the_rck

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today, I need to:

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

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

I've had trouble sleeping the last few nights. Sometimes, it's joint pain. Sometimes, it's reflux. Sometimes, it's congestion. Sometimes, it's all of the above, either all at once or in sequence.

I've been reading a lot of long WIP stories on AO3 or FFnet. Most of them are things I've seen recommended on various Discords. The long part is mostly because I don't want to have to figure out what to read next. The WIP part doesn't so much have a reason; they're just what I've seen linked.

I need to start writing two exchange fics. One's due in about three weeks. The main barrier to that one is picking a prompt to write as I matched on more than one. The other exchange has a later due date and mostly needs canon review and some fact checking.

Today's household chore is cleaning out the fridge. There's a lot of stuff that's well past being edible, and tomorrow is trash pick up. I'm just currently putting the chore off because it's going to be nasty.

My hands have been very bad the last week or so. There are things I could do last month that I can't do today. I suspect that things will get better again, but it won't be permanent.

I don't think that the cooking chickpeas from dry is a thing that works well for me. My digestive system hasn't been happy any day that I've eaten those, mostly gas issues which isn't usual for me with chickpeas and beans. Possibly soaking them longer would help; the packaging recommended 6-8 hours with a warning that longer would lead to the chickpeas splitting open. I stopped at about 7 hours.

I'm also not sure that I cooked the dratted things long enough. They taste fine and don't crunch any more than I'd expect from canned chickpeas, but there's something off.

I got our sheets changed yesterday and ran two loads of laundry (including the sheets). I had two prescriptions that needed to be picked up, so Scott did the week's shopping.

I got Cordelia started as a volunteer for one of those online archival transcription projects. She likes history a lot, and I sold it as something she could put on college applications. She says it's harder than she thought it would be but that she thinks she's better at it than some of the other volunteers. I can't evaluate the truth of the second part of that sentence, but I'm glad she feels like she's doing okay with it.

She has also started trying to learn some French. One of her friends is taking it and needs a study buddy. I don't know if that will go anywhere because she's embarrassed to do any of the spoken bits if Scott or I might hear her.

Scott did a watch-along of the Babylon 5 pilot and first episode last night with some people he knows from Facebook. The rest of the group will be doing it regularly, but they're aiming for evenings, so Scott won't be able to participate because he'll be at work.

My goals for the day include cleaning out the fridge to get rid of leftovers that are more than three weeks old. I also want to make a chicken pot pie. I'm not sure exactly what I'll put into it beyond the chicken and a lot of carrots (Imperfect Foods keeps sending us carrots). Possibly, Scott will chop an onion for me.

I'd like to finish my story for the Wayback Exchange. There are a couple of exchanges that I'm considering treats for and others I'm considering signing up for. Fandom 5K is in the middle of the sign up period, and there's a Naruto exchange-- Exchange no Jutsu! --that's currently in nominations.

I have several ebooks from the library and need to spend some time on those. A couple of them, I may not bother to finish because, while they're not actively bad, they're not really my thing. I have to keep reminding myself that I have options enough that I don't have to accept things that aren't good fits. When I was in high school, I was desperate enough for books that I'd finish things just because they were available.

I've also been working on catching up on reading WIP that I've subscribed to. I've got several subscriptions that have 10+ chapters piled up and waiting to be read. I keep looking at the size of the backlog and finding a cat to wax instead.

I've also got some phone calls I need to make. I haven't heard from my father, and I still haven't called to request c-pap supplies. I'm pretty sure there are other calls I should make, too, but I can't think of them off the top of my head.

Oh, I know. I want to look into scheduling a tune up for our AC. The company that we use has emailed to say that they're still operating, having been designated as essential services. The question is whether or not such a thing can be done with safe social distancing. A lot of their technicians are older than I am.

I got the sheets changed yesterday, and I ran the dishwasher after Scott got home and showered. My goals for today include everything from yesterday plus showering before the cleaning lady comes and tidying away the things she might otherwise put away in places we'll never find them.

I'd be more ambitious, but my right wrist and hand are screaming at me. I probably wouldn't get dressed if I weren't going to shower. Actually, if the cleaning lady weren't coming, I'd probably put on another nightgown. Oh, and I need to get Scott to write the check to pay the cleaning lady.

Maybe I can do some editing today while I marathon this audiobook...

I have a few goals for the next year. A lot of the things I need are outside of my ability to control, so they can't really be goals. Still, there are some things that I can do.

Empty one of the bookshelves in my bedroom so that I can move my bedside table if I need to.

Rearrange the bathroom cabinet so that it reflects what I think should be where rather than what the cleaning lady thinks should be where. This will involve throwing some things out and asking Scott and Cordelia for input. (The cabinet is directly over the toilet, with the sink on one side and the free standing storage cupboard on the other. There's no space between the sink and the toilet and not more than an inch or two between the toilet and the cupboard), and there's no way to get at it without reaching from a distance. There's nowhere to put a step stool any closer in, so I can't safely even see the top shelf. The cleaning lady keeps putting stuff I need up there. I think it's because my stuff is things like ziplocs of toothbrushs or dental floss. Every time I need something, I end up dumping things into the toilet accidentally.

Update and maintain our list of canned goods.

Update and maintain our list of freezer contents.

Figure out a good way to label food in the fridge with the date it went in.

Figure out a good way to put on my hiking boots without destroying my hands. If I can do that, I may set a goal about gaining a specific Ingress badge or two (which will require going out and walking). If I can't, walking outside won't be safe until some time in April.

Shelve the books piled in the basement. Move books from living room to dining room or basement or study.

Watch the DVDs I own but haven't watched yet.

Donate more books that I'm never going to read again. Donate jigsaw puzzles.

Finish 6 of my shortish WIP. I've picked a few that I think will be straightforward to complete.

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

Scott and Cordelia are up at his parents' place to celebrate his sister's birthday. I'm on the verge of falling over, so we all three concluded that I'd be better off staying home. It's an hour's drive each way, and there wouldn't have been any good options for me to lie down there.

Scott was very stressed this morning because he likes making photo cards for family birthdays and didn't manage one for his sister. I think it became a bigger failure in his mind than it really should be. She'd have liked one, but she also knows that we're not getting many cute kid photos now that all of the local kids are high school and older.

I'm trying to get myself back on track with the various things that need to be done. The fact that I can only be on my feet for a minute or two at a time is making it harder, and I keep pushing to finish things when I shouldn't and then end up unable to do anything at all. I just have to remind myself that I'm better off stopping in the middle and then coming back than I am not being able to do anything at all later today or tomorrow.

I've got a couple of appointments this week. I think I'm going to have to rely on cabs for them because I'm unlikely to make it back home if I go out by bus.

Scott and I have talked a bit more about the 2nd shift thing. He's holding onto the idea that it's temporary and will end by mid-December. I'm concerned that this is going to be a thing that keeps getting extended for 'a few more weeks' over and over because the staffing problems on 2nd shift are chronic. They can't keep employees, partly due to the time of day and partly due to lack of training (nobody wants to run big machines when they don't know what they're doing. Go figure), and kind of desperately need people exactly like Scott in terms of experience and reliability. Scott's space on 1st shift was filled more than a year ago, and 2nd shift is about three people down from where it should be.

I need to get Scott to apply for an absentee ballot. He'll be working 6:45 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. (or 8:00 p.m.) on election day. Even if he gets out of work on time, he can't possibly make it back here before the polls close. There's only one thing on the ballot, a millage for school maintenance/repair, and those usually pass under that circumstances, but... I would not like to see those expenses pulled out of the general fund. The local schools already have issues with insufficient funds there.

It looks like pomogranates are going on the 'not even in trace amounts' list with raspberries, blueberries, and strawberries. I had some candies containing pomogranate juice twice last week and ended up with intestinal trouble both times. I'm not pleased by this.

I'm also eying the Skittles that Scott bought for Halloween and wondering if the 'natural flavors' includes anything on the above list. I may test that later this week, but I'm not enthusiastic about dealing with the repercussions.

There's a family medicine practice in the same building where Cordelia's pediatrician is. I'm going to call them this week and see if Scott and I can transfer care there once we can no longer go to UHS. I don't like the location much, but getting there is feasible if I'm up to walking a bit (the UM shuttle doesn't actually stop near the building, so there'll be a 10 minute plus walk from the nearest stop) and if I'm up to sitting in the lot by 23 to wait for the transfer between the city bus and UM shuttle. It's something like a $17 cab ride each way (UHS is $11 once I add tip).

I really don't want to try to work with a new primary care doctor. Everything is so vastly complicated, and my UHS records go back to 1985.

Okay, back to the to-do list. I've got two things that I can do without a lot of physical effort and that aren't going to make me melt down mentally. After that, everything left is either physically too much or a thing that I really can't cope with at all but that has to be done ASAP (and has been flamingly urgent for over a week).

Most of the latter has to do with the LTD thing. I keep looking at what my mother has written and feeling like I need to qualify statements. For example, it says I can't tie my shoes. I often can't, but I did it once last week. Cue me freaking out over the statement. Lather, rinse, repeat without ceasing.

My mother is also concerned that the LTD people will find my fanfic and argue that it proves that I'm capable of being 'productive' as a freelancer. I'm not sure how to address that. I have periods when I suddenly write several short things or manage a single long thing, but I also have long periods when I don't write anything at all for weeks because I can't. A big part of me being able to write those things, though, is that the expectations and pressure are low. If I don't come up with anything, nothing particularly terrible happens.

A person being able to bake cookies occasionally in no way suits them to self-supporting by making cookies.

Most of today's to-do list carries over from yesterday.

( To-do list )

I got through about four pages of the fourteen page questionnaire yesterday before my elbows started hurting horribly. Apparently typing straight through as fast as I can is different from composing as I type. When I compose, I pause a lot and move around in the text to rework things, effectively giving my arms and hands micro-breaks. I also wander off to read DW when anything starts to twinge. Yesterday, I typed for 30-40 minutes straight and then couldn't do more. For about an hour, I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to do things like open my water bottle to refill it, but things calmed down enough for that.

Right at the moment, I'm trying to deal with the urgent things before starting today's stint on the paperwork. This section is all work history and has a lot of things that I really can't remember. I don't recall my hourly rate for the waitress job I had for less than two months the summer after I turned seventeen. I'm fifty two; I'm not sure I can reasonably be expected to remember much of anything that happened when I was seventeen.

Mainly, I remember that I made more in an evening of babysitting than I did in a full shift at that job. I just only got babysitting jobs Fridays and Saturdays.

Cordelia took care of getting the trash and recycling out yesterday. I was grateful because getting the trash out is hard on my hands. The bag opening is stretched tight on the bin in the kitchen, and it needs hand strength to get it loose. I can manage the rest without being too hard on my hands, but that part is nearly impossible. Putting bags in place in that bin is more or less beyond me now, too. (I can. I can also drop hammers on my toes or slam the door on my head. Apart from being necessary, it's in that class of unwise actions.)

I have to go out this afternoon/evening. That or I have to persuade someone else to do it. Well, I suppose that the library book won't be overdue until the library opens Friday morning, so I could have Scott do all the other things.

I slept badly last night, probably because I'm stressed out about the paperwork and about the appointment next week. It's hard to say. I kind of need to get the paperwork done quickly because it's going to keep me from sleeping well until it's completed.

I woke with a headache. Coffee and food helped it, but it was that sort of thing that comes with my body needing sleep but also being too wired to allow me to sleep.

Drat. I just realized that a DVD set I got from the library that I thought had a long check out period only has a one week check out. I haven't even started it, so I expect I won't be able to finish it. Especially given that Scott wants to deal with the library run tomorrow instead of Sunday. He and Cordelia are heading up to East Lansing on Sunday to see Hamilton, so trying to wedge in a Sunday trip seems like a bad idea.

Maybe I'll just take the bus into town on Sunday. It's a thing I'm capable of doing, or I could pay the 25 cent fine for keeping it a day longer.

My back is doing better today, and Scott got the dryer vent tube cleaned out last night. He used the leaf blower for most of it (I had to hold it so that it didn't move while he was working) and the vacuum cleaner for the parts built into the wall and the dryer. He had forgotten that it needed doing until I reminded him. The taking the tube down and putting it back is definitely the hardest part.

I've done two loads of laundry today and have at least one more to wash. After that, I've got another half a load and might wait to wash those.

I need to spend this weekend writing. I have a fic exchange story due that I haven't managed to start yet.

I regret that I didn't take time to deal with the dishes yesterday. I've ran the dishwasher twice today. My hands are very unhappy about this because getting things out of the dishwasher is much, much harder than putting them in. I try to have Cordelia do that part as much as I can, but I had missed how many dirty dishes we had because I hadn't realized that the dishwasher was nearly full.

I started a load of laundry before I emptied the dishwasher, and I tried to do some cooking. The latter task ran aground on the food I planned to cook being bad. I want to make banana bread, but the bananas aren't quite overripe enough yet, and my hands really weren't up to it after the cleaning.

I talked Cordelia through refilling the cold brew coffee thingy. I normally do it because I'm the one who tracks when it's empty. I don't drink it, but I pour Scott's mug (he drinks it cold and unmixed with anything else) and prepare Cordelia's every morning.

I'll probably leave switching over the laundry until Cordelia gets home. I'm not sure I can manage that on top of what I've already done.

I wanted to change the top sheets and pillowcases on our bed. We changed the fitted sheet yesterday because I sloshed coffee on it while reaching for a kleenex to clean up coffee that I'd sloshed on a library book on my bedside table while I was trying to set the cup down.

I considered going out to get my hair cut today, but I failed my morale check and stayed home. I think I need a different haircut because the long hair is giving me issues. It's exhausting to wash, and I keep moving wrong when I brush it. I'm safe down to a certain point. Then I twist my wrist to shift my grip and keep my brush moving.