the_rck

Scott and Cordelia caught the train home without problems, but there were a lot of delays, so they got back three hours after the scheduled arrival time. Scott had parked over near the station, so they could just head straight for the car whenever they got in. I wasn't trying to meet them at the station.

I'd hoped that the train would be on time because then we could have gone out for lunch, but I was in the middle of my medication related afternoon fast when they got home. Also, it was late enough that I wouldn't have dared to order much beyond pancakes.

Scott and Cordelia both slept a considerable chunk of the afternoon because they got to bed late and had to get up around 5 a.m. to be sure of getting to the train home.

They both say that they enjoyed the show. They were less happy about the dinner beforehand because our SIL made reservations at the sort of place where the cheapest entree is $26 and the cheapest appetizer/salad is at least $15. They both got the cheapest entree available. Scott had to send his back because it included unadvertised bacon that would have made him exceedingly sick (they'd definitely have missed their train). The restaurant remade the dish, and he didn't get sick afterwards, so they must have done it carefully.

I finished Killing Eve season 2 in plenty of time to return it today. Scott and I still have some library Blu-rays to get through. I think I'm going to avoid getting Blu-rays as much as possible from here on out because setting up the captioning for the player requires 8-12 extra clicks. I can handle 2-4 without agony, but that many is hard. I think I could do it if I had something that would hold the remote for me, but nothing we have in the living room is at the right height to let me set the remote down and just push buttons.

Yesterday was overall awful for me in ways that were due to other people being completely thoughtless in understandable ways. I'm still kind of mad at Scott because we've been married for 25 years. I ought to be able to count on him to be paying attention and to advocate for me when I can't do it myself.

He feels that it's unfair for me to expect him to understand and to keep current on all of my health issues. From his point of view, I need to tell him specifically when there's an issue and then remind him when it's pertinent. Every damned time it comes up.

( Details and venting )

I was upset enough last night that I just stayed in our room and didn't interact except with Scott and Cordelia. I was afraid that I'd either break down crying or actually punch somebody. (One BIL mansplains loudly and constantly. My FIL is evangelical about whatever he's currently into and won't accept the possibility that the research is questionable).

Nobody intentionally hurt me. I had hoped to avoid having people realize that it was more than me feeling physically unwell, but Scott tells me that everyone knows I'm upset.

Scott went out and got me a tiny container of Haagen-Daaz last night. I watched a bunch of episodes of Murder She Wrote and tried to calm down. I just still found myself getting cranky and picking at inconsistencies and misuse of vocabulary and generally not being to sort of person who could handle being around extended family.

Today, I ended up with both a menstrual migraine and cramps and so only went downstairs briefly for breakfast. I took Tylenol when I got up. I took naproxen two hours later and an Amerge not long after that. I took another Amerge four hours after the first. I can sit up without dizziness/head pain now. I still have nausea and cramps.

I don't usually get both cramps and migraine, so yesterday's upset may be contributing. It might also just be perimenopause and crap timing.

I expect to go down for dinner, but mainly, I want to go home and not have to deal with this.

It rained yesterday (Tuesday. I'm late posting this) morning, and we all mostly stayed inside all day. Mid-afternoon, Scott, Cordelia, and I went for a drive to a nearby small town that has a bookstore. Cordelia drove both ways because Scott couldn't find any shoes but his flip-flops.

Scott and I knocked out some Ingress portals in hopes of taking down some large fields. We got one set of nested fields, but the bigger one, the one covering where we're staying, was anchored further on, and Cordelia was already complaining that we were wasting her time. Also, we needed to get back here in order to cook dinner.

We found Scott's shoes pretty much as soon as we got back, so I'm very glad he didn't buy from the only place we could find selling shoes-- That was a hole in the wall sporting goods place that had one thing his size-- a pair of sandals for $150. If we'd had more time for our excursion, we might have looked further, but the nearest other place Google suggested would have added half an hour to our trip without us even going into the store, so... not happening.

Yesterday had a lot of me starting to do things and then realizing that I was missing something that I would need someone else's help to obtain.

I did manage to back up a bunch of WIP and fragments to the DW account I use for that purpose. That hadn't been on my initial to-do list, but it counts as an accomplishment. I want to keep things backed up there constantly, but in practice, it happens in batches, so I kind of end up spamming the half dozen (or fewer) people who follow that account (I keep the stuff access locked so that no one stumbles on it and thinks it's meant to be complete).

Cordelia's friends are coming over this afternoon. I'm not sure what Scott and I will do. We need to do the library run, and I really would like to shop for some of the things the OT recommended.

Scott and Cordelia went to see Christopher Robin yesterday. Scott's work called mid-movie, so I had to call him, and he had to leave the movie to deal with the problem. The guy said he was from the warehouse, so it must have been either an issue with trailers or an issue with having too much or too little of something that's supposed to ship over the weekend.

Scott remarked that he understood the irony of being called out of this particular movie for off-hours work stuff. He also said that he expected the stuffed animals in the movie to be creepy but instead found them charming.

I spent a while talking to Scott's sister yesterday about planning for the family vacation. She's hoping that the fact that the rental claims to have a 'commercial kitchen' will mean at least two refrigerators (the listing only mentions the singular) and will have some sort of indoor grill. I told her that, while we might be that lucky, contingency plans couldn't hurt.

I also persuaded her that we need to buy any specifically gluten free and/or dairy free substitutes for things we know we're going to use and take them with us. I expect that there will be something available within a half hour drive that might work in a pinch, but I wouldn't want to rely on finding particular brands or even particular items. I have my own short list of things I want to buy here and transport because I need a specific brand rather than a more generic type of thing. That is, I'm good with English muffins or almonds of any brand, but I only know one brand of chicken sausage that's safe. If I don't have those, I'm suddenly down six meals.

I discovered last night that moving a three pound weight in particular ways on the side with the bad shoulder makes it not hurt for about twenty minutes afterward. I guess I'm going to be doing that a lot. It only takes about thirty seconds, so the tradeoff is more than worth it.

The pathology report came back on the mass they removed from my SIL. Everything looks best case. She'll likely be released Friday or Saturday. She was allowed to eat some eggs today.

She says her only restriction will be on lifting. I was concerned because the vacation rental doesn't have any bedrooms or (more importantly) showers on the first floor and was prepared to try to persuade the rental company to let us trade for a different house somewhere else within a certain driving distance of here. I'm just as happy not to have to, but I was prepared to do battle.

I have set up a Gdoc for the family to work on meal planning and on who's bringing what. I'm hoping that we can do some reasonable work in that direction (also, working on something like that helps ground me deal when I'm freaking out).

I'm letting the DCU Bang slide for the moment. I've asked to be put on the 'solo track' which means that I'm not matched with an artist and won't let anyone down if I can't finish.

I've got a story that can work for Iddy Iddy Bang Bang that's in spitting distance of done, so I think I'll be good on that one. I'm pretty sure I won't find a beta reader for it, but... It's also not a thing that many not-me people are going to want to read because it's another branch of the Sky High darkfic behemoth, "Not Ready to Swallow Oblivion." I suspect that I will be hard to match for art for that, and I will tell the mods that I don't mind if I don't match at all because I really don't. I just wanted to see if I could manage a deadline.

The other things I was considering for IIBB were a crossover between "Not Ready to Swallow Oblivion" and "All the Faces We Were," several stories in "House of Sulfur and Mercury," a crossover between The Pretender and another show that I haven't actually watched and can't get my hands on without spending money, a sequel to my recent Star Trek Mirror Universe story. Actually, I considered a lot of different fic sequel options for this. I can argue that any story that eats my brain is iddy.

I left a message today with the roofing company that we want to have do our garage roof. I'm sure we're past the point when the estimate we got was good, but we have the ability to pay for it now, and that's actually more important.

I'm probably not going to visit the hospital again before my SIL is discharged. We're back to the must wash all the bedding daily again for the next four days, and I can't do that and go out for something stressful and optional. I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow morning, and dealing with that and the laundry will be hard enough. At least it's July; we can probably get by with 2-3 loads of laundry a day instead of 4-6.

I probably should put some ebooks on my phone. Carrying physical books adds weight I really can’t handle, and I keep thinking I’ll do something on my phone and then realizing that I don’t have WiFi or a good signal. I’m not interested in games, but maybe I could get some things that are easy to reread and put a couple on here. I could rotate them. I want rereads because trying new things while I’m out is more stressful than staring into space. (This is why I’m not browsing new-to-me fic when I’m bored and have WiFi.)

I’m at PT now. After I’ll go downtown. I have business at the credit union and the library. Given the timing, I’ll likely get lunch, too.

We checked out of our hotel about 11 yesterday morning and got breakfast at a diner-ish place. Then we met my parents at the Air Zoo. I had cramps, so I ended up sitting in the cafeteria area. Cordelia mostly just read her book. We started home around 2. When we got to Ann Arbor, Scott went to the Barnes & Noble because he’d promised Cordelia a trip there. I sat in the coffee shop area while they browsed. I was cranky about being there at all when I was so close to home and the possibility of lying down. Scott explained later that, if he’d taken me home, he wouldn’t have been able to make himself go back out.

Cordelia spent most of her time on the trip counting minutes until we went home. It’s sad that none of us really wanted to be there.

The free breakfast here turns out to be almost entirely bread type stuff. I was hoping for something protein-ish that I could eat, but the closest they got was peanut butter which I can't eat. I'm going to be running on fumes by the time we get lunch. We'll try to buy something today so that I have protein available tomorrow morning.

I slept badly last night. I couldn't figure out how to untangle the layers on the bed so as to be covered without overheating (the quilt has a sheet over it and a sheet under it. The layers separate, but things are set up to make separation challenging). The bed's firmer than I'm comfortable with.

I've hit 12K words on the thing that will probably end up being my Iddy Iddy Bang Bang story. There's another story I might go with instead, but that's at a point where I need to figure out Actual Plot.

I haven't moved forward at all on my DC mini bang story in the last couple of days. I may need to just put in a bracketed note about what needs to happen and move on to write later scenes. I think those will tell me what needs to replace the bracketed bits.

Cordelia had her last drive with the driver's ed instructor yesterday at 9 a.m. I got up when she did, but she told me to go back to bed because I looked exhausted. I ended up getting up not long after she and Scott left. I was still pretty tired, but I wanted to watch some library DVDs while they were out.

We went to Bob Evans after the class ended. Service was really, really abysmal. They were maybe a quarter full, if that, but our food took three times as long to arrive as it normally would, and the waitress brought two glasses of water for the three of us. I ended up not getting any until after Cordelia and Scott had finished eating. We asked a second time for that, and it didn't come. Scott actually went up to the counter for the third request, and it still took 5-10 minutes to get it.

I don't know what was going on in the kitchen, but the water thing is on the waitress. There were multiple waitresses, too, so it wasn't one person run off her feet. She just couldn't be bothered to check in on us or to follow up. I have no idea what sort of tip Scott gave. I hope he still tipped adequately.

I've frozen a lot of my library holds. I don't want to try to get to the library during Art Fair, and we'll be away on our normal library day anyway. I thought about switching them to a branch library, but doing that seems like more juggling at a point in time when we'll be busy. The ones I didn't freeze are those that I don't expect to come in for a very long time (If I'm 27th on the list for one of four copies, odds are that it will be months. Even if everyone else on the list managed a single day turn-around, it wouldn't come in by the weekend).

Scott's family is discussing the things we can do during our week together in August. The elephant in the room is the fact that absolutely none of the grandkids actually want to do the outdoor activities available. Scott's parents picked this place because it has canoeing, kayaking, swimming, hiking, pontoon boat rentals, and beautiful scenery. Only one of the grandkids is young enough to surrender and have a good time when dragged to do something she's not interested in. She's seven. The next youngest is fourteen.

Anyone who wants family togetherness is going to need to accept occasional walks to the beach for swimming (less than a block away) and a lot of board games.

I'm working on my due diligence for the August primary and trying to figure out the local candidates. annarborvotes.org is a pretty good resource in that direction, and I'm really glad to have it. I still need to look at the candidates for governor and for state senate (our federal representative and senator are unopposed in their primaries). None of the judges will be on the ballot in August, and the ones I could vote for are all running unopposed in November.

I ended up going with Scott to take Cordelia and her friend to the restaurant. The plan was that I'd wait wherever he and I ended up for dinner until after he took the 3-4 kids to the dance. We had trouble finding a restaurant and ended up at Seva, a vegetarian place. We tend not to go there because my food options are severely limited by needing to avoid tomatoes and peppers and walnuts and peanuts and eggs.

I ended up ordering a cup of soup and two sides, asparagus and sweet potato fries. The soup wasn't edible by me, and Scott didn't care for it either. The menu said 'butternut-apple bisque,' and I couldn't taste either apples or butternut squash. It went more toward the savory end of flavor, and I couldn't place the herbs, so I didn't force myself to eat more than a couple of spoonfuls. I was concerned that the soup contained something that would make me sick. The restaurant ended up removing the soup from our bill. We hadn't asked them to. I'd have been cranky about spending $4 on a cup of inedible soup, but I did order it, so...

I also got dessert, banana cheesecake. It was recognizably cheesecake, but even though I could see banana chunks, I couldn't taste the banana at all. Scott tried it and also couldn't taste the banana, so I'm again puzzled. I think that, when something with a particular flavor is in the name, it's weird not to be able to taste even a trace of that in the food.

Cordelia's only comment about the dance was that it was loud and that the music was terrible. I'm not sure if the latter refers to sound quality or to song choice.

Scott's parents have reserved a house for a family vacation next summer. They didn't consult with us about potential conflicts first but did consult Scott's brother and sister, so we're a bit puzzled. We won't know for at least another month whether or not Scott can get that time off, and I'm pretty sure that the timing will mean that Cordelia couldn't do choir camp even if she wanted to. (Though Scott thinks the location of the house is actually kind of near Interlochen.) Scott's parents have promised to 'help' us with the costs but want us to tell them how much we can afford to pay. Which is both reasonable and burdensome because Scott finds it shaming.

To be honest, I'm not sure we can afford anything but gas money and our share of the groceries. I'm not convinced that Scott will be able to tell his parents that. He was able to say, months ago, that we couldn't go because we couldn't afford it. Now, we can't just not do it. We have to figure out what we can scrape together and ask for the rest. I understand why Scott's parents want everyone there. They're both 75 (and will be 76 next summer), and their oldest grandchild is 18 and in college. The odds of getting him to come to future family vacations aren't really all that great. The odds of Scott's parents being up to such a vacation in three years, five years, ten years... Yeah.

Is it weird that I feel that 'tell us what you can afford, and we'll cover the rest' is more embarrassing than 'because you can't afford it, we'll cover the expenses'?

It ended up taking us a lot longer to get on the road yesterday than we’d planned, so we didn’t get to Kalamazoo until around 5:00. My parents and my brother came by about an hour after we arrived, and we all went to dinner. The hotel where we are doesn’t have a restaurant, but the Holiday Inn next door does, and we ate there.

We talked a bit about the ways that the internet has changed learning and research. Mom commented that, when she looks at videos about refinishing furniture, a lot of the people don’t have the slightest clue how to do what they claim to be expert in. My brother commented that it’s now so easy to look things up that nobody bothers to memorize anything. We all talked about encyclopedias and how neat we used to think they were. Well, Cordelia didn’t. She doesn’t remember encyclopedias at all.

My parents are having some issues with the cold and the snow after more than a decade in Baton Rouge. They had thought they were ready for it, that they remembered, but it’s different when it’s 2F and there’s a foot of snow on the ground. Their dogs love the snow, but one of them has little body fat and very thin fur and so has to come inside regularly or she’ll freeze. The other dog is apparently much more suited to cold weather and so is loving the time outside. Mom said that that dog is normally a couch potato in Baton Rouge because it’s too hot for her.

Today, we got up just barely in time to have some of the free breakfast that the hotel does (closing up at 9:00 on weekdays). I was surprised— Most breakfast things like that do scrambled eggs, but this buffet had peeled hard boiled eggs and a bunch of very rubbery looking fried eggs. There was a boxy machine that made pancakes on demand and pork sausage that was mild enough that I could eat it but otherwise not much of note, just lots of bread adjacent stuff.

My parents had things they needed to do for the early part of the morning, so they got here about 11:00, and we all went to the Kalamazoo Air Zoo. Scott was in seventh heaven. My parents had somehow missed his enthusiasm for planes and how much he knows about them, so they were a little astonished. Scott and my step-father hiked to the secondary building while Cordelia and I got smoothies and sat with my mother and talked. The secondary building had things that people could actually climb into and had an area where a bunch of people were restoring a plane that had recently been pulled out of Lake Michigan.

Apparently Lake Michigan was the training ground for aircraft carrier pilots during WWII, and a number of planes went down there. At this point, it’s a race against time to recover them because of zebra mussels. The plane they were working on was one that had gone down right after take off when the engine just died with no explanation. It was the pilot’s third time going up, and he wasn’t even injured, but they weren’t able to save the plane.

(The 'aircraft carriers' on Lake Michigan were some sort of repurposed cruise ships that had had paddle wheels and such. My step-father said his best guess was that they’d been brought in from the Mississippi.)

Scott really very much wants to do the sort of work that these guys were doing. It’s a volunteer gig, and they’re constantly looking for people with a love of planes and some skill with tools. Scott says that, maybe, when he retires, he’ll be able to do something like that.

We had lunch at a Japanese restaurant that Scott found via Google. Then we all drove twenty minutes to Three Rivers to visit a very large used book store called Lowry’s. I bought a lot of used romance novels, things the library doesn’t have, at a little more than half what I’d pay on Amazon, and some mysteries.

My parents had to head back to Lawton before I was done browsing. There’s a limit to how long they can leave the dogs alone. About then, it started snowing more heavily. The road back to Kalamazoo goes through a good bit of very, very flat farmland, so the wind was whipping through. I called my mother when we got back to our hotel and told her that I didn’t think they should drive back our way for dinner. My brother disagreed vehemently because he considers that sort of weather trivial, something that happens every week or so all winter. Our parents tried to come to Kalamazoo but ended up turning back. My brother says that their mistake was trying to take 94, that they should have taken Red Arrow (an old highway) because nobody ever goes more than 45 mph along that and because, unlike 94, it has shelter from the wind. I pointed out to him that it’s been at least two decades since either of them drove in the snow. That makes a huge difference.

We had dinner with my brother in a pub sort of place called Gallagher’s. Scott and I both had chicken pot pie and weren’t entirely satisfied with it. My brother picked the place because it was only about five minutes from our hotel and pretty easy to find. I’m pretty sure Cordelia was bored stiff by the conversation which was mostly political griping. (My brother reports that our mother has been hearing people at the hardware store talking about how Trump’s cabinet picks prove that he’s abandoning the people who voted for him. Van Buren County is about as red as it gets, so this is actually a fairly big deal.)

Tomorrow, Scott’s hoping that he, Cordelia, and my parents can go to a movie. He’s also talking about trying to find a store that carries superhero related t-shirts that Cordelia will like. I’m not optimistic on that bit because she’s already rejected the sort of thing that Target carries. I will likely just hang out in our room all day, either listening to audiobooks or watching Steven Universe.

My left foot is killing me from the walking I did today. My Achille’s tendon hurts a lot, and the area where it attaches to my heel (is that the calcaneous bone? I seem to remember it being, but we did bones in seventh grade, so…) is a bit puffy. Also, my skin seems to be reacting to the sock glue, so having a day when I don’t need it would be really nice.