for things to do with a lot of extremely salty ginger paste. We bought it online because Scott hadn't been able to find it at Kroger over the previous month. I use it in cooking for myself, and I will sometimes do a lemon ginger drink the recipe for which calls for fresh ginger peeled and minced. As I can't do that, I buy ginger paste which normally works fine.

This bottle, however, is salty beyond what I can handle, and I normally add extra salt to everything. It tastes of salt with a ginger afterburn rather than of ginger.

The label claims that it's 5 mg of sodium per tablespoon, but judging by the taste, it's rather a lot more. My guestimate is that there's at least a quarter teaspoon of salt per tablespoon, just going by taste, and the internet tells me that there are 2300 mg of salt in a teaspoon. Rounding, puts that at about 600 mg in a quarter teaspoon which is vastly more than 5 mg. Even if my guess is way high, there's more salt than the label says.

Possibly the jar was filled with the wrong product. I would buy this as a brined ginger paste. I'm not sure what I'd do with brined ginger paste, but... Somebody must have a use for the stuff.

Anyway, the drink recipe would use up what remains of the ginger paste, but I did a batch with this stuff already, and it was nasty. I could have about 1 part of the stuff to about 19 parts water, and it still tasted briny, just tolerable (for me) levels of briny.

(Using fresh ginger requires someone else to be my hands. No, a blender or food processor will not help. I can't get them out of the cupboard or put them back again, and I can't clean them. I'm unwilling to give up the microwave or the toaster oven or the stand mixer in order to have a blender or food processor permanently within reach. I can't use an immersion blender because vibration hurts my hands.)

Life has been fairly uneventful during the last few months. I'm in a lot of pain and very much need PT/OT for half a dozen different things. I think it will be six months, best case, before that's an option.

I'm also still having issues with vertigo. Moving my head enough to look at a shelf above eye level or to kiss Scott (he's a foot taller than I am) is enough to make me light headed. Turning over in bed provokes a strong reaction which isn't out and out unpleasant only because there's no risk that I'll fall.

I'm just being very careful. I can walk around okay and even go up and down the basement stairs safely (I just keep a hand on the rail and don't carry anything I can't drop).

Cordelia is strongly leaning toward going to Michigan State next year (or the year after if things are still locked down). The main questions relate to paying for it.

We've been doing very laid back Christmas preparations. We'll be staying home, but there will be Zoom calls. (We do weekly Zoom calls with Scott's parents and his siblings and their families.)

I kind of vaguely want to write and post another three fics by the end of the year so that I finish with 200 stories on AO3. I don't know that I'll find the focus for it, though. I've written that many stories in that sort of window before, but I don't feel motivated right now (possibly because it's 2 a.m.).

So it's been a while since I last posted. I don't have any good reasons for that. Mostly it's that my attention span is kind of shot. I've half-written a lot of posts and then forgotten to finish or to post.

I've done a fair amount of writing, mostly things either as yet unrevealed or still in the anonymous period. I've got one story to finish by the end of the month and another due in the first week of December. Yuletide will be due not long after that, and while I have a solid idea, I haven't started writing yet.

I would like to write and post more than that by the end of the year, but I don't know that it will happen.

I'm still trying to figure out the right sleep/wake schedule for me so that I don't interfere with Cordelia's classes and choir rehearsals and so that I actually eat more than dried fruit, cheese, and almonds. The only good place for Cordelia to work is the dining room table, and me being in the kitchen is sometimes a problem for her since they're effectively the same room.

My hands, particularly the right hand, have been worse. My left knee has some weird thing going on, too, but that's only an issue if I kneel or otherwise put pressure around the kneecap. Then it feels a lot like a really deep rug-burn on top of a not quite healed burn.

Two weeks ago, we spent a day in the ER because I had bad vertigo. The triage nurse I talked to wanted me checked for a stroke. Nine hours later, they sent me home with instructions to keep doing the Epley maneuver and a warning that that might make things seem worse for a while but was still necessary.

I'm still having issues any time I tilt my head forward or back or to either side. Rolling over in bed is an issue, but at least there's no risk that will make me drop anything or fall.

My sister spent a lot of time telling me that it must be POTS. I pointed out that inner ear issues make more sense for the current acute symptoms.

She also maintains that I don't have anxiety. I just have physiological issues with my body being hair-trigger about adrenaline and such. In her opinion, that's not anxiety because it's not disordered thinking or PTSD. I told her that I don't see a functional difference between my body triggering my brain to panic and my brain triggering my body to panic. The external symptoms are the same. The situations that cause issues are the same.

I can't get useful treatment on either side, and I rather think that anxiety is more like headache or gas or nausea. It's a symptom that can be caused by many things and that can cause other problems. My sister thinks that 'anxiety' is like the flu or a broken bone, a condition with definite boundaries and meaning. It's not.

My sister's trying to say that I'm not mentally ill in a way that comes across to me as a judgment about physical illness being more acceptable. I'm pretty sure that she doesn't even realize that she's doing it. Her physiological explanation fits my symptoms, but that doesn't mean that I don't have anxiety.

I don't think she understood why I was angry with her about it. Why I'm still angry about it.

I've taken a couple of long walks in the last couple of months and a couple of shorter ones. I don't know that I'll be going out much in the next few months because I'm feeling the cold much more this year than in the last few years. This is about how I always used to feel normally in the winter, so I'm assuming that my body's settling toward full menopause. It's a little annoying to have the perimenopause overheating stop in October/November rather than, say, March or April or any time in the summer.

Cordelia has been accepted at all three schools to which she applied. At this point, we're waiting to find out about financial aid offers and about what her best friend plans to do. Her best friend is waiting to hear from the University of Michigan; if she goes there, Cordelia may choose to go to Eastern (which will, I suspect, offer the best aid package). If the friend doesn't get into U of M, they may both go to Michigan State since they've both been accepted there.

From Cordelia's point of view, the three schools she's looking at are about equal. She's interested in teaching or possibly being a school counselor or other educational support type. She's not clear on what all of the options are, and she needs a chance to explore the different options for it. Eastern, Western, and State all have decent education programs.

UCon was last weekend and entirely online. Scott was busy throughout. He ran several games, played in others, and did some ops shifts. I ran a game on Saturday that went well. The game I'd offered on Friday got no players, so I'll offer it again next year. I didn't play anything because I was fairly sure that I'd find figuring it all out too stressful to be fun.

I can't handle too many new things all at once, and I gave priority to being able to run events because I enjoy that more and have less opportunity to do it.

Scott's sister is putting heavy pressure on us to do an in person Thanksgiving. She says they'll do it 'however you need in order to be comfortable' but isn't accepting 'Zoom call' as our answer. We're not bending on this, though.

Scott's father helped him build a ramp off of the back porch. The steps that were back there had started crumbling from the inside and were prone to breaking under anyone who put weight in the wrong place. Scott thinks that a ramp will be easier for me, long term, and easier to keep ice-free once we have snow.

The library has closed again. I'm not sure how long it will be closed this time. Right now, they're saying at least until November 30th, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's longer. I have several books that I haven't touched, and having more time is a relief (especially in light of writing deadlines), but there are several holds waiting for me that I had been really looking forward to reading. Getting those via Overdrive will take at least two months and, in some cases, longer.

I'm still not reading here regularly. I'm reading more library books, both ebooks and paper, and finding other ways to fill my time. I get a bit overwhelmed when I think about trying to catch up.

I'm also still having a lot of hand/wrist issues. I've figured out how to minimize the pain and numbness, but I'm still prone to misjudging how long I can afford to keep typing. It doesn't usually hit me until hours later, sometimes, even a day later. The problems accumulate.

Cordelia took part two of drivers' training last week. It was several hours of lecture followed by a test. The class was held in the parking lot with each student bringing their own chair. They skipped the films they'd normally have shown.

We haven't tried to schedule the actual licensing test. Cordelia wants more time to practice parallel parking since she's not comfortable with that yet.

I've written a couple of exchange stories that haven't yet been revealed, and I'm working on three different writing projects and trying to figure out how I want to deal with UCon. That last requires some experimentation with platforms and with what our WiFi can handle in terms of me and Scott running games at the same time. I've asked Scott for help, but this is the worst time of year for scheduling anything that needs his participation.

The two probable options are him running in BlueJeans while I run in Discord or both of us running in BlueJeans. He's spending a lot of time working on investigating other platforms so that UCon can give their potential GMs some solid information about their options. I could probably get by with audio only and maybe some stuff on Gdocs, but I'd like to have video, too.

My body has reset the clock on menopause again. This period has been going for two weeks now.

( Stuff about writing )

( Cut for COVID discussion and risk taking relatives )

I'm having trouble managing my library holds. The decontamination delays and low staffing levels make it difficult to judge how long something will take. I've been trying to request only things that are actually on the shelf at the branch where we pick up holds, but it still sometimes takes two weeks for those to be available. I don't think there are good options in that direction in terms of predictability.

I want 4-8 CDs, 1-3 DVDs, and about 10 books (counting comics/graphic novels) a week. I'll only ever finish about half of those books, but it's usually not due to running out of time as much as there being a lot of things that I get a little way into and just don't want to finish.

Okay, I'm now definite that working in the bedroom (sitting on the bed) is the key to not having the hand/wrist issues. There's no way to set up at a table with the configuration that works because it would put the tabletop somewhere inside my knee.

I was hoping that I was wrong because the late night/early morning hours have always been productive for me in terms of writing. I can write at other times, but I focus better then, even with interruptions from Cordelia.

I would like to find some sort of psychotherapist for myself, but a lot of my issues are things I can't discuss via any sort of tele-visit. A lot has to do with Scott and Cordelia and my increasing disability, and I can't talk about it at home without one or both of them as an audience. I don't think that trying to discuss it while walking around the neighborhood or sitting on the front steps would work, either, especially not for a first appointment.

This evening's goal is completing my absentee ballot so that I can mail it tomorrow. I've done the easy bits, so part of the process will be me researching each candidate. Fortunately, the ballot proposals are all straightforward.

I've spent the last couple of days trying to get my new laptop functioning in a way that works for me. I have warned Scott that I'm probably going to complain a lot for the next several weeks. I'm still not 100% sure that this change is going to work, but we also don't have any really good options. My old laptop no longer supports all of the things that we need it to do.

I'm just frustrated because the new laptop doesn't work well in several aspects-- Trying to get all of the icons and text to a properly readable size breaks a couple of programs I use (which is a design problem that I can't believe no one noticed), and I can't connect a CD drive without Scott finding some adapters that he's having difficulty locating (everything he buys is not what he thought it would be).

The lack of adapters made transferring my files a time consuming process. We worked from my most recent Time Machine backup (after I verified that I had a good one). It took more than 20 hours which... Well, the first estimate was 209 hours, so I guess 20 hours was better. It still meant a long time without doing much of anything.

I like the fact that the new laptop is lighter. I feel less at risk of dropping it. The difference in thickness means I need to recalibrate the height of my table again which is frustrating. I don't like the cramped keyboard because it requires having my elbows quite tight against my waist. I also can't type well if I'm wearing my heavy braces because I can't reach certain keys from home row, mostly the right hand, little finger stuff. I can't tell how many of the other typo issues are due to stress over the laptop being new to me and how many are likely to linger.

The long gap of not having my laptop very definitely let me know that my hand and wrist issues relate to using the keyboard. Using eating utensils and holding my phone and/or books are also contributing factors. I'm not sure how to balance the things I must do with the things I want to do and the things that make the pain worse.

My grandmother has passed away. She was 95. We had been expecting the word at any moment the last two weeks. There will be no funeral or memorial service. My aunt and uncle who are close, geographically, are both in very poor health, and many other relatives would have to travel a long way. Grandma wouldn't have wanted us to take the risk; when Grandpa died, she told my father that attending the funeral would be the waste of what might otherwise be a good family visit.

My father may visit Michigan again, but he also may not. I think he would like to see his brother again, and his brother could die any time (he's been waiting for double lung transplant for 2-3 years now). My father's sister passed away last November. We're still in Michigan, of course, and I know he'd like to see me and Cordelia. I just don't know if he'd try to get up to Oscoda; it's a lot further from a reasonable airport.

I'm trying to work through some library books. I've read the ones that are physically light-weight, so what's left is the things that are longer and heavier. I think they're mostly children's books, so I'm hoping they'll be quick reads and not strain my hands. I'm giving up on more of this batch of library books than I usually would. I think I'm just less able to put up with minor irritants in the text.

At the moment, I'm trying to finish an Overdrive audiobook before my access ends. I've got 2 hours of the book left and 5 hours on the loan.

( I figured out some things about my hands and wrists )

We're still waiting for the replacement laptop that Scott ordered for me. It's a little fraught because we don't actually know whether or not it will be feasible for me to use it. Mostly, I'm concerned that it's not as wide as my current model and may not accommodate my hands and wrists properly, let alone my hands and wrists with the heavy braces.

I'm not sure what we do if it won't work because we can't find anything as wide or as robust as my current laptop. We've been coaxing this one along for quite a while because Apple wasn't making anything that would be better for me.

Scott and Cordelia have gone to a family gathering. I pleaded a headache which I do have, but I also really didn't want to try to squeeze myself into a narrow plastic chair in order to sit outside for 2-3 hours in the heat. Scott's sister and mother plan to cook a shared meal and were not really happy with me when I said I wasn't comfortable with that. Scott and I discussed it and agreed that he and Cordelia would take their own food. Then he forgot to make anything and ran out of time.

I wish I knew if he genuinely forgot or if he 'forgot.' It's probably safer for them to share the meal than it is for Scott to go to work every day or to do the shopping, but we have no way to avoid either of those things. This, we could. Without them bringing their own food, they're going to be pressured heavily to eat, and they're going to be hungry enough to be angry at me for insisting.

Scott had yesterday off, and he has a vacation day on Monday. Yesterday, we watched Hamilton on Disney+. We also watched a couple of Netflix DVDs (Killjoys and Knives Out).

Cordelia will have three friends over this evening for socially distanced 'smore making. Two of the three friends are likely to be responsible about it. The third is more of a wild card that way as she's an extrovert who's been getting increasingly desperate for interaction over the last four months. I'm not fully onboard with the shared food, but I trust Cordelia more than I trust Scott's mother or sister.

I spent yesterday afternoon and evening largely unable to use my hands due to burning and numbness on the backs of my hands and a bit up my arms. A cold pack helped a bit, but getting things to calm down took naproxen and prolonged soaking in the coldest water I could get (we don't have ice. We don't have freezer space for ice). My hands weren't abnormally warm to the touch, and they didn't get red or swell. Whatever I felt wasn't showing on the outside.

Typing seems to make the issue worse as does wearing my thumb splints. I strongly suspect that the thumb splints are the underlying problem because I've had issues (not this bad) before that always cleared up after a few days of not wearing them. Unfortunately, not wearing the splints means that my hands hurt in a different way and are more vulnerable to surprise!spikes of agony when I misjudge what I can do. The splints don't prevent all of the movements that cause problems, but they stop at least half of them.

My past experience with splints and braces has always involved them causing new problems even as they help with whatever the old issue was. It's always been a balancing act between protecting things that need to heal and not giving myself new injuries that will need protection and healing and cause other injuries in turn. My hands, however, aren't going to heal. This is osteoarthritis rather than tendinitis or anything else that can be helped by rest.

Naproxen isn't a long term tool for me, either. My body handles it better than it does most other NSAIDs, but I can't take it more than 2-3 times in a week. That means that I'm continually trying to guess whether I'll need it more in a day or two than I do now (which includes factoring in what things I know I have to be able to do). I'd like to take it today, but I took it yesterday, and I'm not sure what the next few days will look like.

Today, I need to:

Finish making the grocery list.
Strip the bed.
Wash the sheets.
Wash two other loads of laundry.
Feed myself.
Cook sweet potatoes.

I have already got the dishwasher running. I'm going to try to do things in pieces with hand/wrist soaking in between.

I'm feeling cranky as hell today and kind of want to scream at the entire medical profession. When a doctor suggests 'lifestyle changes' and I say, "I have barriers x, y, and z. How do I address them?" that is, in fact, still me needing medical help. I wouldn't bring things up as barriers if they weren't, in actual fact, problems I don't know how to solve. I know that my problems don't fit any neat boxes and that having the usual solutions be unworkable is frustrating. I know that. I really do.

But the usual solutions being unworkable means I need more help not less. I suppose that the real answer is that my doctors aren't going to tell me that my problems could be solved by having twice the income we do, and I'm pretty sure that that's the only effective fix.

( Cut for a certain amount of bleakness )

( When I say I have anxiety about going outside, this is what I mean (31 overlapping points) )

Most of the stuff under the cut is me venting and me tracking this stuff for my own use. Somehow, I don't think any of these issues can be helped by exposure therapy.

Scott and I have received our absentee ballots. I had been a little worried. The election isn't until the first week of August, but I want time to research. For most local offices, the primary is the deciding election, and I want to make an informed choice. I also want time to take long breaks between each bit of marking I have to do. Holding a pen well enough to control it hurts like hell, and it gets worse the longer I keep going. Fourteen sections will take a while.

I'm seriously considering asking either Scott or Cordelia to help me with the marking of my ballot, but that will involve extra paperwork in terms of documenting who they are, how they're related to me, and that they really and truly did exactly what I told them to do.

I had three face to face medical appointments in June. One was my mammogram, and the other two involved tests that also couldn't be done remotely (allergy and urology). The mammogram follow up with the cancer center clinician was done remotely. I understand why, but I'm unhappy about it because, five years ago, the lump didn't show on mammogram or ultrasound but could be found manually.

I need to schedule another allergy thing later in the year, but it's going to be difficult because I need two appointments, about 48 hours apart, and have no good way to get to the office. The nearest in-service bus stop is two miles away, and most of the distance doesn't have sidewalks (and is otherwise pedestrian unfriendly). I don't know when those buses will start running again.

The allergist said that three days between the appointments was too long as I might have serious adverse reaction to one or more of the patches. The testing that we were able to do at the appointment was the scratch test stuff which I didn't much feel that I needed but that my current doctors felt I did. My last test results were from the late 80s and are too difficult to retrieve even though I'm still in the same medical system. These results were exactly what I told them they'd be-- cats, trees, ragweed, mold, dust mites. In practice, I'm allergic to other mammals in addition to cats, but I don't react as quickly or as badly to dogs or mice or whatever.

The allergist mentioned the possibility that my occasional breathing difficulties in response to things like rosemary might be mild (mild in as much as I never cease being able to breathe; I just have difficulty) laryngospasms rather than an unexpected resurgence of my asthma or any sort of anaphylaxis. Since I have GERD, laryngospasms wouldn't be unexpected. What would be unexpected is them lasting for hours which these issues do. There's also apparently damn all that I can do about them beyond what I normally do for GERD.

The urology appointment ended with a referral for pelvic floor PT that is on hold until the after the current crisis. Part of that is transportation, and part of that is that the problem is something I've lived with for years. I would like to resolve it, but I won't be harmed by waiting. If I was going to go out for PT or OT, it would be for my hands, and I'm not going out for them, so.

( Cut for urology details )

The buses are running reduced routes and only one bus per route per hour. They cap the riders at 15 people because they can't seat more than that with social distancing. If someone's at a stop and there are already 15 riders, that person will have to wait an hour for another bus that might have space. I took the bus home after my urology appointment, and I got the next to last seat.

I used the ARide for my mammogram, but that meant being prepared for pickup more than an hour and a half before I had to be at my appointment. ARide service is limited, too, right now, but is a better option than the bus since at least one knows whether or not a particular trip is even possible. I try not to use the ARide, generally, as it's meant for people who are unable to use the fixed route buses due to disability. Most of the time I can take the regular bus and do.

I last used the ARide regularly when I was recovering after radiation. At that point, I wasn't sure of my ability to walk to and from bus stops. For a while after that, I used regular cabs off and on, mostly for going to appointments from which I'd then take the bus home. Going somewhere is much harder than the trip home. Stepping out the door is often hardest because, once I'm out the door, I don't let myself think or feel much of anything.

I talked to our dentist's office yesterday. I had an appointment on the 20th but have put it off since I don't know if I'll have a good way to get there and home again. They're conveniently close to a bus line, but that doesn't help right now. Also, given that I'm not currently having trouble with my teeth, being in that space seems like an extraordinarily high risk undertaking.

The receptionist told me that they're quite busy due to many people trying to get in for cleanings that were due while the office was closed. I understand that the staff there are being careful and are really in need of getting paid, but... Routine dental care seems unwise right now.

It's been a long month. I suspect that July will feel longer still.

( Cut for length )

We ordered food from Totoro today. They're on GrubHub now rather than just asking that people pickup purchases. Scott probably would have gone to pick up food there if I'd asked, but their location is awkward for that because parking nearby is difficult. Pickup would really need two people, one to drive and orbit the block, the other to run in and get the food.

Scott did go and pick up a bubble tea order. We placed it online and paid that way. Then they assigned us a time to enter the shop to get our tea for carry out. I didn't go along, nor did Cordelia. I don't think it's something we'll do often.

Scott has taken the day off for my birthday. Tomorrow, he goes back on first shift, hopefully permanently. I expect the transition to be awkward for him and for me because we'll need to go to bed so much earlier. It will also throw my eating schedule into disarray again. We've been trying to shift things over the long weekend, but I don't think we're even close.

I'm seriously considering trying to stay up in the living room after Scott goes to bed. I might be better off doing that, especially if I can make the transition out there earlier than 10 p.m. That's Scott's target time for going to bed, but he's often watching shows that don't end before that or otherwise distracted enough to lose track of the time. I usually stay in the bedroom because I'm not interested in his shows or in Cordelia's.

Moving out there feels like a huge chore, though, and I tend to have more neck/back trouble when I sit on the couch than when I sit on the bed. On the other hand, my laptop is much happier on the table that I use out there than it is in the bedroom; it's less prone to overheating.

We're starting to consider a laptop and printer and such for Cordelia to take to college in 2021. There's sufficient money in her savings account to cover the expense, and I'd much rather spend it before we do the FAFSA paperwork. The money's Social Security that she's received based on my disability and is meant to pay for her living expenses.

(We currently use a bit more than half of it every month to help with household expenses. The rest stays in the account and comes out when we have unexpected expenses like the sewer line replacement or the furnace or what-have-you. I'm not sure how we'll adjust to the sudden disappearance of that money when she turns 18, especially when it will come with needing to deal with college expenses.)

My hands have been quite bad the last week. I've been tempted to put a sock on my right hand to discourage me from trying to grasp things with my thumb. My left hand is doing better, but I suspect that that's largely because I'm right handed and keep trying to do things on that side instead of on the left.

After a week of using the gel for rosacea, the rash on my face, neck, and shoulders is unchanged. The rash on my arms is worse. We took some pictures of my face, neck, and chest to send to my primary care doctor, but I haven't sent them yet. The rash on my chest still looks as bad as it did in terms of redness but has flattened. I think the rosacea medication had something to do with that.

We had a guy in last week to do the AC tuneup. That was straightforward enough. Cordelia stayed in her room. Scott and I wore masks. The technician wore a mask. He was the same guy who usually comes, so we didn't have to show him where things were which made keeping a safer distance more feasible. The company did check in ahead of time to ask if anyone in the house was sick.

Scott's family is kind of pushing for some sort of face to face gathering. We've been putting them off because I really can't handle doing it outside and because Scott is a potential vector for infection. Between work and shopping, he's going out at least six times a week. I really don't think his parents understand that the risk is real.

I haven't done much writing recently. I keep starting up other tasks and telling myself that I'll get to the writing soon. I need to remember that 'soon' is not actually a firm measure of time. I have an exchange assignment due soon and it's somehow not writing itself.

I lost three days last week to migraine, two days with the actual migraine and one with hangover exhaustion. I still have no idea what caused the headache or what made it finally go away.

I'm not really sure what happened to the rest of the week. Well, no. I dived into rereading some very long fics and kept thinking that I'd do other things 'soon.'

My hands are giving me a lot of trouble. I can't type for very long at a sustained pace. Writing and chatting are possible because I have natural pauses in my rhythm-- for composition-- that let me rest a bit. Typing without those pauses only works for 5-10 minutes before it starts hurting; I push it further, though, and end up taking a very long time to recover.

Yesterday, we got food from Saica, a nearby Japanese restaurant. Sadly, it was all cold by the time it got to us. We wanted to order from Totoro, but they're only doing pick up right now. Their location makes that not really a great option. We found one delivery site that claimed to work with them, but it kept telling us that they weren't open even though the Totoro website was quite clear that they were open for pick up.

We had the weekly Zoom chat with Scott's extended family. We got a time extension which was awkward for me because my laptop really overheats during those. It doesn't like streaming audio or video; both at once is too much. It's less upset when I play audio from internal storage.

( Computer issues (but also family trapped in the house issues) )

I need to do a few things today and need to corner Cordelia and make her help me with the hand intensive parts. I don't think I can manage any of the following without her help.

( The list with annotations )

I'm trying to get back to reading here regularly and to opening Discord and Gchat. I just keep putting it off and then realize that the time commitment has gotten bigger because of the delay. Which leads to more avoidance.

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