the_rck

I'm still testing negative for Covid, but I'm also still definitely sick with something. Earlier in the week, it was headaches (probably sinus) and exhaustion (on the level of 'why are the muscles in my torso wobbling when I'm on my feet more than 30 seconds?'). Right now, both of my ears ache, and I'm unsure of my balance. I've taken sudafed and mucinex and am hoping things will drain soon. Today's the first day when sitting in the living room wasn't an option.

Scott is recovering. He'll be going back to work tomorrow. He'll also have to figure out which of his scheduled vacation days between now and 31 December he'll be giving up. We already knew he'd be working Black Friday because that was part of his deal for having last weekend free.

Cordelia decided not to come home. She had a five day weekend, so she'd been planning to visit. She made the decision based on not wanting to risk getting sick as she had two different offers of a ride. She says that campus feels empty. MSU scheduled tomorrow and Tuesday off for 'fall break,' and Cordelia's Friday class only meets some weeks.

I just got my Yuletide assignment, and I'm excited about it. I'm probably going to end up buying the canon so that I can take proper notes without worrying about due dates. I'll be returning all of the other things that I borrowed from the library before offering them; getting stuff that way helps me feel able to offer more things. That way, I know I'll have access if finding a copy to buy takes longer than I expected.

I finished filling out my ballot last night. We'd been planning to take them downtown today, but I wasn't up to it. Either Scott will drop them off tomorrow, or we'll put them in the out-going mail.

We did a grocery pickup at Meijer on Saturday. Unfortunately, one of the items they didn't have was the tissues I ordered. My suspicion is that they didn't have the exact size of package I ordered. They have a single toggle for substitutions, and I always set it to 'no substitutions' because of the risk of getting things no one in the house will be able to eat. Also, for things like tissues and soap, I have to have unscented, but there's no way to specify that.

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.

The local public library closed at 6 p.m. today and will stay closed through the end of the month. Scott stopped at a branch on his way to work today to drop off the stuff we're done with. It filled two bags, so I thought that getting it out of the house was a good idea. I regret the holds, but Scott was uninterested in trying to get downtown to retrieve them.

They'll still be there in April. All due dates are being extended until 30 April, too, because they don't want anyone returning items while they're closed. I think the drop boxes will actually be locked.

We just did the 2020 census online. They sent us an ID through the USPS. The process took about 10 minutes. I am more than a little dubious about the requirement for not just race but 'origin.' They seem to be wanting ancestral countries, going by the instructions. I'm not pleased with that because, after a certain point, it's 'who the hell knows?' I can track my grandparents and about half of my great-grandparents, but I have zero idea beyond that.

And this is with my family having relatively unbroken records. My stepfather won't be able to answer with any certainty because one of his grandmothers had about seven different stories about where she immigrated from. We don't know if any of them are true (and we suspect not since she seems to have been trying to obfuscate something there). I also can't imagine that many African American families have certainty about that information.

I could also see being extremely concerned about what the government might do with that information.

My digestive system seems to have settled down which is a huge relief.

Cordelia's currently flinching any time I cough. I don't cough frequently, but she's hyper-vigilant about it right now.

She's also not sure how third trimester is going to work at her school. Everyone starts a new schedule with new teachers on Monday. Without physically going to the classrooms, most of the kids have no easy way to reach their new teachers. Her science classes are done for the year, so she won't be missing lab work. Choir is going to be an issue, but that's an all year class with only one teacher, so there's already a structure for her to communicate with the kids outside the classroom.

I don't even remember all of Cordelia's classes for third trimester. There are five, and I think I know three of them. The fourth is probably some sort of English and the fifth some sort of history/social science, but I have no idea. The school hasn't posted anything about next trimester on PowerSchool yet.

Both the campus tours we scheduled during the AAPS spring break has been officially canceled. The University of Michigan is offering a video tour, but the walking around Ann Arbor part was never the bit we wanted.

Yesterday, the choir did a carwash as a fundraiser. Cordelia worked 11-1. At 1:05, I started hearing thunder and was glad that she wasn't out in that. I'm not sure how long it took after that for the carwash to be officially canceled, but they likely waited for a while in the hope that the storm would pass. I got an email from the choir director at 3:30 to say that things had ended early, but that email didn't say exactly when they called it.

We did the library run yesterday because Scott didn't want to have to wedge it in today. Of course, he and Cordelia didn't leave until 3:00, and the library opens at noon on Sundays. It would have been doable.

Cordelia just called to say that they're leaving the Wharton Center and plan to stop for food. They both really enjoyed seeing Hamilton, and, according to Cordelia, both cried.

I don't think that I'm going to stay up until they get home around midnight. I'm not sure if I could sleep through them getting home and getting ready for bed, but I think I need to try.

Scott and Cordelia dropped me off at north campus on their way out of town. I played some Ingress and, once again, misjudged how far I should walk. I guess that I take walks (and play Ingress) with the same 'just a little more' that keeps people up all night reading books/fics or binge-watching something. I'm getting closer to the badges I need for 12th level, but I'm still a long way away.

I've managed a shower and some cooking for the week ahead since I got home, so I'm not falling over, but moving is hard. I just need to sleep.

I wrote 500 words on my Turing exchange fic yesterday. I had been afraid that the story was just not going to happen, but the minimum word count is 800 words, so I'm confident I can manage that this week.

We have a light/ceiling fan fixture in the bedroom again. It took a lot of swearing and time, and Cordelia had to be called in for assistance a couple of times to help hold things up while Scott tightened screws. (My main contribution was retrieving light bulbs.)

We managed to take care of the library during the last half an hour they were open. I checked upstairs for the CD that I can't find at home. I couldn't find it, but I also couldn't find the other CDs by the same artist that the online catalogue claimed were there. I need to go there when I have more time in order to look more extensively. They might have been filed under the wrong genre, or there might be more than one 'Folk' section. Neither seems altogether likely.

The only copy of My Hero Academia v.11 owned by the library system is still 'in transit.' I was really hoping they'd have either found it or ordered a replacement by now. Well, actually, I was hoping, given the four holds, that they'd order another copy before searching for the missing one.

I went to Kroger after this while Scott and Cordelia continued on to the bank to deal with some ATM things. I found an excellent sale on a shelf stable thing that we eat a lot of and bought three times as much of it as I normally would have. I made a token gesture toward Easter by buying three chocolate rabbits.

( To-Do List for My Own Reference )

I found the right POV and angle of attack for one of my exchange assignments. I still haven't gotten the characters in the same space, but I'm figuring out how they got there which I think will lead to interaction soon. There'll be no problems making minimum word count on this one.

One of the CDs that I thought I put in the bag to go back to the library hasn't been checked in. It might be somewhere in the house. It might have gotten reshelved without being checked back in. If I don't find it between now and then, I'll have to check when we go downtown. If I can't find it, I'll have to pay for it, but I can renew it this time so as to have more time to look.

Every time a library thing goes missing, it's a CD. They're so small that they can hide anywhere at all.

I'm not convinced that wearing my computer glasses around the house is going to work well. It may end up being better than other alternatives, but it's not a good option. I ended up with aching eyes after using them for a few hours, and they're not at all good at food preparation distances. Those are a little too close in for the glasses which seems to be worse than too far away is.

I managed to nap this morning after Scott and Cordelia left. The key seems to be lying on my back and using my neck pillow and c-pap. That makes relaxing harder but seems to make me more likely to sleep. My tendency at night is to start out lying on my side and then go to my back when I'm more relaxed. The process then gets speeded up by my taking Halcion; I end up on my back without needing nearly as much time on my side.

There was no school Tuesday due to freezing rain and no school Wednesday due to more snow on top of that. Cordelia and I managed to get most of the ice off of the main sidewalk on Tuesday because it was all at that point when the temperature is hovering right at freezing. We had rain coming down sometimes, and sleet at others.

The ice on the sidewalk was sufficiently porous that I could use a normal, flat-edged shovel to break it up. Cordelia had the snow shovel and couldn't make much headway because the shovel's not up to dealing with ice. I'd have put out ice melt, but the rain would have carried it away. We only had a fraction of a bag, and I thought we'd better save it for a point when it might actually work.

I had to go out for an appointment yesterday, and it was nasty enough that I didn't want to go down the hill to catch the direct bus to campus. Instead, I went downtown and transferred. Everything was slow and late, to the point that the trip took me twice as long as it would under normal circumstances (even with the extra time for going downtown and transferring).

My doctor's pleased by my general test results. My total cholesterol is a trifle higher than it ought to be, but the ratio of HDL to LDL is good. We're going to test again in six months. My A1c and triglycerides are down just a bit. I got my DTaP booster while I was there. I'd expected to have to make another trip for that, but they were able to do it with under a ten minute wait.

I didn't want to deal with the hill on the way home, either, and the timing was off for the stops that I'd normally have aimed for. The wind was bad enough that I didn't want to stand for longer than 5 minutes. I ended up taking 20-25 minutes to walk to the downtown bus station. I still had a wait there, but the station was open, and if it hadn't been, the library is a block away and across the street.

(There was a big warning on the bus website that they were planning to do emergency preparedness drills this week and that that might result in the station being closed but wouldn't affect bus service.)

My water bottle came open in my bag while I was on my way to my appointment, so my phone charger is now in a baggie with uncooked rice. I also may need to pay for the library book that was in there. It didn't get very wet and only got wet in two spots, so I've got it under two big books and an 8 pound weight to see if it flattens. I'm not entirely optimistic, though, because I'm almost certain that the bits that did get wet then froze.

The wet charger meant that I didn't play Ingress after the appointment. I really didn't want to be out in that weather with my phone dead. Circumstances that would have made a working phone necessary were extremely unlikely, but I thought that Scott and Cordelia might worry if my phone suddenly vanished from Life360.

Scott took Cordelia and one of her friends to a showing of Totoro last night. The general consensus seems to be that they prefer the dub that they grew up with rather than the subtitled version with the original voice actors. Also, Cordelia's friend just finished reading Howl's Moving Castle and much prefers the movie (which I take as supporting the idea that the movie's not a bad movie but rather a bad adaptation.

Cordelia and her friend ended up pulling 5.5 trash bags of stuff out of her room. Half of that went into the trash bin. The other half is probably donatable. I'm going to go through the stuff this afternoon to make sure that nothing's going out that Scott or I value. Cordelia realized that Scott would want to keep his childhood teddy bear, but she might not realize that one of us wanted some other item.

I also ruled that we're keeping the camping pad. It's in the hall closet now. There's room for it there since I got rid of the ancient Disney Princesses air mattress and sleeping bag set. We'll want the pad if Cordelia ever has someone spend the night again.

The idea of added salt was kind of horrible yesterday, so I didn't do it. Today, I'm feeling out of proportion exhausted, and last night, I ached. The aching might just have been because I walked so long on Wednesday and then cleaned the fridge until I was just short of falling over on Thursday, but... It's so very hard to tell. I have a sample size of one and a lot of variables that I can't easily control for.

There's a reason it took me decades to realize that blueberries, raspberries, and strawberries all make me sick the day after I eat them.

I haven't written any fiction in a week. I'd like to manage some more before the end of the year, but I don't know if it's going to happen. I need to get going on the time travel exchange story. I have a rough shape for it, but I need to review the canon and don't wanna. Meh.

I'm going to try to catch up on book logging today and to answer a couple of sets of questions about writing. I also want to finish some library books so that I can return them tomorrow. Most of what's waiting for me to pick up, hold-wise, is CDs, so it's not that my shelf of to-be-read library books would overflow. It's just that some things can't be renewed and that others should be easy to get through fast. I just haven't made myself start.

The stuff that's due tomorrow that can't be renewed is:

Star Wars Rebels complete season 4 - We've only got 3-4 episodes left. I think we'll be fine on this one.

Venom - We've watched 10 minutes and may not get back to it.

Timeless season 1 - We haven't started this. There's a hold on this and a copy on the shelf, but the library system won't let me renew unless someone actually has time to go to the shelf and retrieve the copy that's there already.

How to Invent Everything by Ryan North - I've just barely started this, but it looks amusing, so I'd like to go on with it.

Teahouse of the Almighty by Patricia Smith - This is a book of poetry. I'm maybe a quarter of the way through it and may give up due to lack of time.

Also due tomorrow but can be renewed:

Elementary season 4 - I'm six episodes in.

Negima! omnibus v.1 - This is a reread, but it's been so many years that I really want to review so that I can try to remember who's who. This is one of those manga series with far too many characters whose backstories and abilities actually matter to what's going on. I remember liking that aspect of the series but finding it overwhelming, too.

Scott has been very sick all weekend so far. He wasn't able to do the grocery shopping yesterday, and it's up in the air as to whether or not he'll be up to driving me to the store today so that I can do it or even up to sitting next to Cordelia so that she can drive us all to the store to do it. Cordelia's expressing her worry about Scott being sick as concern that we'll run out of food.

If I'd thought to, I could have gone out there by bus yesterday, done the shopping, and then come home by cab. Today, the bus I would take to get there only goes part of the way there. On Sundays, the route ends at a stop that's further from the Kroger than our house is. There's another route I could take for getting there, but it involves crossing busy streets where there is construction around the bus stops on the side I'd be getting off. I suppose I could ride the bus to the end of the route and then back and get off on the Kroger side of the street.

Scott feels guilty about the idea of me doing the shopping tomorrow. More guilty about that than about Cordelia worrying that we'll run out of food. I'm not sure how to address that one.

We need to return some library items today, one of which can't be renewed. None of my holds expire until the end of the day on Tuesday, but if I take the bus downtown to return that one DVD, I might as well return everything else and pick up my holds. The Traverwood branch of the library is out near Kroger (but not served by a bus route on Sundays), so I could return things there if we all go to Kroger. It wouldn't be a major detour by car (it's a 15-20 minute walk for me from the library to Kroger, but I don't walk very fast).

Tomorrow, I need to be at Skyline at 5 p.m. for a performing arts fundraiser. It's a pancake supper with kids performing 'informally' during the meal. I'm hoping that Scott will be well enough to attend. We've already paid, so it's not so much a question of whether or not the choir gets our money as whether or not Cordelia gets to have her parents physically present to support her.

Tomorrow is also when Scott's mother will see someone at the cancer center about their recommendations for her course of treatment. I'm not sure what time that appointment will be, and we're all kind of on edge about what happens after.

Maybe, if they're in town anyway, I could have them drive me home from grocery shopping? Them dropping me off at the school is a non-starter because of timing and because of the location of the school. I really don't want to arrive there earlier than 4:45, and I'd rather arrive at 5:15 than 4:45.

I got some writing done last night after Scott got home. I had a 2600 word story with beta comments (which were mostly 'hey, this needs more explanation and supporting detail') that I wanted to work on, but I didn't want to do that with Cordelia apt to read over my shoulder.

I got to bed later than I meant to because I started browsing the library's online catalogue and saw a new purchase (warning for transphobia) that I'm going to complain about and ask to have removed. Doing that goes against my normal philosophy of library collections, but the book is advocating parental, social, and legal response to trans people and other genderqueer people that I think might kill people.

Well, not even might. Those behaviors and policies actually already do kill people and subject them to harm in other ways.

The subject tags on the record indicate that it's going to be shelved as psychological science. There's nothing on the record to indicate that this is opinion/propaganda and no reviews linked to provide evaluations of the 'science' involved.

I'm seeing a vast number of reviews of the book from very conservative groups, many of which I'd consider hate groups, and one Washington Post article (which is not a review. As far as I can tell, the author of the article has seen lots of hype but hasn't seen the text). There's also an article at thinkprogress.org that lays out the things I found upsetting when I saw the blurb. Seriously, it ought not be this hard to find negative reviews of a book on a controversial topic.

It's almost as if the publisher only sent review copies to organizations that agree with the propaganda and none to places that just review books. Go figure.

Possibly someone asked for this book specifically (it's an Amazon bestseller on the LGBT list). Possibly, because of the subject tags, the vendor the library buys through considered it an autobuy (libraries set parameters for that when they want to be sure they're getting books on certain topics without library staff having to dig to find them).