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.

I keep starting things to post here and then not finishing them because they get tangled up in my health and loss of function and fears about the future. So I'm going to try starting with some bits about things that don't relate to those. I'll try to post most of them over the next couple of days as they're all written now.

*Cordelia turned 18 in May. She was very puzzled by how Scott and I reacted with a We Did It! She doesn't feel different, and it's not like we think we're done parenting, but we got from infant to legal adulthood. Milestones. They're a Thing.

*Cordelia got her driver's license two days after her birthday. This required multiple trips to the Secretary of State because she had to have a learner's permit to test. The first one expired on her birthday and couldn't be replaced until after it had expired. Fun times with bureaucracy. Because she's 18, she has no curfew on the license.

*Cordelia graduated on June 7th. The ceremony was on the school's football field. It had rained all afternoon but stopped early enough that the seats in the bleachers were only a little bit wet. We'd brought towels and umbrellas, so we were set. Each graduate got four tickets. There was supposed to be separate seating for vaccinated and unvaccinated (or mixed) groups, but I couldn't see that. There were a lot of people because there were 330 kids getting diplomas (and some who weren't there but had to be named). The guy announcing Cordelia's part of the class mispronounced her last name.

We were lucky. It was a rain or shine event. At least one of the other local high schools had their entire ceremony in pouring rain.

*There was a post-graduation upset due to the school removing some already posted photographs from Facebook and then editing the video of the ceremony online. One of the graduating students carried a Palestinian flag with her (they searched the kids for 'contraband' before letting them put on their gowns, so someone official knew in advance). The superintendent tried to tell everyone that that footage 'distracted from' the proper focus of the occasion. The student had been allowed to walk across the stage with the flag without interference and had their official diploma; their 'right to free speech' had been respected. A week or so later, the photos and footage were restored. As far as I can tell, a handful of parents complained to begin with, prompting the removal, and then a rather larger number, including members of 'the Jewish community' (which is not small enough here to have a single opinion on anything). The superintendent sent out an email about how, after consulting with 'our Arab community leaders and our Jewish community leaders,' she'd decided that she'd been wrong to yank the footage.

I came very close to going back to Facebook entirely to express disapproval about removing the photos and footage.

I keep trying to write this up and wandering off into verbal flourishes and logical snags. The analogy here doesn't work 100%, but definitely the part about only the House winning, in the casino sense, does.

And only some people ever have the option of becoming part of the House.

I see a lot of people talking about history, politics, and justice (social and otherwise) in terms of zero sum games. People on various sides work hard to convince everyone else that the issue is or isn't really a zero sum game. I consider that a distraction from the real issue.

The real issue is that most of us-- possibly all of us-- are trapped in thousands of intersecting rounds of the Prisoner's Dilemma. Our risks and the cost we're putting on other people are real. And once a person receives the highest penalty from one round, the penalties for them in later rounds get bigger and nastier, the hole the backstabber can push them into get deeper.

Unfortunately, the level of penalty for being an asshole who's willing to sell everyone else down the river also seems to go down over the long term. At least, this is my best explanation for vast swathes of history and politics.

I think that it's easy for all of us to overlook that the Prisoner's Dilemma is like any form of gambling-- Only the House wins. It's never a choice between a good thing and a bad thing or between a good thing and a better thing. It's a choice between penalties.

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.

This morning started with a migraine. I got somewhere between 4 and 5 hours of sleep before I woke and couldn't manage to fall asleep again after. I was in that weird state of being too near to sleep to be able to get up to do anything about the headache but also hurting too much to manage sleep. I've been functioning at less than 50% mentally all day.

Thursday evening, there was a choir thing at Cordelia's high school, a parents' meeting for information about a trip to Spain that she doesn't intend to go on. I dithered a lot about whether or not I should try to go. It was fairly cold out, and with the meeting starting at 7:30, I expected a bus once an hour which might mean sitting at the bus stop for a very long time before being able to get into the building or after the meeting.

I wanted a better idea of the timing, so I looked at the bus website. The ride planner told me that I couldn't get to the school between 3:14 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. unless I walked a considerable distance (estimated as 20 minutes). I'm very nearly certain that it is possible to get there by bus between those times, but I wasn't willing to risk it. I also wasn't keen on spending between $30 and $40 to attend a meeting about something that Cordelia doesn't want and that we really couldn't afford if she did want.

I ended up sending the school board an email about the accessibility issues of having evening events at the school. The nearest bus stops are on the other side of the highway from the school. The highway exit ramps let out on traffic circles. The lighting is lousy, and there aren't sidewalks or any allowances for pedestrian traffic. It's not a safe walk in full daylight. I wouldn't want to do it at 7 p.m. which is full dark here at this time of year.

I pointed out that I can't possibly be the only parent who doesn't have access to a car all of the time and/or can't drive. I also can't possibly be the only one who considers cabs/Uber/Lyft prohibitively expensive for anything that's not life essential. The school has been there more than a decade, and the district and city have done damn all to make it safe for pedestrians to get there. 90% of the city of Ann Arbor is on the other side of the highway from the school, and the city is zoned for three high schools, so most of the students live on the other side of the highway, too.

One of the main barriers for Cordelia in doing extracurriculars is transportation. All of the kids who stay for those have to get on one city bus. She was pretty constantly stressed about whether or not everyone would fit and what would happen to people who couldn't get on or who missed the bus. School policy is that the kids can't wait in the building without adult supervision. There's a lot of emphasis on penalties for being in the wrong place.

This is the same school that made her think that they were going to close the building and kick all the kids out into the parking lot in a snowstorm to find their own way home. Cordelia doesn't trust them.

At any rate, even though it was around 7 p.m. when I sent the message, I got an email from the superintendent of schools less than two hours later. She said they're going to try to figure out a solution. I'm not sure what they can do, but I hope that this eventually goes somewhere. I've been meaning to complain the last 2.5 years, so it's past time that I did. I pointed out that the access issues most strongly affect poor families and parents with disabilities. I think I actually said 'ADA.'

I also finally sent an email to our representative in the state house to ask why Michigan law doesn't penalize bad faith by insurance companies. I don't know that that will go anywhere, but it definitely wasn't going anywhere without me asking.

I've made more progress on my UCon games. I think the space scenario is only going to need about another hour of work. A lot of what I want to happen in the game doesn't need to be in the character sheets or the setting material. I'd probably have gotten it done today if I'd had a reasonable amount of sleep. The superhero scenario will need quite a lot more than that, but I'm more optimistic about getting it done.

I have no idea why I'm still awake now. Hopefully tonight will be better than last night and tomorrow better than today.

We've had three knock on the door canvassers in the last two days. I have no idea how many we'll get today. They're all after Scott because they know I voted already. The guy late yesterday was from the AFL-CIO and seemed to think we were a union household which... Neither of us have ever belonged to a union. We both think they're a Good Idea. We've just never had jobs that were unionized.

(Scott's employer has straight up stated that any plants that unionize will close. For unrelated reasons, of course, because that sort of threat is illegal. My previous job in the university library system wasn't unionized because the organizers who had come in in the 80s managed to offend most of the employees by (a) referring to the female employees as 'girls' and (b) using informational handouts aimed at an audience that couldn't read very well.)

At any rate, I had voted for all of the candidates they endorsed. Endorsements like that are more likely to be a consideration for me in a primary because I've never seen the AFL-CIO endorse a Republican candidate around here (does it ever happen?). I intend to take a little time today to write up some notes for Scott about the non-partisan races. Most of those aren't actually contested, but some are.

I have taken a dose of propranolol (20 mg) this morning. It's not a medication I've tried before. It's intended to help with the tremors, but there's a chance that it will give me asthma problems. It's the first choice of medication for essential tremors for people who don't have asthma. Primidone, the medication that gave me asthma issues, is the first line for people who have asthma. I'm trying it today because Cordelia is home in case I have problems.

It's been an hour, and I think I'm doing okay.

I think I need to make a schedule for today, tomorrow, and Thursday. I probably won't stick to it, but having it will force me to pay attention to time passing. Yesterday, I spent all day writing something that has nothing to do with UCon or Yuletide or anything else with a deadline. 4K words, but... I can't afford to do it again.

I slept better last night. I threw everything I could think of at the headache and turned out the light as early as I could. It wasn't as early as I wanted-- Scott and Cordelia watch Legends of Tomorrow at 9 p.m. on Mondays, and Cordelia wants me awake after that.

I took Tylenol, Amerge at about 9:00 and Sudafed and naproxen about 7:00. I was aiming the naproxen at my headache, but it actually helped with the sinus itching a bit. Possibly the anti-inflammatory part helped? I used my electric heating pad on my shoulders and neck, and that helped some, too.

I think about all I managed to do yesterday was my PT. I tried to nap but couldn't quite get there. I turned off the ringer on my cell phone because I get frequent spam calls, but having it off stressed me because it meant not knowing if Cordelia was trying to reach me.

I just checked the status of my absentee ballot online. It's marked as received, so I can stop worrying about that. I've also found out that the USPS will deliver absentee ballots even with no/insufficient postage. Voters are expected to pay postage, but if they fail to, the USPS will charge the postage shortfall to a fund that the municipality has to have available for that purpose.

I finally added up my writing numbers for the month to date. I'm at 14365 words for October. That's above my lowest monthly word count this year but still not what I hoped for. For most of the prompts, I wrote about 150 words, just barely starting much longer stories. I'm interested in finishing all of those but not sure what will happen.

I have not finished my DC mini bang story. That was supposed to be posted yesterday. It's currently about 9K and not near done. There are a couple of amnesty posting days; I'll have to look them up and see if I can manage by then. I need to put it on a back burner, though, because I will be running my UCon games on the 9th and 10th of November. I have to actually have everything prepared and printed and organized by the evening of the 8th.

Right now, I'm thinking that I may go with Cowboy Bebop for setting details. Rewatching that and taking notes won't be a huge burden. I can tweak as needed and steal things from Firefly and from The Expanse. I just don't much want to (re)watch either of those.

I may crowdsource some of the character creation work. I know the roles I need the characters to fill. I'm just kind of blanking on appropriate skills. Also, real people should have a couple of things they're knowledgeable about or moderately good at that have nothing to do with their jobs or that only relate tangentially. Since I want the players to buy in, maybe I should just offer them those skill slots as fill in the blank things with numbers already assigned?

Part of me thinks that we should cancel our hotel room and just drive back and forth, but me running games so early in the mornings and Scott running well into the night makes that less feasible. I'm mainly looking at the expense of the hotel room. We have about four necessary to pay bills that would be better uses for the money. Scott put the quarterly car insurance payment last month on his credit card and put off paying a medical bill (which has now doubled because it's an ongoing thing, roughly the same cost every damned month. I'm not sure why he was surprised by that).

I'm not sure where Christmas gift money will come from this year. I think I've already spent what we might reasonably budget for me. Scott didn't tell me how tight things were, and I ended up buying some things from sock dreams, all on sale, because I needed to buy more sock glue. Wearing pretty socks is a psychological boost for me, and I don't regret having them. I just wouldn't have spent the money if I'd realized.

I need to buy some new trousers. The ones I currently have are still wearable but only marginally. Some have small holes (they're cotton blend knit fabric. Small round holes are the usual failure mode for that fabric) while others have elastic so weak that I don't dare carry my cell phone in my pocket when I go outside. I'll put them on my Christmas wishlist, but Scott's parents won't buy them because they can't get them on Amazon, and Scott won't buy them because they're no fun and because I already spent that money.

Cordelia pretty certainly needs glasses. She passed the eye exam for getting her learner's permit, but she's noticing that she has trouble seeing certain things on the board in math and science. We won't have vision coverage until January, so I'm hoping she can manage somehow. I pulled out my distance glasses, and she says they help but give her a headache if she wears them for too long. I suggested that she take them to school and just wear them when she really, really needs them. She's already getting headaches from straining to make out what's on the board.

After UCon, I'll start looking into getting her an appointment for her eyes. Ideally, an appointment in early January. I need to get my eyes checked around then and then bite the bullet to get progressives. I'm concerned that I'll have problems using progressives because I shift position and, thus, reading angle/distance about every ten minutes. Not doing that isn't an option for the rest of my body. Last year, the ophthalmologist told me that there's no way to get progressives that will work with that, and that's a big reason I haven't bothered.

I'm also very hesitant to mail order progressives based on the measurements Scott and I figured out for me when I bought reading glasses. The pupil distance being a millimeter or two off for glasses I use a couple of times a week doesn't matter so much. Also $20 glasses. Progressives cost more, and I'd be wearing them most of the time.

( Writing to do list )

When Cordelia leaves, I'll move into the living room and put some Cowboy Bebop in and start taking notes.

( Non-writing to do list )

I finished filling out my absentee ballot. Even with thumb/wrist braces, it took me a long time, long enough that it wouldn't be feasible standing in an polling place. I need to get it to the post office tomorrow, but my body's conspiring against me-- I'm having an allergic reaction to the dust I put in the air when I swept our bedroom today, and I'm starting up cramps.

I was hoping that the c-pap filter would help the allergies, and it is helping some. I also used a neti pot and rinsed things. My sinuses aren't willing to calm down to let me sleep, so I kind suspect that I won't get to do that tonight. Maybe if I set up in the living room... I'm hoping not to have to do that, but Scott's still sick and desperately needs sleep.

On the plus side, I've gone from being 12 prompts behind on letsgetshitdone to being 8 prompts behind. I haven't finished anything, but finishing wasn't ever my primary goal. I started one Amber story, one Labyrinth story, one Narnia story, and one that's meant (if I ever finish it) as a gift for someone who reads here. So the tally for the month is three written, one abandoned, and four started.

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).

Scott's feeling overwhelmed at work. They need to do a major equipment overhaul that involves replacing a lot of things. September and October are the busiest time of year due to cider season, and he concluded that there's no way to do the change during those months. He figured they'd do it after.

The higher ups want it done two weeks from now. Smack in the middle of our very expensive family vacation. I'm not clear what this means for Scott being able to take that time off. The vacation house is four hours from home, and home is half an hour to forty five minutes from work.

Scott and I got our voting dealt with kind of late-- It was nearly 6:30. There was actually a line which is not something I expect for a primary. Of course, I usually don't wait for Scott for voting in a primary. I spent a good bit of time figuring out who to vote for. Scott asked me to give him an abridged version of what I found. I told him how I'd decided to vote and why but also gave him information about the other candidates in case he might have different priorities.

The thing I'm most invested in is the bus millage. I'm hopeful that that will pass, though.