the_rck

Cordelia's appointment was fairly straightforward, but we now have a regimen of multiple creams and washes. The whole thing is complicated enough that we have a detailed sheet telling us which things to use when. It's benzoyl peroxide and two different antibiotic creams (one for her her face and one for her back and chest) in the morning. Then adapoline (sp?) and the antibiotic creams at night after washing everything with Cetaphil.

The dermatologist also noticed Cordelia's dandruff and recommended two shampoos to be alternated, T-sal and either Selsun Blue or Head and Shoulders. She gave us samples of T-sal and Head and Shoulders (though she wanted to give us Selsun Blue instead). The dandruff extends to some minor scaling on Cordelia's face, and that's why we have a different antibiotic cream for her face than for elsewhere. Scott picked up the three prescriptions, some Cetaphil, and an oil-free moisturizer on his way home from work, but we still have to order more of the 2.5% benzoyl peroxide and pick up some of the shampoos Cordelia needs. The dermatologist also told Cordelia to shower more often, every other day instead of the once or twice a week she has been doing. Maybe she'll even listen.

I talked to my psychiatrist yesterday afternoon. She's not enthusiastic about me trying Cymbalta because of just how bad my reaction to Effexor was. She didn't want to prescribe something haphazardly, over the phone, so we're going to have an appointment on Tuesday morning to go over the options.

The electric car is giving us difficulties-- It's not consistent about charging. One night, it will get to full charge over night. One night, it'll barely charge at all. Scott just emailed me to say that he was late getting to work because the car simply didn't charge at all last night. He will be late getting home, too, because he doesn't have enough charge for that and will have to stop to do that. I'm not sure where-- Probably the AAA in Canton that he mentioned a few days ago.

My SIL finally got back to me, around 8 p.m. last night to tell me that she still hasn't received the reports the Cancer Center people promised to send her on Monday. Why she couldn't tell me that earlier in the week, I have no idea. At this point, I really can't do anything about it until I go in there on Monday. Well, I have access to one of the reports she wants. They finally got around to sharing the report for my mammogram with me. (Weirdly, there are two reports with slightly different titles and exactly the same text. That was the case the last time I had a mammogram there, too, so it's apparently normal. It's just kind of confusing. I mean, exactly the same text.)

My impression is that the delay in my SIL getting back to me is that I was using her Gmail address when she responds better to messages sent to her uw.edu address. I didn't have that, and it doesn't appear on any of the webpages I could find that profile her. I looked last night. Scott's sister had the address and has shared it with me, and I've put it into my address book now.

My sister wants to put the information about PBB up on Facebook, and she thinks people will pay it more attention if she gives my story as well as hers. I asked her to give me a couple of hours to tell our aunt who actually uses Facebook first. I haven't done that yet because it will be hard and because it wasn't urgent that she know. I just don't want her to find out from my sister on Facebook. If my sister wanted to call her instead of me doing it, that would be fine. She has called the aunts on the other side of the family for me (she thought that, since they're in the same state I am, they might actually be able to help. It's possible, and asking wouldn't have occurred to me).

Around about dinner time last night, I started aching, mostly in my arms and legs and shoulders. I had forgotten just how terrible that feels. It hasn't really happened to me, except when I've had a fever, since I stopped working. When I was still working, I felt that way all the time. I ended up taking an Ativan around 8 p.m., and that actually helped. By bedtime, I wasn't achy in anything like the same way.

The runny nose has mostly passed. There's still a little bit lingering, but I no longer feel like I need a tissue in hand every moment. (I kept reassuring people at the dermatologist's yesterday that it was a medication side effect, that I wasn't contagious. I used a lot of hand sanitizer anyway.) It seems kind of unfair to have a side effect that started twelve hours after the medication and lasted another thirty or forty hours. I very much doubt that the toradol was still working by that point. I'm debating whether I should let my primary care doctor know about the side effect. It might be a good thing to document, but it's really fairly trivial as such things go, certainly not enough to prevent me taking the med again if I really, really need it.

I emailed the other Metanews person last night and told her that I don't think I can do any more link finding. She's disappointed. I think she was really hoping that we'd find a way to manage somehow. She and I are on opposite schedules, so talking about what to do next will be a slow process. I have offered to write up some sort of announcement of hiatus and call for volunteers to take over my work. I'm not optimistic about the volunteers, but who knows?

I'm getting cranky with a couple of online vendors who won't stop harassing me to give them feedback on recent purchases. I sort of understand the one I bought from via Amazon-- Feedback there matters a great deal in terms of future sales. Blair, on the other hand... I already gave feedback on the purchase once. Just because they shipped another pair of pants a week later doesn't mean they need feedback again. Both of these vendors email me every four or five days, and I really, really don't want to deal with them, but I also feel like I ought to. It will, after all, take less than five minutes for each of them. It just feels like one more damned thing piled on, though.

I'm not as anxious as I expected I'd be, given everything. I'm not sure why I had the anxious headache and nausea last week over the mammogram but am not having any such symptoms today when I'm facing a biopsy. I'm going to take an Ativan anyway, but I don't feel like I need to do it immediately.

I did have anxiety dreams this morning after Scott got up. I was late for my appointment. My SIL hadn't shown up yet. My phone was out of charge. I'd forgotten my meds and my lunch. I couldn't find my apartment (for some reason, in my dreams, I never, ever live in my actual house). I had guests in my house who I needed to get rid of in order to be able to leave, and they wouldn't go away.

Next on my agenda is washing and getting dressed. I've been putting it off, but it's getting kind of late, and I really should get on that. I have my clothes laid out already, at least.

I added at site to the Metanews Feedly account yesterday that has a spectacular monthly newsletter. Unfortunately, I couldn't persuade Feedly to give me just the newsletter even though that's the url I put in. The site in question is a fanfic site, and I'm going to get a notice for every single fic that gets posted. it's not a horrifically active fandom, but I'm not sure the newsletter is worth it.

Scott was originally scheduled to work 3-3 today, but he swapped with someone so that he could be awake with me last night. Instead, he'll be working 7-7 on Friday. I was a little annoyed when he told me that because I suspect I'll feel more in need of his presence on Friday than I did last night. The change turned out to be fortuitous, however, as we were to borrow a car from evalerie. She and her family were in Chicago with the car in question and got back fairly late. It was after 10 by the time she came and got Scott so that he could get the car. (Enterprise closes at 6, so he'd dropped the rental off on his way home from work and had them drive him home.) If Scott had had to get up at 2, staying up so late would have been a big problem.

Cordelia says she's not worried, but she has been giving me a lot of hugs this past week, so I don't know. She probably won't be willing to hug me later today given that I won't be putting on deodorant. I don't think I'm particularly stinky under that circumstance, particularly not less than two hours after I've washed, but she notices and objects.

The school district has decided to do all of the start of the school year paperwork online this year. I did Cordelia's last night. The website interface was very, very frustrating. If I toggled to another window to check something, the webpage would freeze and refuse to allow me to edit it further until I closed it and logged in again. That's spectacularly bad design. They wanted three emergency contacts this year. I think, in years past, it's been two. They also had space for four parent/guardians. I assume that's so that they can include step-parents on both sides if there are any. I had to make Cordelia come and sit by me for part of the process because she had to read and agree to several things. She flinched at the concussion information sheet even though we've been filling those out for Rec & Ed sports for two or three years now. She's had to read and sign the thing each and every time. I guess, this time, the information sank in and seemed scary.

Let's see... I need to do some tidying so that the cleaning lady can work when she comes while I'm out later on. I need to write her check (and I need to make sure it's a good check. Apparently, there's a printing error on some of our checks that makes the computerized scanners balk. The account number is perfectly clear to a human eye, but the computer will refuse to process the check. From looking through the book I'm currently using, it looks like a 50-50 split between good and bad. The error is really exceedingly trivial, just a little bit missing off the bottom of a couple of zeroes, not even the whole bottom gone, just part of it). I need to pick out a book or three to take with me to the appointment. I need to put all of my stuff back in my purse. It's gotten scattered recently.

I don't really want to do any of this.

Cordelia and her friend ended up making lunch yesterday-- macaroni and cheese. Cordelia was very reluctant at first, but, about half an hour after she absolutely refused to consider cooking, she and her friend had the box of pasta out and were asking me what to do. No one put away the leftovers, so they're kind of cemented to the bottom of the pot. I'll have to see what I can do to pry them loose later today.

Scott is working 3-3 today. His alarm didn't go off at 2. Fortunately, he woke about 2:30, so he wasn't too horribly late getting to work. He called to let them know he would be late (it's about a half hour drive, so the time he needed to get dressed meant being late). His alarm did go off at 5:10, and I had a heck of a time figuring out how to turn it off. I had to turn on the light and still couldn't read the labels on the buttons on his alarm. I'm not sure how much of that was the tiny print and how much of it was the light still being fairly poor. It stopped making noise, and I got the light on it to dim, so I was able to go back to sleep eventually.

I actually dreamed that I was going to have to start high school and had missed the application deadline for the special program I wanted. I'd think I was too old for that sort of dream, but I do still have occasional dreams about high school normally. In this case, though, I think it may be anticipatory anxiety about figuring out where Cordelia will go to high school. We don't have to decide until she's in eighth grade, and she only starts seventh this fall, so I'm worrying early.

I would like to be able to send her to Community which is a smaller high school, still in the public school system, with some specialized programs. Unfortunately, Community always has at least three times as many applicants as it has spaces, so getting in is difficult. It's a lottery, so everyone has pretty much the same chance. I think, given transportation constraints, that Community and the normal high school we're zoned for are the only real options. I consider Community viable because one of the buses that runs near us has a stop about a block away from the school. I think the trip would take about ten minutes. Cordelia would have to ride a school bus in order to get to the normal high school, so the bus trip to Community doesn't look so bad at all.

Oh, well. There's time to think about it.

Scott grilled pork last night. I think it came out tasting kind of nasty. He said he put sesame oil on it before he grilled it to see if that would keep it from sticking (it didn't). I normally like sesame oil but not this time. Of course, I'm not sure that what I was tasting was sesame oil-- It tasted kind of like gas smells.

Cordelia's friends' mother sent home made spring rolls and home made baklava yesterday. The spring rolls were oddly buttery. I think she must have cooked the cabbage inside in butter. The baklava was a little scorched and very lemony but still good.

I'm doing the Metanews posting this week as the other moderator has been having both personal issues and connection difficulties. We're very late this week because the other moderator wasn't able to do any links until today. We will likely be at least a bit late next week due to me having three doctor's appointments in the two days when I usually link find.

My ankle's mostly doing better today, but I gave myself an issue earlier by bending my ankle wrong when I was getting up from sitting down. Basically, what that happened was that my heel was on the floor while the ball of my foot and my toes were on something about an inch and a half taller. That hurt considerably.

I'm thinking that I'll try watching that Chinese movie I've had from Netflix for a few weeks now. I want to watch it and return it ASAP, and this afternoon ought to be a good time. I'll just close my laptop for the duration so that I can focus on the TV and actually follow what's going on and which character is which. I will probably go back to the start and watch the fifteen or twenty minutes I already watched again. I wasn't paying enough attention the first time to catch most of what happened.

I did end up signing up for iddyiddybangbang with a Weiss Kreuz PWP. Now I just have to put the dates for the challenge in my calendar and review the bits of the story that I've already written. I said I wouldn't mind being matched with an artist or person making a fanmix, but I don't know that I will be. Weiss Kreuz isn't nearly as widely known now as it used to be, and the majority of people signing up for the challenge seemed to be doing so in big western fandoms like the MCU.

I cut two blogs off the Metanews reading list yesterday. One tended to produce one usable meta post for roughly every ten actual posts, but I had to read every single post all the way through before deciding to link, and it posted about fifty things a week, so that ate up a lot of time. The other was a much higher volume site with three or four hundred posts a week, only five to ten of which would be meta. I thought about keeping it because it was very fast to weed. Most articles were clearly, based on title alone, not meta, so I only had to look at ten to fifteen articles in any depth.

That leaves four sites that I'm looking at that might be more trouble than they're worth. The two of those that I would most like to cut, I don't want to let go because they're the only two that we follow that are dedicated to comics. They're both very high volume sites, however, that yield little meta.

I think I need to think twice about signing up for a week of check in posts for writethisfanfic again. I hate to give up on it since there only seem to be three of us willing to do it, but this week, I didn't once post before 5 p.m. Usually, I post before noon. Also, I'm not really using the community because I haven't actually done any writing in a couple of months. I want to, but I can't focus at all. I like the idea of the community, but I'm not sure I'm getting anything out of it. Of course, check in posts take all of about ten minutes a day, every day for a week. That's not a huge time commitment. The hardest part is coming up with discussion topics that aren't either inane or things that have been put forward dozens of times before. I'm feeling more than a little burnt out on that part.

We only got through one CD of Son of Neptune tonight because Cordelia didn't want to do more and didn't want me to go on without her. We only have one CD left, though, so I may insist that we listen to it tomorrow before we go to the library.

Cordelia's best friend and her younger brother will be coming over every day next week. Their father usually drops them off about 7:45, but their mother says she'll be bringing them about 8:00 instead. Cordelia has the impression that their mother may actually have started driving and that that's why she's bringing them. If they were coming by bus, I'd expect them to come later because it takes a while to get here and because the buses are extremely crowded at that time of day. She has also offered to bring food which would be difficult on a standing room only bus.

Scott picked up some Stain Devils to try to deal with the bloodstains on Cordelia's shorts, but the stuff only comes in really tiny bottles, and the stains are huge and in many different places. Trying to immerse each one completely for two or more hours would take more time than we've got and a lot more of the product than we've got. Also, Scott didn't read the label-- We would need heavy rubber gloves. Scott ended up going back out for some Oxiclean, and that has cleared up both pairs of shorts completely.

Scott's worried that taking my Gmail address off my phone will make it not work as well. I pointed out that it's very easy to put the address back if, for some reason, I need to. I'm still learning how to do things with my phone. Today, I discovered that I can't set an alarm to the minute I want. The program will only allow five minute increments. I wanted 10:02 but could only have 10:00 or 10:05. It's more of an inconvenience than anything, but it does make it harder to set my alarm for exactly half an hour after I take my morning meds.

I've already had my mug of coffee, but I want more. I shouldn't because a tin only lasts me six servings (my mug holds two cups) and because I don't need the extra sugar. Also, it's warm and humid in here. Why on earth would I think more hot liquid would be a good idea?

I'm going to try to finish my interlibrary loan book before library time this afternoon. I've only got about forty pages left, and it reads quickly. I'm finding some of the author's recurring phrases annoying, and, although this is a work of historical non-fiction, he keeps talking about characters suffering the vengeance of the Sun Goddess.

I think I'm going to give up on the other book I'm currently reading. I'm only vaguely interested in it, and I have trouble tracking which bits of story go with which characters, so I'm not following events very well.

I still haven't found that missing library CD. I haven't looked very hard, though. I keep hoping it will just turn up somewhere without me tearing the house apart. I probably should at least get down on the floor and look under the couch. The gaps between sections are large enough that our DVD remote can fall through, so a CD case definitely could. I was mistaken-- Amazon still lists this CD as in print and for sale for $19.99. I really thought it was out of print. A lot of others in the series are.

Our cleaning lady usually comes on Thursdays, but she called yesterday to ask if she could come today instead. I saw no reason not to say yes, so she'll be here in about half an hour, and I really should eat lunch before then, in spite of having gotten up fairly late.

Scott got up at 7:00 because he needed to take the car in for work. They shuttled him home, so he's not stuck there, but we have no idea when we'll get our car back.

I caught Cordelia just in time last night-- She didn't realize (and I didn't realize that I hadn't told her) that bloodstained clothing needs to be soaked in cold water to get the stains out before washing. She'd just been throwing stained stuff into her hamper with the intention of washing it soon. So we've got six or seven pieces of clothing in the sink right now. The stains are old enough that they may not come out very well, but I'm hoping. I really don't want her to lose all three of her pairs of shorts.

I haven't had any updates on my sister, but I didn't really expect to. It's entirely likely that she's home by now. I may try calling my mother tomorrow. I need to get my brother-in-law's cell phone number. I thought I had it, but I don't. I suppose it makes sense that I wouldn't. We've only met twice, before Cordelia was born, and we've never actually talked. Still, it would be good to have his number.

Even if my mother ends up in Michigan for the first week in August, Cordelia and I will almost certainly be staying in Ann Arbor. The lump in my breast has shifted around to become more obvious, much closer to the surface, and my doctor wants me to get a mammogram and see a specialist. The available time for that is the afternoon of Wednesday the 5th. I already had an appointment on the morning of the 4th, but I could reschedule that pretty easily and with only a few days notice.

I spent a couple of hours this morning weeding the Metanews LJ reading list. More than half of the communities we followed hadn't posted in months or even years (some of them even had posts saying that they were ceasing activity). I cut all of those. I cut all of those that post frequently but don't actually link meta (we were following a couple of communities that exclusively link fic). For those, I went back a screen's worth of posts and cut them if there wasn't a meta post or link in that space.

Of course, we don't actually currently have anyone checking the LJ reading list (which is a pity because there's a fair amount to be found there). The other moderator said she would but hasn't had time (or so I judge by the fact that none of the links that I'd expect from LJ have been in recent posts). I probably should post looking specifically for someone to deal with LJ. I am starting to think that there's no hope at all of finding someone who will help with the blog list, so I'm probably going to have to take an ax to it and cut a lot of sites that do good meta. I don't think I'm capable of keeping something on the reading list and not going through the posts, looking for meta.

I may drop The Daily Dot. It has a high volume of posts for a handful of more or less meta stuff. Also, a lot of readers dislike the site and don't ever want to go there. Then again, The Daily Dot is really, really easy to weed-- I can delete 90% of the posts without even looking at them, just going by the titles.

I guess I'm wishing I had an easy way to consult with readers to see if there's anything I'm linking that isn't of interest to anybody. For example, do people actually want links to every new installment of Tor's rereads? All of those come up every single week, and I'd expect regular Metanews readers who're interested to have started following the rereads independent of our links. Then again, it's always possible we'll get a new reader who hasn't discovered those rereads yet. I don't know. The Tor rereads take a good bit of time because there are so many of them.

Scott's parents are coming soon to do some yardwork. The weather is excellent for it. I just hope they don't overdo or get overwhelmed. I think Scott's father wants to work on the trees growing between the garage and the fence and to mow the lawn. I think Scott's mother wants to work on my raised beds (she said they were hoping to bring some coleus, and there really isn't anywhere else to put that).

Scott might have to work late tonight, and we're kind of hoping that he will because the alternative is going in early tomorrow which might turn into having to stay for twelve hours. We're supposed to be at the vacation house some time between 4:00 and 5:00 tomorrow, if we can, and if Scott's working until 3:00, we won't get there until around bedtime. It's about a two hour drive, and if Scott works, I don't see any way we could leave any earlier than 6:00. We might very well leave later.

This will be troublesome because Scott and I are supposed to have first pick of the rooms in order to get something that will accommodate my bad ankle. I don't see the rest of the family waiting that late to select rooms (if nothing else, the four year old may need to go to bed before we get there). It would also mean that Scott and I wouldn't get a chance to put in any requests on the list for the grocery shopping expedition. At least, it's only supposed to be a ten minute drive to the store. Last time we did this, it was half an hour, so that, if we forgot anything, we pretty much had to do without.

I need to call my aunt and uncle and probably email my cousin again to make sure that everybody has and will use my cell number. I don't want them trying to reach me and unable to because they keep calling our landline. My father has my cell number but it's 50-50 as to which number he'll use when he tries to call. I also need to talk to them to find out exactly where Grandma is going to be. My cousin told me that his best friend's wife is the daytime manager for the rehab place where Grandma will be and that her mother is on the staff at night, but he didn't tell me the name of the place or what town it's in or anything concretely useful.

I want to run the dishwasher before we go, whether it's full or not. I just don't see anything good coming of leaving the dirty dishes in there while we're gone. Most of our laundry is done (some still needs to go in the dryer). We had pizza for dinner last night, and there's enough left to feed us tonight. That way, we won't be leaving leftover chicken or turkey burgers or whathaveyou.

I wrote up a call for volunteers for metanews and posted it yesterday. As far as I know, we haven't gotten any responses yet, but anything sent to the Gmail account goes to the other moderator, so maybe someone has talked to her. I also wrote up but didn't post an explanation of what we do and don't link to. I think we need a more up-to-date mission statement, and we definitely need to edit the information on the community profiles. That lists people as working on the newsletter who've been gone for many months.

I've gotten through about twenty posts on the blog list so far today. I'm in the part that takes the longest because I've already gotten rid of the things that blatantly aren't meta. I need to skim each remaining post to see if it's actually meta (and sometimes it takes more than skimming). I did a few hundred posts yesterday after I got word about my grandmother coming through okay, so the remaining eighty or so posts are totally doable this afternoon.

Scott had to be ready to go in early this morning. They didn't end up needing him to, but it meant broken sleep for both of us. We're hoping that they won't keep him late tonight because he's got an appointment to have the car looked at-- Something fell off the car last week. We're not sure what it is (Scott was able to retrieve the piece in question), but we think (hope) it's just something protective that can be easily put back. The car also needs an oil change.

I really, really wish I could open and close our windows. Unfortunately, I'm just not strong enough. It's more problems with closing them than problems with opening them, but it's the closing of them that I would most need to do. It's been very cool outside at night for a while and much, much warmer inside the house. It would be really pleasant to get that cool air inside by opening the windows, but, if it gets hot the next day, I can't close the stupid things, and we'll end up miserable because I'll have to turn off the air conditioner no matter how hot it gets. The problems with closing them vary, too. For some, it's that I can't easily reach them (and this part is harder with the bad ankle). For some, it's that they're stubborn and beyond my strength.

I'm trying to fiddle around with my library holds so that nothing comes in while we're gone that will need to be picked up before we get back. I suspect, though, that Cordelia and I will each lose at least one hold. I have four things for which I'm the next in line, and Cordelia has two. (Scott's tenth on the list for the one hold he has.) We should have plenty of time to visit the library right before we leave.

Each family is going to be responsible for cooking a couple of meals for the extended family. Scott and I haven't signed up for anything yet. Him because he hasn't thought about it and me because I'm not sure what I can reasonably commit to-- Scott's likely the one who will have to do the bulk of the cooking, after all, so he ought to decide what he's willing to make. There are a bunch of dietary restrictions to consider, too. Scott's mother and sister are GF. Scott's father has a dairy allergy and is diabetic. One of our nieces won't eat mammalian meat for ethical reasons. Scott's sister is limited in terms of a bunch of other foods that I've completely lost track of. Then there's me and Scott with our restrictions. And this doesn't even consider likes and dislikes.

Of course, Scott has been looking at the weather forecasts for where we'll be, and the current prediction is for days of rain which will make the swimming pool pretty useless. I'm not sure if Cedar Point is far enough away that the weather would be different there. Scott's parents want to make a trip to a national park that's a couple of hours away, but Scott says that it's east of where we'll be, so it may well share the weather we'll have.

I want to figure out a way to get north and see Grandma. I'm just not sure how to make it work. Hopefully, that will become a little clearer when I know where she's going to be. If she's in Bay City, it will be easier to visit than if she's somewhere further north. Google's not helping much because my grasp of which towns are where in that part of Michigan is very weak. I'm finding a lot of places that specialize in pediatric medicine near (I think) where she lives, but so far nothing that would be a likely place for her to be. I should just get my act together and call my cousin and ask him.

Okay, lunch, then back to link finding.

It's actually cooler inside our house than it is outside right now. I'm surprised because that isn't usually the case when we don't have the air conditioner running. I've actually turned off the overhead fans for now, and I put on a long sleeved dress. I may change clothes if I'm going to go out later, but I'm comfortable like this now.

Scott got home about 4:00 yesterday and promptly fell asleep. What with that and needing to shower, he wasn't ready to contemplate dinner until about 7:30. At that point, he suggested ordering pizza or picking up Chinese food. I said I wasn't at all sure that would work given the timing, so he waited for me to make up my mind. Never mind that my drop dead, must eat dinner by this time of 8:00 hasn't changed in over a decade. Waiting didn't make it at all more likely that I would be able to eat delivery or carry out food given that the issue wasn't whether I wanted to or not but whether or not I could still eat once the food was available. It's a reflux thing. If I'm going to bed around 11:00 or midnight, I can't eat most things after 8:00. Otherwise, I'll be up past 3:00 a.m.

With ten minutes to go before my deadline, we scavenged enough leftovers to feed all three of us, but it was a near thing, and I was still hungry after dinner.

Scott wanted to take us to Orange Leaf after dinner, but I had to veto that. Most ice cream (but not all) is safe for me even relatively late, but every time we've gone to Orange Leaf after 7:00, I've had reflux trouble on going to bed. I'm not sure why that's different, but it is. I wouldn't have thought that frozen yogurt would be worse than ice cream.

I've dealt with two of my three pending business envelopes. The first of the two Social Security ones was an update for which they wanted me to list every single medical appointment/procedure I've had done since June 2013. Fortunately, my iCal is helpful in that way. It doesn't cover anything that was a same day appointment, and it includes a couple of appointments that I rescheduled but, for some reason, didn't delete, but it was close enough. I hope they don't do a full review, but if they do, I'll cope somehow.

The second Social Security envelope, I still haven't opened. I've had it about a week, and I know exactly what it is. That has to do with them wanting me to tell them what I've done with Cordelia's Social Security money, how much we've spent and how much we've saved. I'm not sure why they bother given that they've never asked for a detailed accounting, just how much money is in her account right now. I'd have thought that us taking thousands of dollars out of her account would be cause for further query, but I haven't heard a peep. I mean, I think our expenditures were justified in terms of being for things that are valid family expenses-- the sewer line, the roof, and now the air conditioner. It's not like we're going to Vegas or anything, but Social Security doesn't know that.

Anyway, I'll deal with that envelope later today or some time tomorrow so that it can go in the mail on Monday. Today's mail has already gone out, so there's no hurry.

The third envelope I needed to open was, as I suspected, a medical bill. It's only for $40, but I think it might be the result of the U's medical system once again losing track of my insurance information. I keep having to remind them again that the first thing they should do with each bill is send it to Aetna. Then, it should go to Medicare. Finally, it should go to my insurance through my former employer. I haven't decided if it's worth the bureaucratic hassle to try to find out if this particular bill was submitted properly. This is the first time in about 15 years that I've actually received a bill for anything medical, so I am inclined to think that it wasn't billed properly, but it's only $40.

I started tweaking my Remix last night. It's a little frustrating because there's more information that I need to get in there, but I want, at all costs, to avoid an info dump. I just want enough there to explain why the characters aren't acting exactly the way that, on the face of things, they might be expected to. The story's only 1600 words right now. Adding a solid paragraph of explanation would be more than a small speed bump, and some of it is stuff that the point of view character wouldn't articulate in any way. He's definitely the point of view character, though. The other character who could be was the point of view character in the original and doesn't know any of the stuff that I'm trying to get across to my readers. Maybe I need my point of view character to have a flashback to when he learned all of this stuff... But the story's so short that I don't know that I can make that work.

In my efforts to procrastinate on my Remix, I've started link finding for metanews for next week. In a way, it's nice to start this far out because it means I'll have more time for other things on Monday and Tuesday, but link finding seems to be the sort of thing that expands to fill all available time.

One of Cordelia's sort of friends had a bike accident and broke both her wrists. It's probably a good thing for her that the school year ends a week from Friday. (I call her a 'sort of friend' because Cordelia likes her, but this girl steals stuff from all the other kids in the class and generally harasses people. She gives most of the stuff back, eventually, but...)

Cordelia's best friend fell at school yesterday, tripping over a low fence that the construction folks put up during the winter and never took down. My impression is that the fence in question is no more than knee high, if that, and Cordelia says that it's in a place that doesn't make sense. The friend was badly enough bruised that she wasn't able to play in their in school concert for the fourth graders (She plays violin, and she had trouble lifting and bending her arm). It remains to be seen whether or not she'll be able to play at tonight's concert.

Lunch time is a little difficult for the kids in Cordelia's grade-- They send the kids outside for about twenty minutes, but the sixth graders are forbidden to use any of the playground equipment for fear they'll hurt the little kids or prevent the little kids from using the equipment. The school also keeps banning the activities the sixth graders come up with to keep themselves occupied. I kind of understand that because the kids argue a lot over the rules and some kids cheat, but those forty-six kids need to do something, after all.

Scott's parents are planning to come to the concert tonight. It's quite a trek for the fifteen minutes Cordelia will actually be playing, but they don't seem to mind. We don't know yet if Scott will be able to attend. He worked late last night, and he's hoping that that will mean he doesn't have to work late tonight. I am glad that they decided to separate the band concert from the orchestra concert. It means fewer people crammed into the multi-purpose room and a concert only half as long.

I wish there was a good way to get feedback on metanews. I'd like to know what sort of links are actually useful to our readers and what sort nobody wants to read. I'd like to pare down the blog list a bit and maybe try to find some other blogs that have content more focused in areas people are interested in (and with a better ratio of meta to not meta). I mean, are people actually interested in fifteen different links about the same episode of Game of Thrones? I don't have the time (or the knowledge) to evaluate which articles are the best, however, so I'm not sure how to cut that down.

I have gotten the definite impression that people want the names of the blogs included in the text we attach to the links. I'm just at a loss as to how to do that without adding a lot of time to something that already takes me too long. Writing up a link takes between two and five minutes, depending on how often I have to go back and forth between windows and on how well my browser and Gdocs are interacting at the moment. My best guess is that adding the blog name would increase that time by at least thirty seconds a link, and that adds up.

ETA: For Metanews, I'd also really like to know if it's necessary for me to keep tagging things with 'warning:spoilers.' I link a lot of stuff that says, in the title, that it's talking about a specific episode of a show, and it seems to me that sensible people would assume spoilers in something like that. Meta about a movie that came out last week also probably has spoilers. (Heck, meta about anything almost certainly has spoilers. I just don't bother to warn for things that are older.)

I've been having a little trouble with nosebleeds, nothing major but still noticeable. It doesn't make sense given that it's more humid in the house now than it was all winter. I do wonder if it relates at all to the way the Wellbutrin has been giving me dry mouth, but that's been going on for months now, and the nosebleeds are new. I did email my psychiatrist to ask, but she'll be out of the office until next Tuesday or Wednesday.

Yesterday, I mostly worked on link finding. I think I've only got an hour or two of work left to do on that today. I'm about 90% sure that the new link finder will do LJ this week. I've been exchanging emails with them, and they should have the access they need to do it properly. I believe it's my week to post, so I'll check over the LJ links to make sure they're tagged properly as that's one of the more challenging parts of writing up links. Some of the tagging isn't particularly intuitive.

Cordelia has been complaining a lot about the tests that they're taking at school right now. These are big standardized tests, and she hates them. She's good at taking tests, too, so I can only imagine how other kids feel. It just seems like a waste of time.

Scott grilled a pork loin last night. It took about three times as long as he expected, so it wasn't done until about 8:15. I need to eat by 8:00, so Cordelia and I scrounged dinner, reheating vegetables and making an almond butter and raspberry jam sandwich that we shared.

I want to watch some Netflix DVDs today. I've got three (though I can only find two of them). Unfortunately, I can't find the remote I need to switch over to the DVD player, so I'm not sure if that will happen. Also the two DVDs I most want to watch are subtitled, and I'm not sure I'll have time to focus on those. Of course, I need to devote time to them eventually, so why not today? The other DVD, I'd been hoping to watch with Scott as it's a new to us TV show.