azurelunatic

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

The other day when I took Alex to an appointment I heard a weird noise behind us when I parked, after I'd turned the car off. Some kind of generator at this location? Weird. I picked up my phone and did something unrelated.

At our next stop, I heard that noise again. Same direction. From where my tote bag was. Fan-like.

I got out and rummaged around in the bag and turned off my menopause fan. Which was lit up. By the multifunction flashlight. (Which is also a fan. And a power bank.) (The menopause fan is also also a power bank.) So I turned that off too.

At home, I low-key thought about it (while re-charging both) until last night, when I decided that what the situation needed was a Mollyguard of the type I'd put on my final work machine at Virtual Hammer.

"Dear, do we have any Sugru?"

There was, in fact, one (possibly expired) packet in the refrigerator (right side swing-out bin in the door, right against the window) and I nabbed it.

The cute bear fan-flashlight-powerbank has the charge port right next to the tiny power button, so I made a narrow coil of the stuff and wrapped it carefully past the charging port, then around in a wider circle that would admit a poking adult-size finger. My finger. (I did not test this with any dragon-size fingers.) And since making it that large meant the surface had sloped down, I added another layer on top, to protect it a little better.

The menopause fan with the noisy water tank has its charge port somewhere slightly more sensible, and its outlet port even better hidden, but the indicator lights are right above the power button. So I carefully peeled off the instructions (which covered the power button but still allowed it to function), and --

"Dear, I don't suppose we have any *white* Sugru?"

... and I added some of the color-shift purple/green glitter I had for Another Project. Which made the black sugru coordinate better with the mint-green fan, at least. And crafted this Mollyguard just as carefully, but without the problem of a slope.

I still had some left, but coincidentally there was my little mint-blue travel fan that I use out on the porch, or Alex uses for various crafts drying. That also has a flush power button. Yet another Mollyguard, this one (thank goodness) uncomplicated.

So, in the time before our heat pumps, we had a window air conditioner. (Still have, actually, just not in use.) Except our windows open the wrong way except a very few in the wrong place: sideways instead of up and down.

This can be solved with Engineering! Note: you may have to make special provisions if you have People Within The House Who Must Not Exit, such as Alex's late Escape Calico, who examined the cracks and crevices around the AC with great interest because she could smell the outside air and she longed for the Wild Places. We used a web of string on the outside in addition to friction; I could also see using a strong elastic cord around a handle anchored somewhere.

Materials:
Air moving device
Foam insulation sheet
Padding (I used the stuff you use to fill stuffed animals & spare fabric scraps)
Cover for padding (I used rags)
Securement for padding cover (I used duct tape but gaffer tape is probably better)
(Optional) Aesthetics cover (especially if you have someone monitoring the outside of your home, such as a rental office or HOA) -- a thrift store fitted sheet in the color of the outside of your blinds, maybe
Something to make sure it stays in and your bowling ball of a cat won't body-slam it out

Step 1. Insert your air-moving device into the window or whatever.
Step 2. Measure the empty space. You are going to be filling this empty space.
Step 3. Obtain a sheet of insulating foam that can be cut down to fit this empty space, with just a little wiggle room so it's just smaller.
Step 4. Around the outside edges of the foam, start attaching padding until it can be squished into place but it doesn't overflow the space
Step 5. Attach the cover for your padding.
(5b. Attach the aesthetics cover, with the nice side pointed out and the side you've pinned or tied into the right shape on the inside.)
Step 6. Set your space filler into the space.
(6b. Adjust if needed.)
Step 7. Do whatever you're going to do to secure it in place.
Step 8. If you have a fan shroud or some other thing to block any gaps in the air-moving device itself, attach those.

( moderate medical shitshow )

* Good: told my nurse explicitly that I didn't care about the position of the curtain, except people keep closing the curtain in the door for privacy and leaving the door partly open.
* Even better: thought to shove the curtain all the way back behind the guest chair (containing protective draggon) which took care of it pretty comprehensively when combined with frequent calls of "door!"
* Mixed: Aranet 4 said carbon dioxide PPM was in the 700s, until some building curfew that was not sufficiently overridden put it into the 1300s.
* They'll file a ticket: the big blue and silver door access button inside that bathroom failed to open the door at least 2 times. It did make clicks, so the problem wasn't me failing to push particularly well (which sometimes I do, but if it did that it needs fixed)

I'm rolling with the assumption that a couple different kinds of appointments are in my future. The clinic is an allegedly scent-free zone (I suspect that if I go in there having used a scented shampoo or something I won't get kicked out, but I'm not about to test this bc that seems extremely rude to everyone) so I will be limited in my opportunities. But!

My skin eats certain kind of scents. Complex layered fragrance with exotic smells? Put it on my tits and it turns into something vanilla musk adjacent. Though it doesn't seem to do quite that with at least certain florals. It's not exactly a curse, because I do like that vanilla musk scent, but it's ... well, I really should start using the scent locket gear that I got.

ursulav is also part of the Class of '23 (a bit ahead of me, and it's the worst class to be in) mentioned her new superpower: mosquitoes no longer like her. One tasted her and flew off in disgust.

Then I saw a review roundup of some BPAL scents. And contemplated my (current) skin chemistry. And thought about it a little more.

OMG, what is this going to do to my skin chemistry. This is going to be fascinating, if I can stand any of the scents I have...

Friday was Interesting!

The shower saga: ( We think this time it may be fixed. We'll see. )

Alex proposed frozen pizza dinner. I counter-proposed Costco pizza dinner, on account of the heat. Belovedest went off to Costco and eventually returned with pizza and it was delicious.

I was too hot to sleep by bedtime (still feeling slightly sunburned despite not having been in the sun) and the shower was out of commission, so I sponged myself down the best I could. I was eventually able to sleep.

I ran the living room air conditioning overnight, because one of the fun parts of heat wave is that it doesn't cool down enough overnight and we start the morning already too hot. Lesson from Arizona: having your climate system at Too Damn Cold overnight means you get a head start on the heat so it's merely Warm during the day, and not Too Damn Hot.

Saturday: we mainly lounged around in the heat, waiting for the shower to be ready to use again. When it was about that time, I went outside and started up the clippers. Belovedest wanted to be shorn. I finished more quickly than usual. Alex wanted to try an undercut. I saved them a lock before entirely getting the sides. I see places that I want to improve if I ever do that again, but they're pleased.

Today, Sunday:
Shopping day. (We did not get the early start we wanted to.)

Since Smort closes before Costco on Sunday, we hit Smort first. The state of the shelves was Somewhat Alarming, and they are limiting customers to two cases of whatever at one time. In addition to the burritos we went in there for, I also grabbed us some chips, some shelf-stable cupcakes, and some almond (and therefore Belovedest-safe) Snickers. I mentioned the State of Things to the checkout clerk in passing, who said that the warehouse is shut entirely down due to the number of sick people there. I'm guessing it was probably Delta. Yikes.

I'm considering this a bellwether about the supply chain. I don't know how many of them were vaccinated. But it's probably time to make sure youse have the supplies to wait out another shutdown of "nonessential" services. Regardless of top-down shutdowns, things are going to halt if too many people are sick at once.

I think we were getting low on toilet paper, so I grabbed one of those at Costco. Belovedest reassured me that we have a lot of frozen, pre-formed hamburgers in the downstairs freezer, and a lot of broccoli as well. Those are two of our staples, and we already have beans and rice.

It was slightly cooler today than yesterday, so after we got the car cooled down from its parked-all-day state, we were able to just whizz around with the windows down. I emptied my water bottle so we made a stop for sustenance (and cool drinks, mostly the cool drinks) on the way from Costco to the pharmacy to retrieve my current batch of meds. Belovedest relayed that two of them are supposed to be coming in tomorrow. Yay.

The-Steph is coming next week. I'm not fully logistically ready for that. I've got a mammogram this week. I'm not sure I'm emotionally ready for that, but it's got to be better than last year when I didn't have my phone available due to it being broken by a battery replacement gone wrong. (I have my next appointment with my counselor the day after, so I can have whatever feelings I'm having in her direction.)

Today's impromptu project: a cover for the cat cage.

Yellface is scheduled to get a spot of radiotherapy in a few weeks. She'll remain isolated while she cools down. To that end, we ordered a reasonably sized cat cage. Belovedest assembled it today. It's down in the basement.

It doesn't quite fit the litter box we thought it might (corner unit, covered). It does fit a low sided bowl thing (the one we got when we thought the pee spots outside the box were because she thought the covered box stinks). Unfortunately, we then discovered that Little Miss Filthy Bachelorette Cat doesn't deliberately pee outside the box, it's just that she doesn't always bother to sit down.

Cats.

So obviously the litter area in the cage needs a splash shield, so the entire basement doesn't get hosed down with radioactive cat piss.

Enter the Garbage Quilt.

Most of our old sheet/blanket collection is being used for other things -- there's a lot of making sure that Sewzb0t Parlor doesn't have a direct line of sight into the, er, more NSFW corner, for example. (We prefer to not expose our housemate to things they can't unsee.) But there were some smaller rags in my sewing bin.

"Let's see if I can see some of these together," I said, then disappeared into the depths of Sewzb0t Parlor, to emerge at intervals with a maniacal cackle and an increasing number of contiguous square feet of assorted cloth.

The thing is not pretty. The cloth is mostly on its last legs. There's no discernable pattern. The thread doesn't match any of the cloth except the underwear section, which is some of the most gonzo sewing I've ever done (it's a mostly straight piece with a slalom seam down the middle). None of the types of fabric match very well, except most of them are jersey knits. You can see through the purple section that used to be my favorite nightgown 15 years ago.

I called the project before I finished on account of dinner. It's fastened to the cage with magnets.

I love it already.