Saw Dr. Bitsblobs yesterday. Not sure I actually like him that much, because he did not strike me as having a strong attention to detail. Saw dentist on Monday, who wanted me to get some work done before chemo. Dr. Bitsblobs wants to know why she wants me to get it done NOW before he will authorize it. (The clinic will not even schedule me before they have the signed form.) I also am unsure if I have the meds that I'll need for the side effects. He could have sent them to the pharmacy! I could have lost them! It's entirely plausible that I put them somewhere "safe". But they're not in MyChart. The palliative care doctor looked for them and doesn't even see what they're supposed to be.

Anyhow, I'm off to get a microchip or whatever.

Belovedest got their results last night; Alex and I got ours this morning. Negative. 404, COVID not found.

We have therefore shopped. Hooray.

Poor Yellface. This evening she had several bad choices in front of her, and chose the least actually bad. More below.


( pills and such )

( a cold, we all hope )


And now, the cat emergency.

Alex made some pizza rolls, and I dug out chicken samosas and cheesy buns plus a microwave meal for me. I vaguely registered that Yellface was pawing at some things, but since she often paws at jackets etc. left within her grasp, preparatory to nesting in them, I didn't give it a second thought. I was curled up playing gems when I noticed that Yellface had assumed a squatting position on the non-woven fabric sack that I had cleared some papers into. I interrupted her mid-piss, and there followed a lot of excitement. I pulled papers out without spilling (somehow), Belovedest picked it up (likewise), Alex fetched a dog towel (fortunately), and Belovedest retrieved the rest of the papers. While Belovedest was emptying the litterbox and clearing the access with Alex (after having previously obscured it in the installation of the glass chair mat), I decided to scope out what Yellface was doing. She was in the kitchen looking sorry for herself instead of finding another place. I apologized and opened the basement door so she could go to her downstairs box. Belovedest did observe her peeing there as they washed out the box in the utility sink. Once they'd come back upstairs and filled the litterbox, she signified her approval by using it. We all apologized to her, and she gradually became less indignant. Sorry, baby.

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.)

My arm felt worse before it felt better, but as of this morning I could not detect any remaining soreness.

This morning, Belovedest got the letter from their healthcare outfit, letting them know that they were eligible for vaccination, and could they please schedule an appointment.

My general plans for the day involved replacing clock and smoke detector batteries, and marking the 10-year detectors with the approximate date of their expiration, so's we could make shopping-list preparations when that time rolls around. Those plans were ... somewhat upended, though I think most of the clocks and detectors did get done? Maybe?

So off we zoomed to get Belovedest's shot, and I practiced French in the car and poked a little list I was making. They came out shortly, with a second appointment scheduled. I put it in the calendar, then we got started on the list.

Dollar store - miscellaneous things including rubber bands (for mask securement) and balloons (mead-making)

Drive through - fries and cold drinks

Restaurant supply store - honey!

Discount grocery with bulk bins - dried pineapple and other tidbits, plus a bucket opener and spices for butter chicken

Naturally, there was no scooter available. Which was unfortunate, because I was starting to hurt a lot. We had a choice of a few registers, and I was about to put us behind an older man with just a few things, when I spotted that he was wearing his mask as a chin-strap. So I dodged and put us behind a party with two carts, who were wearing their masks properly ... Except one of them pulled her mask off to talk to the cashier. (Who didn't look all that impressed, but also didn't look empowered to say You Put That Back On Right This Instant.)

Naturally, every disaster befell this transaction. A bottle of juice tipped over, went splat on the floor, blew its top, and started pouring all over. I got out of the way. This halted the transaction. I poked Belovedest and asked if they could go run find another jug of juice, and pointed out the juice aisle. They headed in that direction ... and overshot the aisle, and proceeded out of range. The person not wearing the mask also zipped back towards the back of the store, and came back with two items which were not the juice, but which were evidently important.

The cashier had called for cleanup, and then everything stopped again while someone came up with the floor cleaner and did several passes over the obvious visible juice, first employing the squeegie and vacuum to suck up the spilled juice, then spraying the floor down to ensure that the last stickiness was gone. He did not check the next aisle over that we could see, even though some of the juice had absolutely sprayed under a display rack.

The customer's return came right about the time the juice cleanup was done, and her companion was diligently bagging the stuff as all this went on. At length everything had been scanned, and it was time for payment. The customer had a card that she was going to be using for the transaction, but it was not present, so she had to do manual entry. This failed. She tried it again, in case there had been an error. This also failed. She put her mask back on and headed over to the ATM. The cashier apologized to me for the delay; she thought she might have been able to start ringing me up on the other lane, but the computer would not let her do that (I guess no way to suspend the transaction?) I mentioned that back in the day I had also been a cashier. "So you know," she concluded, with some relief/satisfaction. Yup. Yup, I know.

The customer returned with the requisite cash, and the transaction concluded. Hooray! We were rung up quickly and professionally with no trouble.

By the time we were done, it was early evening and I was D-O-N-E done. I took two ibuprofen and retreated to my bed with Voltaren gel, in the probably vain hope I could get it close enough to my hip joint to do something. Given that I conked out in short order, it must have done some good. I woke up when the roast vegetables were out of the oven, which was pretty good timing.

Yesterday night was not a good night for sleeping, since the left side of my nose refused to drain, resulting in me sleeping mostly on my right side for the whole night.

Yesterday day I discovered that the "lower back" pain that I've been dealing with for a while? Positioned wrong to be kidney pain. Positioned exactly right to be hip pain.

I spent most of yesterday in a muscle relaxant doze with spikes of extremely annoyed hip. I crawled out of bed this morning for long enough to hose myself off in the shower, then crawled back to bed with extremely wet hair and slept until well after noon.

Today the eligibility tiers rolled in my favor.

Which is why at around 1pm I was scrabbling through listings for where we could go to get jabbed. I found a likely-looking place, figured I'd try to book something for both me and Alex at the same time, selected 1:50pm for shits and giggles (the minimum comfortable amount of time I thought I could get out the door and there) intending to try for a second appointment for Alex, it asked me to log in with MyChart, and while it was working on that I ran to get going-out clothes and by the time I got back, holy shit it had made the appointment and it was time to DIVE OUT THE DOOR and get Alex's appointment while on the road. Which I didn't say out loud until we were already on the road and the location was out of appointments. Naturally. They got an appointment at a nearby-ish location at 3:30, as I foresaw random delays.

( Read more... )

I asked Alex whether we should go straight home or try for some bananas at one of the local food distribution points. And since that was close to the local Sonic...

So we arrived home with a bunch of banana-bread-ready bananas, a few apples, and BORGOR for the whole household (minus cats). Murderface had been doing anxiety-laps while we were away, then knocked over the trash can in search of BORGOR (the juice on my discarded tomatoes, because I'd forgotten to specify no tomato).

Alex and I are scheduled for the same time and place for our #2 vaccines, in April.

Belovedest has yet to hit eligibility, although I have finally gotten off my ass to petition the relevant government agency to add their category of workplace to the list. Given that places in their library system with the biggest digital access gaps are already starting to open to the public for internet access purposes, I think that adding government employee librarians who have to do more-than-curbside is a reasonable step. We'll see if I get a reply.

I think two people from #AdventuresOfStNoNo got theirs today as well.

Apparently the numbers are creeping in the wrong direction, but WA is one of the less-bad states. So we sorted our candy into the three major categories and put them in labeled bins. Fruit, chocolate, chocolate with peanuts.

Little clusters of kids drifted past occasionally. There was an inflated Pikachu.

The candy was outside, on the front porch. We were inside, behind the closed glass storm door. alexseanchai was an Angst With Happy Ending writer. Belovedest had on a fun shirt and a dragon tail. I painted their face green. I was a witch on laundry day -- floral black skirt, bleach-stained black top, witchy makeup, hair loose with sprayed-in glitter, tiny hat on a headband.

We got about half as many kids as last year.

After that, the local NaNo chapter watched The Mummy. The living room had commentary.

Earlier, I'd puttered around in the basement on the phone with Ev. All of everything has been catching up. She might come down here. Meow Meow is on some new meds. ( Read more... )

Monday is Ev's day to pack up her stuff from work. The office is staying closed until mid-2021 at minimum. She has Tuesday off as a company-wide holiday.

Depending, I may spend Tuesday downstairs or in bed.

https://verysmartbrothas.theroot.com/the-difference-between-a-karen-and-a-becky-explained-1842708257

As told to IRC, with some elaboration:

I had some species of apoca-Becky encounter yesterday.

I made the foolish decision to venture forth to the closing of a JoAnn's (50+% off everything left, last day 5/28). Opening time was noon; I arrived at 12:06 and waited for 2 hours in socially distanced line; I foolishly forgot any sort of seat.

02:53 PM neilathotep oh no, closing for good!?
02:53 PM azurelunatic Just that one location
02:53 PM neilathotep oh ok
02:54 PM neilathotep i was wonderin since it seems they are doing some gang busters onlline


Some nice chats with a neighbor in the line, most people in line masked or with masks ready for inside.

By the time I got inside I was already sore and tired, because these days I can about manage 5 minutes standing without much pain. But they were doing a good job with managing the number of people inside and people were being courteous.

I didn't score an iron or a cricut (my goals) but did get innumerable rolls of ribbon on 80% discount, and fleece at 60%. I set myself a hard budget and came under it.


02:57 PM neilathotep ooh ribbob
02:57 PM neilathotep a blowout cricut would be cool


Unfortunately all the discounts were store-only and had to be keyed in individually, which meant I was standing at the register for what felt like 20 minutes but was probably only 10. It had to go in 2 transactions because the combined number of items + discounts apparently makes the register computers super laggy. So by the time I'm all checked out I'm balancing some ridiculous bags of fleece on the cart and hobbling painfully.

My audio processing is bad at best, and worse when I'm distracted or in pain. When some short little old white lady with hair that reminded me of Mama on a bad hair day popped up by my side, it took me time to figure out that she was asking if I was okay. I wasn't, but not in any way that needed help, so I said I was okay.

She kept bobbing along next to me, telling me I was beautiful, and had a beautiful spirit, and my hair was beautiful (I will agree to that, although it was a mess from all the wind and the colliding with shelves due to excess bolts of fleece).

I recognize the tone as that of someone who is not going to leave you alone unless told to. This is now above and beyond the standard unpleasant interaction of being in public while visibly disabled. (Person sees an obvious disability/struggle and offers help, thinking they're going to be a savior, and gets angry when the help is not accepted.) It had a very desperate vibe to it, like a social vampire who has drained her usual victims and is starving during the socially distanced apocalypse.

I reach my car, she's still following me, so I tell her to step back. She's not wearing a mask, of course. It takes 5 or more times repeating for her to actually get out from within arm's reach. She's arguing that she's not too close. She's small enough that under normal circumstances I wouldn't feel threatened, but I'm in pain and have already used up my physical confrontation energy on trying to get around a tight corner with the bolt of fox fleece (no other people involved, just too many bolts of fleece stacked badly), and she's not wearing a mask and I'm probably not even supposed to be venturing forth thanks to my various underlying conditions.


03:03 PM neilathotep yuck


She eventually huffs off around the corner of my car, and I lose track of her while I'm focused on loading my car in a way that doesn't slam the cart into the shoddy parking of the person next to me. I stomp the cart back to the store, because it looks like they only had about 10 carts circulating (one for each person allowed in the store, I guess, but some people were using 2 to hold their scores), and it's just courteous to return the carts under those circumstances. The cashier thanked me, and I took the opportunity to say that there was a lady out front hassling + not respecting distancing, and it took repeated requests for her to step back.

"Oh, that's not good," says the cashier. I agree.

I pop back out, and I hear her voice again, she's in the line holding forth at street preacher volumes about how we are all in this together, and we must love one another and we will get through this! and we are all beautiful -- ESPECIALLY HER [sic], and she indicates me.

I wave back in the time honored fashion.

https://www.ascii-middle-finger.com/
....................../´¯/)
....................,/¯../
.................../..../
............./´¯/'...'/´¯¯`·¸
........../'/.../..../......./¨¯\
........('(...´...´.... ¯~/'...')
.........\.................'...../
..........''...\.......... _.·´
............\..............(
..............\.............\...

The lady amps up the volume on the "love", and at this point I fucking snap.

At the top of my not inconsiderable lungs, I inform her and the line in general that she was following me way too close and would not leave me alone after I told her to, and I had to tell her so multiple times before she backed off.

She tried to insist that she was following social distance because she was standing far enough away from her line-mates.

That didn't signify, and anyway I was fucking done, so I stomped off to my car.

Then I heard some applause behind me, and I figured that perhaps she had uttered some devastating bon mot in my absence. That was aggravating, but at that point, what can you really do?

I figured that I would take her picture so at least I would have an external memory of what she looked like. (See: faceblindness.) I got my phone set up for map and for taking a picture of her out my window as I went past in the parking lot.

But funny thing: I saw the people ahead of her in the line.
I saw the people behind her.
I did not see her.

I came to the conclusion that in the time I was buckling in and setting up my phone, someone from the store came out and (forcibly?) removed her from the premises. I did see someone about the correct size going across the parking lot, but that didn't filter through until a little later.

I had to ask Belovedest if they had a live mic when I got home. I was bursting with WTF, and it would be unkind to unleash that kind of language on someone's unsuspecting co-workers.

Today I called the location and expressed my thanks to a person who turned out to be a manager for the employees handling stuff yesterday. I was hoping for someone to answer the phone who had actually been there for it, so I could ask for juicy details, but hey, that's what you get.