the_rck

December was rough. Scott's brother and his family came to Michigan for the week leading up to Christmas, so there were family things every day that week. I couldn't go to the ones at Scott's sister's house because of our nephew's cats, but Scott and Cordelia were out every day.

Scott wanted to do a Christmas celebration with me on the 26th, but I got sick that day with an intestinal unpleasantness (zero respiratory symptoms) and wasn't able to eat properly for the next 5-6 days. I started feeling hungry again after 3-4 days, but I had to be conservative. The first few days, I went through about 72 oz of Gatorade each day.

About a week after that, I had a three day migraine with a nasty earache.

It's also been a rough start of term for Cordelia. She worked orientation which involved going back about five days early. The dorms let her stay, but none of the on campus food options were available until the third day when the orientation students arrived (at that point, the meals were part of the 12 hour work days). On the second 12 hour day, one of her professors posted a syllabus that started off with a hidden prerequisite, something that wasn't in the course description or in the online registration process. That was Friday at 11 p.m., so trying to talk to an advisor wasn't an option before classes started. On Sunday, she got the syllabus for her Intro to Women's Studies class and realized that it was going to be an unpleasant experience.

This means she reworked her schedule two or three times during that weekend. The anxiety levels were about the same as during her first semester, so we were all stressed, and Scott and I were kind of terrified that we'd miss a moment when Cordelia really upset and desperate.

Things are settling, but Cordelia is still needing to come home every weekend and is calling every day.

I finally saw a podiatrist yesterday. Getting a referral for orthotics was fairly painless. The doctor had no idea what's going on with my injured ankle, though. I hadn't been holding my breath on that point because it wasn't part of my original referral. Of course, I'm not convinced they had any record of that because they seemed to think I was there for diabetic foot care; the person who took me back to the room was a bit startled that my feet looked fine, and there was wound care stuff laid out on a tray. I didn't need any of it and never have, but... I assume it's a lot of what they get. Podiatry shares office space with the diabetes clinic, after all, and I doubt that's any sort of accident.

I also had to sign a paper acknowledging my awareness that Medicare only covers foot care appointments at specific intervals.

I'll have my orthotics fitting in late February. I'll be doing at least two different types of PT during that month, too, and February is always long term disability review month. I've also got several non-PT appointments. I want all of it over with, but none of it can reasonably be put off.

I will be scheduling OT for lymphedema, but the referral I got from my gynecologist was for PT (because that's what it was when I did it in 2017). I have to get a new referral that says 'OT' instead of 'PT.' I'm hoping that won't be a big deal. I'm pretty sure that that change will be rubber-stamped since, from the doctor's point of view, it's entirely a difference in terminology. It won't change the diagnosis or even change the phone number I'll call to make the appointments. It's an internal referral, entirely digital.

I've fallen way behind on my library books. It's been hard to concentrate this month.

This posting regularly thing is harder than I remember it being. Some of that is that my sense of time is kind of screwy these days; some of that is being out of the habit; some of that is simply not having much going on.

I've been trying to tidy up my reading/watching logs for posting, but while my lists are (probably) complete, I simply don't recognize many of the titles and need to look for blurbs to remind myself which story the title goes with. I recognize the stories most of the time, but the library catalogue blurbs are often kind of terrible and/or misleading.

Next week, Scott will be going back to 2nd shift. That means he'll work 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. instead of 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. This will put the two of us back on more or less the same schedule. I'm not sure how that will go. I'm definitely better off on several fronts (digestive issues are most immediately obvious that way) when I stay on that schedule, but I'm also out of practice at going to bed when Scott does.

Also, my body really, really wants the day to be 25 or 26 hours long. Maybe even 27 or 28 hours long.

The other complication of 2nd shift is that it will make Scott driving to East Lansing to bring Cordelia home considerably more difficult. He'd get there after midnight, and she's unenthusiastic about trying to deal with that because it will be past her normal bedtime. She's also unenthusiastic about looking at bus options because that would leave her and her stuff downtown and needing to get here somehow.

I think the problem here is, first, that she's never done it before and would rather not have to and, second, that she'll have to carry everything between the bus from East Lansing and the bus from downtown to here. I'm not clear on where the former might drop her off, but the most likely options involve either a few blocks and/or street crossings between or a mid-trip transfer once she's in Ann Arbor. Getting to our house from the nearest bus is two blocks by one route and four from another. The four block version involves a busy street and a quite steep hill, but has the advantage of running more often.

None of this is impossible, just less convenient for Cordelia. I expect that Scott would still drive her back on Sunday if he's not working, but we couldn't count on that. He will miss the driving time with Cordelia in the car. That's been their father-daughter hanging out time for the last year.

I keep having the impulse to go to UCon. I think it's mostly me wanting some of the things that con gave me when I was healthier/more energetic. I also keep thinking that maybe I could do something there to help Scott with all of his board games and such which is... I can't walk well, and I can't carry more than about 10 pounds. I'm pretty sure I'd be a hinderance in that respect. Also, all of the points I made to Scott about me getting upset and being miserable if I go are still valid.

I had been enjoying the convention less and less over the years. Scott has still really enjoyed it. There are games he only ever gets to play at the convention. We own a lot of board and card games, only a handful of which Scott's ever gotten to play. Cordelia dislikes games, generally, and I get so tense that I shake and, eventually, sprout a headache when I try to play anything competitive or that has a lot of time pressure.

(My sister and I both react this way, and we think it's shared trauma from our grandfather having attempted to teach us (ages 4 and 5) to play euchre and yelling at us for every mistake. We were both fine play Authors (effectively Go Fish but with matched sets of cards representing books by specific authors) with our other grandparents, and we both played gin and gin rummy with our parents.)

I think the convention thing is kind of akin to how I feel when the ARide drives me past neighborhoods I haven't explored but thought I would one day. I can't. I don't know that I'll ever be able to. It's a loss.

Scott will go, and he'll have fun. It won't be everything he hoped for, but it will be a thing he's doing that makes him happy. He needs more of those.

Scott's supervisor informed everybody at the shift meeting last week that they're trying to find out how to get everyone vaccinated. The plant is considered essential services since it's part of the food/drink production chain (they make bottles for milk and water and cider and other things), so we're all hoping that Scott and the other people working the factory floor can get the vaccine relatively early on.

Scott getting vaccinated will reduce my risk and Cordelia's considerably. She and I don't go out very much, so most of our exposure would be via Scott.

Work for Scott has been unexpectedly busy for January. They're still getting orders for cider bottles, and that usually stops at the end of October. This has meant weekend work considerably more often than normal for this time of year.

The local school district is hoping to transition back to physical classrooms starting in March. I feel like that's still going to be unsafe, but they want to start with pre-K, kindergarten, and special education, and those are the groups that are worst served by online classes. High school and middle school classes will go back last, and online classes are supposed to be available until at least the end of the year.

I have no idea how the district will manage a hybrid approach for high school and middle school students. March will be the middle of the semester, and teachers won't really be able to teach both online and face to face classes. The online schedule is very different from the normal high school schedule. Online classes start about 45 minutes later than normal high school does, and the normal schedule is necessary based on bus availability.

I'm a little worried that Cordelia will be pressured to go back to face to face classes because of the competitive choir and because of the peer connections class. The choir director will want to go back to rehearsing in person if it's even remotely feasible, and Cordelia can't get to the school without taking the school bus.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

( UCon related )

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The ACT has moved Cordelia's test date to 13 June. As far as I can tell, they're not trying to schedule an extra date, just telling people to choose one of the existing dates and locations. They say they're going to try to add locations. I'm a bit concerned about the location part. We had transportation set for the original test date, but June and July are both horrible in terms of Scott's weekend availability, so the logistics could be challenging.

Cordelia is finding that the trimester change over is an advantage as far as the switch to online instruction goes. Few of the teachers had anything complicated to deal with for Monday or yesterday because it was all syllabus and introductions. That's letting them experiment a bit with the interface (Google classrooms) before they try more challenging interactions. Cordelia's friends who're at schools that do semesters are having a more difficult time because the teachers have more to juggle.

One of the teachers currently has the flu (not, she assures us, the coronavirus as she has a different set of symptoms). Another tells us that he and his family have left town to stay in the country because his son has major lung issues and is at high risk. Both of them seem relieved to be teaching remotely. The one with the flu is teaching ASL, and the school would have difficulty finding a sub with subject knowledge. The one with the family leaving town teaches math.

We're still trying to find distilled water for our c-pap reservoirs. Scott's been to half a dozen places at different times, but there hasn't been any to be found. He's looking for toilet paper, too. We have enough of that for at least a week, possibly ten days, but since he's not seeing it anywhere, he's looking for it.

I managed the sleep disorders clinic Monday without touching anything but elevator buttons, at least with my hands. Part of that was keeping my phone in my hands. I had a little bottle of hand sanitizer in my pocket and used it after the elevators. I don't like that particular kind (Purell) because it has some sort of added fragrance that makes my nose start running, but I used it anyway.

We tried to make some hand sanitizer at home, but we couldn't get the isopropyl alcohol and the aloe to mix and not separate. We've now got two bottles of mostly isopropyl alcohol with the vaguest hint of aloe and a layer of aloe on the bottom. We're shaking them before using them, but it's still like pouring slightly slimy water rather than anything close to a gel.

Possibly the aloe was simply too old. I'm pretty sure we bought it when I had the cellulitis in April 2018. Possibly the recipes were also assuming something less than 99% aloe for the one part aloe to two parts isopropyl alcohol. I used a whisk for about ten minutes, but the aloe stayed globbily particulate and kept sinking to the bottom.

At any rate, the isopropyl alcohol will kill things adequately. It's just harder to use as a liquid than it would be with a bit more viscosity. Scott's still looking for actual hand sanitizer. He has to go to work, and him having some with him is pretty important.

The sleep disorders clinic told me, after I arrived, that they're trying to shift to e-visits for things like my appointment. I'd have appreciated the option, but the timing was so tight between the changes in policy and when my appointment happened, that there was no way for me to know that it might be possible. Also, I think that, on Monday, Medicare still didn't cover e-visits.

The clinician explained that my inability to breathe during the first 20-30 minutes of putting on the cpap is due to the thing taking that long to 'ramp up.' It goes to half pressure immediately and then squats there while I get a headache from lack of air and can't move around in bed because I'll end up having to gasp for air. I'm fine once things are at full pressure. I'm fairly annoyed about this.

She said she'd change it remotely, but later sent me a portal message to say that she couldn't. I wasn't surprised since I've never set the machine up for remote access and have zero intention of doing so. I might be willing to give her temporary access during a pre-arranged time window, but I can't think of any reason at all why it would make sense to leave a gaping security hole like that constantly open, not for a medical device.

Scott's therapist and my psychiatrist are both offering remote appointments for the duration. The former may, possibly, be worthwhile, but I think the latter can be delayed. We haven't made any recent changes to my meds, and my prescriptions are current. I'm not having any side effects or any increased distress. (For some reason, the current fuss and bother isn't setting off my anxiety. I had issues last week with my need to get all of the preparation done, but at this point, that's all settled.)

I seem to have eaten something that my digestive system doesn't like. I have no idea what it could be. Well, no, the most likely thing is that the turkey wrap I bought at the hospital cafeteria yesterday was a bit off, that or the half and half I put in my coffee there. I bought food there because Wednesday morning timing meant I had to leave home before I had my coffee or anything to eat. Scott dropped me off an hour and a half early for my appointment because he had an appointment elsewhere.

The digestive thing is a little awkward as the cleaning lady is here right now. That means the bathroom is inaccessible for at least an hour. There's one in the basement, but I don't like to use it because the valves are old. It tends to keep running after being flushed. Also, it's very cold down there.

More local things are getting canceled. The University of Michigan has shifted to remote instruction for all classes through the end of the term (late April). I have no idea how they're handling labs and the like. I'm sure they're managing something; I just haven't been curious enough to try to dig up the information.

I think I'm on track for my word count goal for the year. I'm slightly more than 25% of the way there (26K words out of 100K words).

I have three unread library books, one of them due this weekend. I have two unwatched library DVDs and a partially watched DVD lecture set. Scott and I have an unwatched Netflix DVD. I'm going to see how many of these I can get through by Sunday.

I've been doing a lot of cat waxing with my various library lists. I've got 22 lists, and some of them are quite long. I'm trying to figure out which things are likely to be easy reads and which are things I can get via Overdrive instead. Unfortunately, I can't actually sort book lists by weight or page count. If I want to do that, I need to look at each record and try pull out the related data. Some records list page counts. Some records list dimensions. Some records list both. Some records list neither or only one or two of the three dimensions.

Update: The school district has announced that they're closing until April 6th. Tomorrow will be a half day. Cordelia's concerned because doing remote learning for classes that would have their first sessions on Monday is going to be a logistical nightmare. We may have one or two of Cordelia's friends come over for study sessions, providing that everyone is healthy and careful. One friend can walk here. Another has her own car.

I don't know what this means for the ACT on April 4th.

I want to get my book logging posted here before the end of the year. The comics/graphic novels are going to be challenging because, although I was pretty good about recording titles, I didn't write anything about most of them when I recorded them. I'm going to have to look them up and see if anything about the blurbs rings a bell.

I've got 2300 words on the story that's due on the 31st. That means I added slightly more than 1K words over the weekend. I'm hoping for another 1K or even 2K today if my hands hold up.

I'm looking over the prompts for the story due on the 3rd. I could write any of the prompts and have more than one idea for each, so I may need to pick one with a random number generator and see what I can do with it. I don't want to start writing until after I finish the other story, but I can start ideas stewing in the back of my brain.

Cordelia's planning to spend this afternoon visiting a friend who wants to do some baking and hang out. Scott has to work. We're expecting him to have to work 12 hour days a couple of times this week because he called in last Friday. He may also have to work one or both weekend days to cover the factory being closed Christmas Eve/Day and New Year's Eve/Day. 96 hours of missed production is a lot, after all.

Today's non-writing to-do list:

Started:
Laundry (load one is in the wash)
Cook porridge for Christmas morning (in the Instant Pot with 20 minutes to go)
Finish Overdrive audiobook that expires tomorrow (24 hours remaining on loan; 4 hours remaining on book)

Not yet begun:
Change sheets (maybe too ambitious)
Wrap Scott's presents (make Cordelia do this)
Bake 2 sets of bars (maybe too ambitious. One today and one on Christmas Day?)
Take a walk (it's 50F right now; this may be my last chance for months)
Watch the library DVD that's due on Sunday

I should be able to get the laundry into the dryer before Scott leaves for work. The porridge will also be done by then if the pressure bleeds off the way it should (it didn't last year, so I'm not sure it will this year). If both are done, I'll have him drop me off when he drops Cordelia off. There's a park out near where she'll be that has portals I haven't hacked before, and there's a bus every half hour if I don't want to walk back.

We got the LTD stuff printed, signed, and mailed yesterday. It got complicated because of some incompatibility between the documents, the ancient version of Word we have, and our printer. I ended up having to C&P all of the documents into Pages in order to fix the problem.

Basically, it was all good until I edited the dates to replace the '__' my mother had put in for the day of the month. At that point, for reasons beyond my understanding all of the margins became ridiculous and unfixable. The printer kept informing me that some of the text was going to be off the edge of the page. I reset the margins to 1.0" on all sides, and the result still lost words off the edge on both sides of the page and off the bottom. When I let the printer set the margins, it went with a narrow column of text with 2.5" margins on the right and the left and 6.5" margins on the bottoms of the page. It looked ridiculous and turned 7 page document into a 20 page one.

My mother apparently wrote everything in Libre Office but saved it in Word format. The most recent version of Word on my laptop is 2015. I think the only thing I lost in the C&P was the page numbers, and that was mostly because I didn't think about adding them back in to the Pages version.

Scott took all of the signed documents to the post office and paid for fast delivery. I'm not sure if he went for next day or what.

We had a game session last night for Scott's Firefly game. I was feeling sufficiently better to be able to stay upright through the whole thing (knowing that bed wasn't far away helped because I could have gone to lie down any time I needed to). We really wanted to get a session in before Scott starts working 2nd shift. We discussed options for weekend sessions, but I don't see one of those happening before UCon.

We are hoping, though, to have some gatherings with parts of the group so that various members can review the board games they'll be running. I'm running a co-op board game with rules that can be adjusted in difficulty, and I need to remind myself of which rules apply at each level. I'm probably running it on Sunday, and I'm going to be brain fried, so review can only help.

Scott's running five or six board games. He doesn't need to review all of them, but he's got some supplementary material for Flashpoint that he hasn't tried before. He wants to get a feel for how that plays before the convention. I think at least one of the other games is a thing he's never had a chance to play.

I haven't started pulling together words for my UCon table top rpg scenarios. One of them is using characters and a setting that I used last year. I think that getting that one ready to go will be straightforward because it's mainly a matter of updating the characters to allow for in-game-world time having passed. I don't have a firm plot for it yet, but I think that updating the characters will give me one.

The other scenario will be harder because the characters are still squishy in my head and have a lot of details that I'd like to let the players decide. I have to decide how many factions I'll have (I have no idea how many players I'll get, so I'm going to have to be flexible). I think I need to start with a timeline for the backstory which is a real world alternate history going back about 300 years. I want to keep it close to our history, but having it completely unchanged for that long doesn't make sense when I'm throwing in a tiny and widely scattered population with inheritable superpowers. Most of them have been trying hard not to be noticed, but three centuries is a long time, and the widely scattered part means a lot of people making decisions in isolation.

I'm considering asking a couple of people if they'd be interested in a write-in this weekend as I think that might help me focus. Scott will be working on Saturday, and he and Cordelia will be doing a choir fundraiser most of Sunday (leaf raking with Scott driving). There are two people I can invite even on short notice who might be able to attend. If I get even one person, it would help me focus.

I'll invite our niece, too, but she's very busy with her school related stuff, so I don't expect she'd be able to attend. I wouldn't mind her coming and studying her AP whatever, but her driving down here to do it would waste an hour of her weekend.

Scott will be working from 1 to 7 today. It's vacation coverage. He and the other person who could be pulled in for the shift decided to split it rather than have either of them work the entire 12+ hours. The current plan is for Scott to get the house ready for me to give out candy this evening-- Our front steps are small enough that opening the screen door risks knocking people off, so he's going to slide up the middle panel of the door to let me hold the bowl out through the door. I'm not sure if he's going to do a jack o'lantern or not.

My hopes for the morning involve him cleaning off the blades of the fan in our bedroom and changing our sheets. I don't trust myself to stand on the bed for the fan cleaning, and right before washing the sheets is the best time for dumping a lot of dust on them. There's no way to clean the fan that won't put dust on half our bed. Sheets that are about to be washed make a reasonable drop cloth.

I should have called Cordelia's best friend last night. Her parents have left the country for a funeral, and she and her brother are alone in their apartment. They're both responsible kids, and I trust them, but I'm the adult who's on call if they need something. I need to check in to be sure that they don't have anything that seems too trivial for calling/emailing me but that's actually an easy fix.

I think I'm also on call in case the parents are delayed in coming back to the US. They're both naturalized US citizen, but they've gone to Pakistan and look like Pakistani Muslims (because that's their family background). I don't know how aware the kids are of that as a risk, but I'm worried about it.

Today's to-do list:
Insurance claim forms
Dishes
Removal of blankets and pillows from bed
Fan cleaning
Removal and washing of dirty sheets
Putting clean sheets on the bed and putting the blankets and pillows back
Moving things out of the cleaning lady's way so that she can get at the floors
Finding a missing form that I need to turn in on Monday
Make two phone calls
Depending on what I get from one of those, possibly go and get flu shots
Have Scott schedule a dental appointment
Have Cordelia schedule a dental appointment

My hands and wrists were very cranky with me last night. I think I’m noticing it more because the prednisone lowered my pain levels for almost a week.

I’m still wobbly and having issues with my ears feeling blocked. I’m not all the way to dizzy, but I am at a point where I feel unsafe without a wall or counter or something else solid within a step or two. Heat helps with the drainage and so do certain ways of sitting/lying. Sadly, the useful ways of sitting make other things hurt. As far as I can tell, the problem is mostly muscle tightness in my jaw and neck. Sudafed and mucinex help considerably less than heat does, and the blocked feeling doesn't include pain, so I'm currently assuming it's purely mechanical.

I’m not sure I’m going to sign up for Yuletide this year. I’m feeling overwhelmed without taking that on. I love the exchange, and I got some amazing stories last year, but I don’t know if I can write anything to order right now. Maybe I can treat, but I think it's entirely likely that I'll not write anything new during the remaining months of this year.

Of course, some of this is me looking at the nomination coordination posts and not seeing things I’d want to offer. I tend to feel discouraged during early Yuletide discussions anyway simply because there are so many things I've never heard of or already know I'm not likely to enjoy. I might nominate a couple of popular for Yuletide fandoms that I'd like to treat in order to free up other people to nominate less popular things, and I'll look at the 5 minute fandom requests once the tagset is complete.

Mom came to town Monday afternoon. She rented a small apartment outside of town. She spent most of Tuesday trying to get her computer (brought from their house on the other side of the state) to admit that the rental's WiFi existed. She got that late on Tuesday by plugging her phone into the computer. She's not sure why that helped given that the phone doesn't have any sort of data plan.

She spent most of yesterday afternoon asking me and Scott questions about things I can and can't do and about the times when I respond irrationally (Scott and Cordelia agree that I do that much more than I thought I did. I don't actually necessarily notice when I have done it, though, so they're more likely to be correct than I am.)

I think I need to explain that my agoraphobia has two branches. The first is fear that I'm going to misjudge what my body can handle and fall or otherwise injure myself. Historically speaking, I've done this a few times a year. The less I go out, the less it happens. Any plan for going out also has to include a plan for what I do if my body breaks on me, for how I get home if I can't breathe or can't see or can't walk or can't spend more that a few minutes away from a toilet.

The second fear is that I'm going to get upset or be surprised by something and not be able to handle it without raising my voice and/or punching someone. I haven't punched anyone since I was about 12, but when I'm panicking, my physical and mental energy shifts to attack mode. It's much harder to walk away from an interaction with a clerk in a store or with a bus passenger than it is to walk away from an email or chat exchange.

It’s not so much that I’m afraid of going out and/or being in places with a lot of people. I’m afraid of the side effects of me getting surprised. Places with more people have more likelihood for me not to be able to withdraw or to put my strategies for retreat/self-protection into effect. There’s also more likelihood that I’ll be startled and respond without thinking.

I don’t like dense crowds because they make me helpless to take care of myself. The people are obstacles rather than threats.

Scott's work schedule is kind of ridiculous. Monday and Tuesday, he worked 12 hours on the factory floor. He had yesterday and today off (I think he has tomorrow off too) but will work 12 hours both days during the weekend. It's going to be 12 hour shifts with odd days off up through Thanksgiving (which makes UCon an iffy proposition. He's scheduled to work the Friday, and I'm supposed to run a game that morning. Probably the best solution is going to be me getting a room for Thursday night). He's finding the work physically exhausting in ways that worry me. There's a dangling possibility that he might be able to go back to scheduling if he can reach the point of that not wrecking him psychologically, but I hate to hope for it because it really was bad for him.

The coworker (now back on the factory floor) who had the scheduler job before Scott has told Scott that he, too, had a panic attack during his first cider season. Not too surprisingly, this makes me more frustrated with the company.

I need to see if I can get Scott out of bed. It's 11 a.m., and I need to make phone calls. I'd rather not do them while he's home, but that would mean delaying them about a week since none of them can be made outside of business hours. I also can't, in good conscience, make them while he's asleep because I get loud. I can't really put off the call to the dentist because I need a note from them by early next week and because they're closed on Fridays.