rowyn

Monday, August 4: The DMV Saga

2025-08-10T19:38:20Z

I wanted to make this part of Monday's entry public because the DMV Saga was such a saga.

I fell asleep around 1 am, the night before, so that part was modestly successful.

I woke at 4 am, congested and coughing. I took some Sudafed right away because it was in reach. The coughing persisted, so at 4:30 I got up to take some generic NyQuil. I fell back asleep around 5, and woke again at 6:58. "1 more hour," I told myself, and dozed until 7:30. At that point, I gave up on sleep. Instead, I lay there feeling awful for several minutes until I could convince my body to get out of bed.

I checked on Mom; Dad was with her, staring at the bottle of nystatin powder. "There she is," Mom said. "I need my eye drops. Those are not eye drops."

"No, they are not." I fumbled at her night stand.

"It says ophthalmic on the label," Dad said.

I found the eye drops box. "These are eye drops." I gave them to Mom. I peered at the nystatin label, which says “not for ophthalmic use.”

After she used the drops, I reminded her about my 9AM DMV appointment. "So if you need anything else, I have to do it now." We took care of the things she needed. I blearily left the room to fix breakfast and went upstairs to eat around 8AM. I checked the drive to the DMV: 12 minutes per DuckDuckGo.

At 8:28AM, I went downstairs to get dressed and get ready to go. Once in the car, I put on a podcast and set the Google Maps app for the DMV. Drive time now: 14 minutes. Well, it was 8:40AM now, so still fine on time.

Traffic continued to get worse during the drive. It was a few minutes after 9 when I finally reached the DMV. I immediately realized I’d made the appointment at the wrong DMV. I’d intended to go to the same one where my parents got their licenses. But this was the “closer but a little worse” DMV that my brother M had not recommended. My entry when I got the appointment specified that I’d picked the “nice DMV”, so apparently I misclicked or grabbed the wrong address from my brother’s email on the topic. Too late to do anything about it now. I prowled through their parking lot for a place to park.

There were none.

I pulled out of the lot, slightly panicky. It was 9:05 now and I only had until 9:15 to check in. I drove down the road, looking for a legal place to park, then gave up and made a U-turn. I’d thought to park at the tire place across the street, but three cars were already parked on the grass along a “do not enter” drive. All right, I’ll just park illegally here with all the other illegally parked people. I got out of the car, grabbed my mask and my bag with the documents, and headed for the DMV building.

A long queue of people filled the walkway up to the DMV. There was a side staircase that went to the entrance that wasn’t jammed with people; I took that and walked inside. I walked past the people waiting in the first lobby and entered the second lobby, looking for a place to check-in for my appointment. Based on my experience with my parents, I understood people with appointments waited inside and had some kind of separate check-in process.

There were no employees to greet newcomers, and no signage for “check in here if you have an appointment,” or anything else.

A woman who looked like an employee brushed past me, and I turned to her in desperation. “Excuse me, do you work here? I have an appointment and I just want to check in.”

She opened her mouth to answer, and then her eyes lit at the word ‘appointment’. “Oh, you have an appointment? Here.” She led me to the unoccupied reception desk and pointed to where I should stand. I gave her my name and she crossed it off on a printout of appointments. “I need your old driver’s license or passport, birth certificate, and proof of insurance.”

I got out my driver’s license and documents folder. “...oh no, I left my phone in the car, it has my proof of insurance. I’ll be right back.”

Her face fell. “We can’t take digital documents.”

...

Well, that had been on the list of ‘things that could go wrong’ for a reason. It would have been nice if the website had said all documents needed to be physical, though.

She continued, “The only thing I can do is give you a fax number. If you can fax it to us...?” She handed me a slip of paper.

It’s the year 2025 and I don’t know why fax machines are still a thing, but there was presumably still a service that did something like email-to-fax. I could not give up this easily. “All right. I’ll look for an app. I’ll be right back!”

“Take your documents, please.”

I gathered them up and rushed back to my illegally-parked car, retrieved my phone, and searched for a send-pdf-as-fax app. The first one in the store was listed as free. I downloaded and installed it, and opened it as I re-entered the building.

The employee manning the reception desk had vanished again, leaving it empty. I stood before it as I selected the insurance pdf for the fax app and entered the number.

“Subscribe now for unlimited faxes from your phone!” the app offered. The cheapest plan was $15 per week.

I backed out to see if there was a cheaper option for Just One Fax.

There was not.

...

I suspected there was a cheaper way to do this via some other app or website, but I made the executive decision that Getting This Done Right Now was worth $15 and paid it.

App: “We’re sending your fax now. It may take a few minutes to transmit.”

I sat in one of the few empty chairs in the waiting area, near the empty reception desk.

After a few minutes, the app announced “fax complete!”

The employee still had not returned.

I waited anxiously. They knew I’d arrived during the appointment window. She’d crossed my name off the list. So I wouldn’t lose my appointment slot? Hopefully?

Every employee present projected auras of Extremely Busy With Specific Patron and/or Not A Patron-Facing Position. I turned to the person waiting nearest to me. “Is there some other way for me to finish checking in, do you happen to know?”

The other woman considered this. “She’ll be back.”

“Okay, thank you.”

They called off a number: D-401. I did not have a number, because I hadn’t finished checking in. There wasn’t a “take a number” machine or anything. You had to get the number from a person.

I waited anxiously, wondering if the fax app had actually worked. I couldn’t see where the fax machine was.

My phone rang: it was Brittany, the occupational therapist. I answered, thinking she was running late and I’d need to give her Mom’s number.

No, my mother was having medical issues and Brittany wanted to know if they should call EMS. I told them to do so as long as my mother didn’t object. Mom has not been consenting to medical treatment lately.

Brittany disconnected. I stared at my phone. It didn’t make sense for me to give up on my errand today; I needed a driver’s license and my current one would expire in September. It takes 90 days minimum to get a DMV appointment. I would be considerably less useful as a caregiver if I couldn’t drive Dad to appointments.

I continued to wait anxiously.

The receptionist returned, leading another patron. I hopped up from my seat. “Excuse me, sorry, I faxed the insurance, would you be able to see if it arrived?”

“Oh! Sure. One moment, sir,” she added to the other patron, and disappeared behind a cubicle divider. A minute later, she reemerged, carrying a piece of paper. Success! It was my proof-of-insurance!

She took all my other documents, paper-clipped them together, and returned them to me. “Check your phone. You’ll get a text with your number.”

I checked. “...it hasn’t showed up yet.”

“It hasn’t? I’ll write it down.” She handed me a slip with A-128 written on it.

I had a number!

I returned to my seat. The DMV announcer called “A-130.” I looked at the numbers displayed on the “next in line” monitor. D-304, B-152, B-201, A-125.

“Their numbering system is byzantine,” I said to the woman I’d spoken with earlier. “A-125 is fourth on the board so maybe I’ll come after that.”

“It’s so confusing. I got in line to get in here at 5AM.”

I winced. At least she’d made it to the last stage.

A little time passed. I called Brittany back. She was still with Mom. Mom had refused EMS. I asked Brittany to give Kim my number, since I hadn’t yet, so that Kim could call me if the situation worsened.

The receptionist showed four people into the waiting area. They waited behind ropes until she had time to process them. I heard snippets of an exchange between her and one of them: something like “you’ll get a text in 3-4 hours.”

“Okay, and I come back then?”

“Right.”

A little after that, a man and a woman entered the waiting room. The receptionist told them, “I’m sorry, we have no more slots for walk-ins today.”

The man gave her an incredulous look. “We’ve been to the webpage. There are no appointments. Anywhere in the state.”

“You have to go after midnight. Like between midnight and 12:30. That’s when the next appointments open in 90 days,” I said.

“This is crazy,” the woman with him said.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes it is.”

A-125 had moved down to the 5th position on the monitor. I remained mystified by their numbering system.

“A-128 to station 4,” the DMV announcer called. None of the numbers on the monitor had changed.

I leaped to my feet and hurried to station 4. The man took my papers, reviewed them, and had no issues with any. Whew. He had me remove my mask and glasses to take the photo for the license next, which got my hopes up that I didn’t need to do anything else. Nope: vision test was next.

“...I foolishly put on my reading glasses to come inside,” I said, which is true in the sense that ‘I have glasses that are technically better for a distance but the difference is so slight that I seldom bother to use anything but the ones that are best for my computer monitors.’ “My distance ones are in the car. Can I get them if I have trouble?”

He gave me a look. “This is a distance test. Reading glasses are not gonna cut it.”

“My prescription is really similar for both,” I explained. He had me do the test, and I had no issues with reading the text .

Identifying signs by shape alone was another story. “Stop sign,” I said, because that one was easy. “...why do I recognize nothing else by shape?”

He gave me hints: “If there was an X on the next one?”

“Okay, railroad crossing.”

“Children?”

“Oh, school crossing.”

“Gets no respect in your old state?”

I stared at the sideways elongated triangle, mystified. “...can you give me a hint?”

“I just did.”

“...”

“It’s a no-passing zone.”

“I’m not used to recognizing them just by shape.”

“That’s fine,” he said, then added in mock-stern tones, “No license for you,”

Despite the obviously unserious tone, I narrowly avoided panicking as he went through the remaining steps. The rest of it was just me signing documents and registering to vote, and him scanning my documents to their system. No written test, no driving test. Thank goodness.

The irony of needing to send my pdf to their fax machine so that they could scan the paper back to a pdf was not lost on me. It’s 2025 and we have better technology solutions than this, but there’s no political will to fix the broken parts of government bureaucracy.

And “you need to fax your pdf” was frankly the least broken part of their DMV system, which is obviously understaffed and probably doesn’t even have enough physical buildings for the level of work they need to process.

At last, he gave me a temporary paper license and told me the permanent one would arrive within two weeks. I thanked him and left, clutching my paper license.

I did it! I got my license renewed!

I still need to get the registration changed to the new state, but that could be a battle for another day. It didn’t look like this office did registrations, and I was pretty sure I’d need an inspection and probably some other paperwork that I didn’t have on me. (I later learned I was correct in presuming the DMV doesn’t do registrations in this state.)

In the DMV parking lot, I saw a car with no license plate lifted by a tow truck. My view of the lane where I’d left my car was partially blocked, but I couldn’t see any cars still along it. Oh no, maybe it was towed, I thought. And then, Eh, it was worth it to get the driver’s license over with. I can pay the towing fee and take a Lyft to pick it up.

But when I rounded the slope on the lane, I saw my car. It was still there! God had mercy upon me!

As I reached it, I realized that the lane was empty because the parking lot was also now half-empty. Since the DMV had run out of walk-in slots, all the walk-in people had left. The entire ordeal had taken about an hour, though it had been so nerve-wracking that it felt like much longer.

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June 15-16: M Visiting

2025-06-17T04:18:13Z

Sunday, June 15

M texted around 8:45AM to let us know he'd arrive around 1PM. I was already awake and got up shortly after he texted, got breakfast, and let Dad know the expected arrival time. Around 10:30AM, I called Mom to ask her about lunch and if she wanted us to wait and bring M when he arrived. She'd had a rough morning and did not have any appetite, so was fine with waiting.

I was feeling groggy, so went back to bed around 11AM to try to nap. I didn't really sleep; I read some and lay in bed with my eyes closed for a while instead. It was restful, though, and I felt better when I dragged myself out of bed at 12:50PM so I'd be dressed when M got in. As I dressed, I felt ridiculous for taking M's estimate as Exact Time Of Arrival because no one's gonna know the minute they'll arrive when they're driving 4+ hours.

Then at 1PM, as I emerged from the laundry room, I saw Rosie, M's dog. "Rosie! You must have brought M." After a minute or two, when M did not appear, I told Dad, "Look! We've mysteriously acquired a dog. This is great!"

M came into the living room (he'd been putting stuff down out of sight in in the guest bedroom) and said, "Your new dog has brought a dog walker with her."

"Ooh best dog accessory."

M remembered it was Father's Day and wished Dad a happy Father's Day, so I did that too. We are not big on holidays in my family anymore.

Lyric came downstairs to check on me and saw Rosie.

Rosie: (OwO what's this?) *comes over to investigate*

Lyric: (OH HELL NO) *bristles up and hisses*

Rosie: (New fren? Fren? Sniff?) *attempts to sniff*

Lyric: *jumps at Rosie, landing claws on her face, then springs back, otherwise standing her ground* (you can't turn your back on a monster because then they'll CHASE YOU and that's worse)

Rosie: *starts back, puzzled*

Rosie: (but we're still gonna be frens right? new fren?)

M came over and verified that Rosie was unharmed (she was). I came over and sat down between them to reassure Lyric and to protect Rosie from further assaults.

Lyric: (okay well this is craptastic I need to hide in the garage now)

I let Lyric into the garage, which is fortunately her happy place anyway. I brought her lunch and a bowl of water into it for her (it already has a litter box).

When I went upstairs, Rosie tried to follow, but I told her "No" sternly, and she didn't attempt to come in the room. I closed the door on her, because I wanted to keep my room free of dog-scent for Lyric. I called Mom to ask about lunch again, and she asked for subs, so I ordered those. Dad, M and I left together; I drove because M had his rental car set up with a dog hammock in the backseat.

At the nursing facility, we asked about bringing Rosie. Dog visitors are fine! They wanted proof she'd been vaccinated, but the receipt M had on his phone for her last vaccinations was sufficient. We figured we'd bring Rosie with us on Monday.

We chatted during the visit, then headed home around 3:30PM. We drove through a rain squall on the way home. It'd stopped by the time we got there, but I drove over to the gym anyway because the clouds were still threatening and I don't like walking in rain. I asked M if he wanted to come with me, but he passed. I'd thought this was a weight day and was disappointed when I checked my phone and discovered I'd done weights on the 14th. Oops. I used the stair climber for 21 minutes. My pulse rate didn't get as high as usual on the 2 setting, so I moved up to 3 for most of it, yay: slightly less boring. Still listening to Tress, but only while at the gym instead of during the drive, since M and I talked during the drive.

At home, I convinced Lyric to come upstairs and get a snack, then sat at my computer for a bit. Lyric started growling from her perch on the back of the loveseat, and I turned to the door to see Rosie peering through the opening; I'd left it cracked so Lyric could go to the litter box downstairs if necessary.

Rosie: (I know I can't come in but I can LOOK right??)

Lyric: (OH HELL NO).

Me: "M! Please call your dog."

M got Rosie back downstairs. Lyric retreated behind the computer, where she stared distrustfully at the door. The next time I went downstairs, she wanted to return to hiding in the garage, so I let her.

It was garbage night, so I stuffed the last of the packing paper into the recycling bin, and then started on the cardboard boxes. The flattened boxes were too big to fit in the recycling bin, and folding them further did not work for cramming them in. So I spent some time tearing them into chunks small enough to fit. I strained my right wrist doing so; it still hurt the next day.

In the evening, I watched most of a "Poker Face" episode with Dad & M. I checked on Lyric a few times, but she was unwilling to emerge from the garage. Even hours after M went to bed and took Rosie with him, closing the bedroom door so Rosie would stay in, Lyric preferred the garage. She'd come inside, sniff at the laundry room floor for a minute, go "NOPE", and return to the garage.

I did a little drawing and editing as it got late. Started over on the hair for the Delphia portrait. It's coming out better this time. Mostly I caught up on journaling, though.

Monday, June 16

I woke around 6AM and went to the bathroom, then checked if I could coax Lyric inside. She was not enthusiastic, but came in and followed me upstairs after a bit. I opened the snack box for her, then went back to bed. Lyric came over to the bed, but took up a perch on the desk behind my head, where she could glare suspiciously at the door. When I came downstairs for breakfast around 9AM, Lyric returned to the garage.

M had to take Rosie to a vet appointment at 2:30, so his plan was to bring Rosie to visit Mom, then drive from there to the vet. "So we can take two separate cars. Unless you want to go to the vet with us.

Me: *thinks about this*

Me: "If I go with you to the vet, I don't have to drive."

M: "Sure, we can take my car."

Me: "Sounds great."

I don't hate driving, but it's so much nicer to ride than drive.

When I called Mom about lunch, she didn't know what she wanted, so I suggested their favorite nearby Asian place. She was good with that. They had an online ordering page, but it wouldn't let me set up a pickup time before noon. So I got M's order, made sure Dad didn't want me to order something as leftovers for him (he was going to poker instead of visiting Mom), then called in the order a little after 11AM, for pickup in 20 minutes.

I usually have my parents pay when we pick up food for Mom, but since I wasn't paying online, I paid in person with my own card. I could've brought Mom's card but eh, figured it wouldn't hurt to buy my own lunch for a change.

When I remarked on this later to M, he said, "We can add you as an authorized user to their card if you want? I just use Dad's card when I'm buying something for them, but since you're here and buying things in person for them, might be more convenient."

Me: "Eh. I can use Mom's card when I have to. But it would be handy to have a card I could keep in my wallet. I guess if it's really easy to do--"

M: "Oh yes, you just ask for it online."

Me: "In that case, sure, let's do it."

M commented, "I also didn't want it to affect my credit -- you know, keeping everything separate. Not that it would have a big impact."

That made sense at first, and then I went, "Wait, does being an authorized user affect your credit? I thought it didn't because you're not responsible for the payments."

M thought that it could. I searched online on the subject that night, and the answer is "usually but not always." Most credit card companies report under the names of authorized users and not just the account holder, but not all of them. So it varies. I'm surprised it gets reported at all, or that credit scoring agencies incorporate it; it seems like "you know a person who will let you spend their money and that person pays their bills" would not be that meaningful in predicting if you will pay your bills. But there you go. Maybe knowing people who pay their bills is a predictor of individual behavior, idk. I am not concerned about it; I have excellent credit and so do my parents, and I barely use mine anyway.

We had a good visit with Mom, and she was really happy to eat something different -- she even ate more of lunch than usual -- so that worked well.

I had planned to go to the gym after the vet appointment. My wrist still hurt from tearing up boxes on Sunday night, so I thought it might be a good idea to let it rest and just do cardio. But by the time we neared home, I wanted a nap and decided to skip the gym entirely.

While I napped, the social worker called and left a message asking me to call back about transport for Mom. It was after 6PM when I woke and got the message, so I just wrote down the number. I'll call tomorrow.

I watched some more "Poker Face" in the evening with M and Dad, though I went upstairs while M watched the episode with the pig-tailed demon child. I had seen most of that episode already, and the one bit I'd missed was a bit I really didn't want to watch. (It's a good episode but oof. M described it as "the darkest episode" of the show afterwards, which I thought was funny because most of the episodes are murder mysteries and no people get killed in this one. But I could see his point. I mean, it did have a bit that I did not want to watch because I considered it too painful.) I tried bringing Lyric upstairs, but she was having none of it while Rosie was loose, and even after Rosie was in M's room for the night, Lyric still wanted to go back to the garage the next time I went downstairs.

Lyric is Not Enjoying this visit, poor kitty.

I had M give me the passwords for Dad's Amazon account, so I can order stuff for them through that and generate fewer confusing alerts for M. I also got the streaming passwords and the Tivo account password, so that hopefully if Dad's TV gets logged off, I can get it logged in again without calling M. We haven't had the issue with Dad's TV getting logged off in some months, though. They used to have internet access from one provider and phone service from another, and the second provider also had a wifi network that existed but didn't provide internet. We got rid of the second provider entirely and that may've made the TV less confused about how to connect and solved the issue.

I also discussed the Hoyer lift option with M; the nursing facility didn't volunteer to send her home with one, but we could get one and may need it. We decided to stick with not getting it for now. If it turns out we need it, I can always ask for it later.

I also finally remembered to take another look at the transfer-board-like object. It's not identical to the one the facility uses, though it's similar. I want to have them order a transfer board for me because while I don't know what else this might be, I don't think it's appropriate for the task -- it's got some reinforcing pieces of wood on one side that gives it an extra inch of height and that'd just make it more awkward to use for transfering.

I wanted to catch up on journaling tonight, and have done so, which is good. I haven't done anything creative today and it's now after midnight, though. Time to finish Time Princess dailies and go to bed.

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May 4-10: DMV appointments, health issues, visiting friends, Lyric (briefly) escaping

2025-05-12T02:31:37Z

Sunday, May 4

I was getting together Sunday afternoon and evening with Kage, Sophrani, and Envoy. This wasn't until 4PM, which turned out to be late enough that I didn't fritter away the whole day in Waiting Mode. I did some editing on Be That Way in the morning. I think this was also the day that I set up the 6' folding table behind my reclining loveseat in my room, and then piled all the miscellaneous stuff that cluttered the floor underneath or on top of it. That left just the piles of artwork leaing against the walls still to deal with.

When I met up with my friends, we got dinner at Asian Harbor. I had a pad thai bento box; I wasn't impressed with the pad thai at the restaurant, but I really enjoyed it as leftovers a few days later. I think it's that the shrimp were tough and since I'd eaten all of them at the restaurant, I was left with just tasty noodles and rice at home.

We watched the new episode of "I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level" and also several episodes of "Spy x Family", both before and after dinner. It's very cute but apparently there's a million episodes of it, so I may get frustrated by a lack of progress in the plot eventually.

I got home a little before midnight, and got to my computer at 12:05AM. I went to the DMV webpage and clicked through to the appointments.

None were available.

...

A few other sources had said that the DMV opened new appointments daily, for 90 days out. So rather than abandoning all hope and spending a day camped out at a DMV, I decided to keep checking after midnight for the rest of the week.

Monday, May 5

Veo had another bonus stream of Blue Prince in the morning, whee! I don't remember much about this day, to be honest.

As usual, I was still up at midnight, and once again I remembered to check the DMV page for openings. At two minutes after midnight, there were three locations with appointments available!

The closest was 60 miles away so I didn't make an appointment, but it was proof that DMV appointments existed and the entire website was not just a cruel joke. I refreshed a minute later to see how long the appointments lasted at those locations. Maybe the server opened new appointments some time before midnight and I needed to check earlier?

Three minutes after midnight, four locations had appointments available.

Huh.

Maybe it took a while for the server to open appointments at all locations?

I kept refreshing every few minutes. For thirteen minutes, nothing changed: four locations had appointments available, all 60+ miles away. Then, at 12:17AM, every location in the state had appointments available.

I scrambled to make an appointment, and now have one for Monday, August 4, at 9AM, at the location that had nice people, where I took my parents a few weeks ago. I had to confirm the appointment via email or text within 15 minutes of making the appt, and did so. I got a confirmation email that I'd confirmed. Whee! I will have to confirm it again on July 31, hopefully with more than 15 minutes between receiving the request to re-confirm and clicking the confirmation. o_o;;;

That I got a Monday appointment explains why there were no appointments available last night: it must open slots daily, not weekly, and 90 days out from May 5 would've been a Sunday.

Tuesday, May 6

Since my father had a hearing aid appt on Wednesday, I checked to make sure we could still find the one that didn't fit anymore.

It was not on the charger or in my father's ear. My father remembers the audiologist taking his hearing aid away at one point "for repairs", and that the audiologist never gave it back, so he had assumed this was why the right hearing aid was missing. (My mother says this is not true. Presumably what happened is that my father remembers a "taken for repairs" incident from some months or years ago, and not the part where he got it back).

Me, to my mother: "Do you suppose Sue put it somewhere Dad couldn't find it, so he wouldn't lose it?"

Mom: "No."

I looked at the usual "my father lost his hearing aid" spots (around his bed and in the pockets of his clothing in the hamper), but no luck. Welp. We can always buy a new hearing aid during the appointment instead.

I looked at my goal list for May, and decided to call the HOA since I hadn't yet heard back from the email I sent over the weekend. They wanted me to come to the clubhouse to fill out and sign paperwork. There was also a $30 charge for giving a third person access to the clubhouse.

While I was on the phone, a different person replied to my email to the HOA, also telling me to go to the clubhouse to fill out and sign paperwork. They responded to my question about bulding a catio to say, 'you can enclose your porch but you can't have a catio. Here's the 67-page Residential Design Guidelnes and a two-page Modification form. You need to fill out the modification form and provide any documentation specified in the 67-page guidelines." The modification form includes, among other things, four signature lines for neighbors and says to attach additional signatures 'as necessary.'

...

Much as I would like a screened porch for Lyric, I don't think I want one badly enough to read 67 pages of guidelines to find out what the "specified documentation" is, much less to spend however long it takes to catch an unknown number of neighbors while they're at home and convince them to sign the form. Oy.

One of Dad's poker buddies is involved with the HOA, so I may ask him if the process is as nightmarish as the email made it sound, or if there's some "you can hire this contractor that we always approve and they'll take care of everything for you" shortcut.

Despite being annoyed by the HOA approval process, I got dressed to go to the clubhouse. Before I left, I checked with my father to see if his poker games were at the clubhouse again. During the early days of the pandemic, they'd moved online, and then later moved to hosting the games in various players' homes. But they were at the clubhouse now, so my dad used the clubhouse for that. My mother doesn't, though. I thought it was kind of silly to pay for access for me when it was entirely possible neither me or my mother would get any use out of it. My father: "Eh, don't worry about it, we'll pay for it."

I drove over to fill out the paperwork. I felt silly driving over in retrospect, since it's only a quarter-mile away. At the clubhouse, I needed a fob to get in so that I could fill out the paperwork so I could get a fob. I felt like the people who told me to come to the clubhouse had not thought this all the way through. Another resident let me in before I had to call the HOA to ask them what they were thinking.

But the people at the desk redeemed themselves by asking if my parents used the clubhouse, and then offering to transfer my mother's fob to me, since she doesn't use it, instead of charging for a third. "Your mother can still use the clubhouse with a guest pass, and you can always get a third if she changes her mind about using it."

Once I had a fob, I went to use the gym as long as I was here. They have an array of cardio machines -- treadmills, bikes, stair-climber, elliptical -- a big collection of free weights, and various weight machines. I kind of wanted to do something with the weights but it's been so long that I don't remember any exercises. I used an elliptical machine instead, since that was easy and the motion of ellipticals is sort of fun. I hadn't brought ear buds, though, so I only used it for 15 minutes. Exercise machines are boring.

At home, I took a nap, then worked on editing Be That Way.

Wednesday, May 7

I haven't been writing lately, not even about my day. Now I have 4 days to catch up on, which means I'll spend my evening writing about the last few days instead of writing fiction. But recent evidence suggests I wasn't gonna write fiction anyway.

I woke up around 6AM, read for a bit, and went back to sleep until 8AM. At that point, I got up to have breakfast before Veo's stream. I told Sue, about the audiologist appointment at 11AM.

Sue: "Your mom already told me. I put the ill-fitting hearing aid next to your purse on the counter."

Me: "Aha! You did put it somewhere Dad wouldn't try to wear it."

Sue: "You bet!"

I ate breakfast and watched Veo's stream. Some other watchers could also only stay 90 minutes today, so Veo ended today's stream a little early, after the first day of the stream took 80 minutes, instead of starting a new day. Only got through one day, but got some cool new things on the run that Veo can carry over to the next stream.

I feel like, at some point, Blue Prince will turn into "you have to get things A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, several of them in the correct order, or you can't progress" and it'll just be annoying instead of fun. But so far, none of the days have felt like a complete waste even though there were things Veo was trying to do and couldn't on them. It's weird because the mechanic of "very little carries over from one day to the next" feels so arbitrary and frustrating. But I generally don't feel frustrated watching the game.

I read social media for a bit, then went downstairs to get dressed to take Dad to his appointment. Sue had already gotten him ready to go, but it took a few minutes to get him out of the house anyway. It's only a 5-minute drive to the clinic but we left about 20 minutes to get out of the house, into car, drive to clinic, get out of car, get up to clinic (it was on the third floor).

My initial thought of "assembled wrong" turned out to be correct. It turns out each of Dad's hearing aids have three different parts (I knew they had two but didn't realize the other place they could disconnect.) I had the audiologist show me where to disconnect the bits and the correct spots to reconnect, so I could fix it if it happens again. The trip wasn't wasted, though, because the hearing aids have a hollow tube that's supposed to be flexible but which had stiffened up over time and wear, and needed to be replaced on both hearing aids anyway.

The visit was very quick: the audiologist had fixed both hearing aids and we were out of there before 11:15AM.

I'd originally planned to chill out at home until it was time to visit Sophrani, but since I had 2 hours, I decided to go to the clubhouse to exercise at the gym there. I normally dislike going to a gym to exercise, but since it's only a quarter-mile away, I can just walk there and count the transit time as part of exercising.

While I was walking to the gym, Sophrani texted to reschedule crafting for Friday.

This time, I brought my ear buds. I used an elliptical machine again, but set the timer for 45 minutes. Even with a podcast for entertainment, the elliptical machine was extremely boring. Also draining. I averaged 4mph for the first 15 minutes, but had slowed to 3mph by the end. I kept wanting to stop in the middle, but stuck it out. The machine automatically switched to a 5 minute "cool-down" timer, but if I actually slowed at all during this supposed "cool-down", it paused the timer as if I'd stopped. 9_9 I gave up after 90 seconds of this because a "cool-down" where my heart rate is still double normal is not actually a cool-down. I had to walk back home anyway; that'd be enough.

Another disadvantage of the elliptical is that the pressure on my feet is continuous, because they're always in contact with the pedals. It's not as bad as standing for the whole time, but it made my feet more sore than walkiong does.

At home, I spent a chunk of the day editing Be That Way, and finished reading through reader comments and making the editing list. The final list is 31 points long and more daunting than I'd expected, but I think my 50% complete goal is reasonable. I also took a nap in the afternoon and ordered groceries for delivery on Thursday. In the evening, I wrote a chunk of this entry.

Thursday, May 8

I went downstairs to get breakfast around 8AM, and told Sue to expect groceries by 10AM. I returned upstairs to eat breakfast at my computer. Ninety minutes later, I went downstairs to get a snack. By then, groceries had arrived, but the store had not delivered peeled hard-boiled eggs for my father (because they were out of stock) or chocolate chip cookies for my mother and me (because I forgot to order them). We still had two packages of cookies, but I had ingredients for chocolate-chip cookies and decided I might as well make them now. At which point I discovered we are almost out of uncooked eggs, because Sue has been boiling them for my father since he ran out of the pre-cooked ones. Whoops. I need to put regular eggs down as a subsistute for hard-boiled when I order.

Still, we had five left, which is more than I needed to bake cookies, so I proceeded.

After I made cookies, my mother ordered pizza for lunch instead of getting a burger like she usually does. So I ordered pizza, too, although I might've eaten fewer cookies if I'd known I was having pizza for lunch. Oops. It was fine.

I edited Be That Way, including putting an estimated difficulty down for each editing point. According to the estimate, I am 15% done with editing, which is about on track for getting to 50% by the end of the month.

I took a nap in the afternoon. In the early evening, I looked at the stacks of pictures leaning against the walls of my room, and resolved to at least get a hammer from downstairs and bringing it up so it'd be possible for me to hang pictures.

While I was in the garage, I grabbed a box of brads as well. Back upstairs, I hung pictures for a bit, until I needed a step ladder to reach high enough for some. Then I went back downstairs, got the stepladder from my dad's room, and returned upstairs to hang pictures.

I put up 27 pictures, looked around at the walls, and thought, I really expected putting this many pictures on the walls would have more of an impact on the piles of art to be hung.

After hanging another 6, I tidied the piles so it would look like I'd made a dent. There's only 14 more framed pictures that I want to hang, plus 2 that I don't like enough to put back up. Then there's a big stack of unframed art, and a stack of empty frames (that are mostly not the right size for the unframed art). I'll have to find a place to put them.

My father has a frequent cough, which sounds more distressing to bystanders than it is to him; he generally doesn't remember that he's been coughing (his memory is shot), and says he's fine if asked.

In the morning his cough was more pronounced than usual. By late afternoon, it was so much worse that I came to over him pseudophedrine (I saw him blowing his nose) and cough syrup. He was still perplexed by the idea that he might want cough syrup. He accepted the pseudophed and wanted acetaminophen because he had a headache, so I gave him that too.

Friday, May 9

On Friday morning, Dad admitted to having a sore throat and feeling poorly. I gave him some Dayquil and another pseudophedrine. My mother thought he was having an allergy attack and gave him allergy meds, too.

Despite feeling unwell, he went to his usual poker game anyway. I found a mask for him to wear during it, at least. He hadn't wanted to call off from poker because a buddy had called to make sure he was coming, since the game was at six players including Dad, and this is the threshhold where it'd be cancelled if anyone else backed out.

By the time he got back from poker on Friday afternoon, he was completely recovered: felt fine, didn't even remember feeling poorly. Yay! Maybe it was allergies.

I'd woken up at 7AM and been unable to get back to sleep, so I ate breakfast early and watched Veo stream more Blue Prince. I was meeting Sophrani between 2-3PM for crafting, so after the stream I went to bed, and fell asleep around 12:15PM. I woke after 2PM; later than I'd planned to nap. Got up and wandered about the house getting ready to leave. Sophrani had texted to say she was running late, too, and to aim for closer to 3PM. I didn't get on the road until 2:35PM, at which point Friday traffic had started. I got to the house around 3:20PM.

Sophrani spent her crafting time making a simple syrup for sweetening tea, and deciding the layout for the bouquet she'd started quilling two weeks ago. I sketched another Mucha-inspired picture, this one of Duke Strikvi from The Secret Dragon. He's supposed to be an androgynous-looking man, but I think he came out just looking like a woman. Oh well. I colored most of it anyway, but didn't quite finish it. Maybe I'll get to it before next crafting session, though past experience suggests not.

After crafting, we hung out for a bit waiting for Envoy to arrive, then went out to dinner at a little Italian place. I had lobster ravioli. :9

Post-dinner, Kage, Envoy and I watched the three newest episodes of an anime, "Bye Bye, Earth." Sophrani tapped out on this one because it doesn't make any sense. Kage: "You can watch it with us if you want. Just don't ask us to explain it because it doesn't make any sense if you watch it from the beginning, either."

I was curious as to the appeal of the Anime That Made No Sense, so I watched it with them. It was pretty and haunting in places. Occassionally it verged on the intelligible, but never quite made it there. All the factions seemed to have the same goal of destroying their god, and yet they were all fighting each other anyway.

After we finished the latest available episode, I checked my phone and found I had a voice mail from my mother. My cat had gotten outside. My fault: I'd left the external garage door open when I left (I meant to close it but forgot). Mom, having no way to know it was open and no reason to think it would be, opened the interior door so Lyric could have Garage Time. Lyric zwooped outside before my mom could close the door.

A few minutes later, Lyric came meowing to the front door, but wouldn't come in when my father opened the door.

My new city doesn't allow outdoor cats, but Lyric was an indoor/outdoor cat for years in my previous one. She wrenched her leg once, but has never gotten in any serious trouble. She'd come when I called after she'd had her fill of outside (usually an hour or two).

So I wasn't too worried. But still concerned--she's never been outside around here--so I came home right away, rather than staying to watch another episode or two of something else.

My first hope was that she'd come to meet me as soon as I parked: she always did that at our old place. No luck on that, though; no sign of her as I pulled up and got out.

I stood in the driveway calling her name and waiting for a minute. Still no sign of her. After I put my stuff inside, I came back out and circled to the back yard, calling her name.

As I walked through our small yard towards the neighbors on the southwest, I heard a distant meow. It sounded like Lyric's "where are you? I'm here" meow, and also there are no outdoor cats so it was highly unlikely to be any other cat.

I walked towards the meow, calling her name as I fumbled out my phone and the cat called back to me. I got the phone flashlight on and shined it towards the meowing. Cat eyes reflected back at me from several houses down, running my way as soon as I got the light on.

I walked to meet her, crouching to pet her and tell her what a good cat she is.

Then I turned to go back to the house, clucking for her to follow me. She followed me all the way, no hesitation. She'd had enough Outside Time and was ready to come in.

Saturday, May 10

This morning, I woke early with a sore throat.

...so maybe my dad's illness on Thursday/Friday morning wasn't allergies. x_x

I took a pseudophedrine and ate some cough drops and failed to get back to sleep. I got up early and played some Time Princess and Race for the Galaxy while I ate breakfast. Around 11:30, I was tired enough to try sleeping again and lay down. Eventually I dozed off, napping until 2:30PM or so. I still felt crappy, so I gathered up more cold meds and took everything I could find. Annoyingly, I can't find any pseudophedrine beyond the almost-empty sheet that I keep by my bed. I sometimes wake early because I'm congested, so I keep it on hand for that. I bought two boxes in January and I really don't think I used all the other pills. MEH. I'll have to go out for more tomorrow. I can't find my masks, either. DOUBLE MEH.

Around 4PM, I decided I needed to switch from drinking caffeine free Diet Coke to hot clear liquids. The problem with this is that I don't particularly like any hot clear liquids. Even the one I like best -- a spiced cider mix -- I don't like enough to drink when I'm healthy, and it goes bad too quickly to keep stocked for when I'm sick.

I ended up mixing some strawberry-watermelon drink mix into hot water and have been drinking it out of the giant tumblers Lut got a while back. It tastes better cold, but drinking it hot is better than plain hot water. It's fine.

I'm hoping since my 80+ year-old father shook this off in 30 hours, I'll be feeling back to normal by tomorrow afternoon. But we'll see.

In the mean time, I am malingering, playing games, and feeling sorry for myself instead of trying to be productive. I'm sick. I'm allowed.

In the late evening, while I was malingering and playing games, I heard a brief shriek, a loud thump, and a muffled "ow."

"Mom, are you all right?" I yelled, already getting to my feet.

"No."

I hurried downstairs to find my mother sitting on the floor of the bathroom. She was unharmed, thankfully, but she couldn't get up on her own. My father and I offered to help her stand, but she can't tolerate having her arms or shoulders tugged. She's got arthritis, an old surgery on one arm that cost her much of the muscle, and artificial knees that don't bend far enough to get her feet under her. She tried scooting over to the stairs, which she's used after past falls to lever herself back to her feet. No luck this time, though. I offered to call 911, but she wanted to keep trying on her own. I put a pillow next to her and she was able to scoot halfway onto that, then she rolled enough that I could jam a second pillow under the other side. We repeated this to get her on top of two sets of pillows, but she still couldn't get herself up the extra two inches to reach the first step. I offered to try pushing her up from under her rear, but she didn't want to try that. By now, it'd been about half an hour. I'd offered to call 911 a few more times during this; at this point I just said I'd call and my mother agreed.

The EMTs wanted to get behind her, cross arms over her chest, and lift from under her shoulders. My mom and I were both pretty confident this would put too much stress on her shoulder for her to tolerate. But these were professionals, so we let them try. The male EMT made the attempt: it was too painful and my mom made him stop.

After this, the EMTs scooted a blanket underneath her rear, and then the two lifted her together by the blanket, which was basically what I'd expected them to do at the start. Success!

My mother reiterated that she was fine and didn't need any further assistance. Once she had her feet under her, she took her rollator and walked back to her recliner on her own. I gave the EMTs a few details -- name, date of birth -- but they didn't ask for her insurance information. I don't know if that's because they already had it on file or if that's because they don't charge for this sort of "help you stand up" service.

This scenario -- the possibility of my mother falling after my father went to bed, and being unable to get up or reach a phone -- is the big reason I wanted to move in and not just get my own house in the area. In this case, though, my mother would've been fine anyway, because my father came out looking for a thing he'd forgotten when he went to bed. So he would've been able to bring her a phone to call 911.

We still need to get fall-detection devices for my parents, though -- the kind that call emergency services when they detect a fall, or if you press a button -- because I'm not always here, or always awake.

Attempting to assist my mother made me feel briefly young and healthy in comparison. By the time I got back upstairs, though, I was back to feeling sick. The sore throat and general acheyness persists. I took some generic Nyquil around 11PM, then stayed up playing Time Princess until after reset at 1AM before flopping.

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April 21-23: MOAR unpacking, fast food, and driving with out-of-state plates

2025-04-24T03:11:37Z

Monday, April 21

Mostly I did some unpacking on Monday. I tried calling Telnar around 10AM, when I felt like unpacking, but he was having brunch with a friend. I unpacked a box anyway while waiting for Telnar to call me back. When he called back, I did more unpacking.

I don't have places to put many of the things I'm unpacking. Some stuff is just getting piled on top of things. I brought four bookcases with me and somehow none of them have shelves tall enough to fit the tallest books that came with me. I don't know how that happened. I mean, I knew the largest bookcase didn't because it was custom-built for a used bookstore to hold paperbacks (this is what I like about it!) I should check to see if any of the little ones have adjustable shelves, though.

I have checked and two of the small ones have holes as if the shelves were designed to be adjustable, but the shelves themselves have no apparent means of removing them: they're not resting on pegs and there's no indication that they were screwed in place from the side. I guess if I had more shelves I could stick additional ones in using the holes and make the shelves shorter? Weird.

Some stuff I have unpacked and re-boxed to put in the unfinished part of the attic. So far, this is all miniatures & miniature-related things, plus my tiny Christmas tree. I'll probably put my boardgames in there, too, when I've unpacked them. As long as I shuffle and pack stuff so I can make the stacks tall while still being stable, I can get a fair amount of stuff piled in there.

Putting stuff in the attic is a bit of a hazard, because Lyric will go in with me if she can. The attic has a small section with a plywood floor, which is where I've been stacking boxes, and a much larger space that's covered in either puffy white insulation or, for one section, just ceiling (I think this is the section above the porch.) I do not want Lyric diving into the insulation or walking about on the ceiling. D: The attic has this weird half-height door with no knob on the inside, so I can't close it behind me when I enter. She's already followed me inside twice, so I need to stop going in there unless I know the cat is behind a door somewhere else in the house.

The first day I unpacked, I counted boxes as I unpacked them. I haven't been counting since; it's just "at least one per day." I unpacked several on Monday, but I don't know the number. I finished unpacking the first row of boxes in my room, though, so that was cool. For most of it, I was chatting on the phone with Telnar.

K had groceries delivered today, but I wasn't around when they arrived and the home health aide put them away. I kept forgetting they'd actually arrived because I'm not used to there just being more food in the kitchen.

Tuesday, April 22

More unpacking! I started on the second row of boxes in my bedroom. The second row includes two giant wardrobe boxes. I don't have a closet or a wardrobe in my room, so I haven't tried unpacking those. I finished the rest of the second row, though. Tomorrow I can tackle the boxes against the wall. Perhaps I can make enough space to move the wardrobe boxes against the wall. Or maybe my parents will let me consolidate their clothes together in the giant walk-in closet in the bathroom, so that I can put my stuff in there. It doesn't have a lot of free space, though, so I don't know that this would work.

Tomorrow, Kage needs to get his car from the shop, and Sophrani's busy so can't take him. So I'm picking him up to take him. I have a plan for tomorrow!

So weird, this "having plans" thing. I remembered to tell my mother I had a plan so she wouldn't expect me to do anything else around then.

My mother wanted a sub from Firehouse for lunch today, instead of her usual McDonald's burger. Firehouse doesn't have a drive-through and it's a production for my mother to go into a store: she has to wrestle her walker into the trunk, drive there, wrestle her walker out of the trunk, go into store, repeat process to get home. One time she tried getting by with just a cane and this was a disaster, so she does not try that anymore. This time, she asked me to come with her so I could go inside for her. We placed the order online, too. I could've gone by myself but it was nice to have company. It's a very short drive. There's so much stuff that's within two miles of my parents' house, despite them living in a sprawling retirement community.

I spent some time today and yesterday going over The Jewel-Strewn Night in ProWritingAid, and finished it. There's two structural changes I want to make before I send it to first readers, but it's pretty close.

It's after 10PM now and about when I give up on getting anything done with the day. But I will try to write a little fiction just because it's been so long since I've even tried.

Wednesday, April 23

I got up around 9AM and fixed a bagel for breakfast. I bought a bagel pack from Panera on Sunday (13 bagels) and ended up eating 8 of them over four days. It's a good thing I like bagels. I'd thought my parents would eat more but nope. When I sat down at my computer to eat it and opened Fediverse, I saw that Veo's stream had started; I'd forgotten about it. I brought it up and watched the rest of it. I'd been curious how running a city would go in Exile Princes, and the answer for Veo was Very Badly. When the next election came up, Veo didn't run again and that was clearly the right choice.

Watching it made me want to play it again, but I resisted the temptation and looked at my to-do list instead. The last item I'd put in the "must do in April" category was to return the Google Fiber router and extender. This involved Google Fiber telling FedEx to send me a QR code, and then me bringing the equipment and QR code to a FedEx location, where they'd package and ship it (and charge Google Fiber). Google Fiber had first attempted to get FedEx to send me a QR code on April 7. I had to ask two more times before FedEx finally succeeded at sending me one on April 20.

I had almost an hour before I had to leave to give Kage a ride to the car shop, so I figured I had enough time to run an errand first. The nearest FedEx store was in the plaza adjacent to the McDonald's my mother always gets lunch from. So I checked that my mother wanted lunch from there and that I should pick up a burger for my father, too. Then I set off. I didn't bring up Google Maps at first because I thought I knew where it was, and then I realized I was thinking of the time I'd been to the USPS location in the same area. And also a UPS store. It's a big retail area. I brought up Google Maps to find the exact spot after I got to the right general area; it was actually in a little plaza tucked behind the big strip mall.

Once there, the FedEx folks scanned my QR code and took the equipment with no issues. Yay! At 11:15AM, I left the store and went to McDonald's. I thought about texting Kage that I'd be late, since clearly I would be, but figured I'd wait until I knew exactly how late. There was no line in the McDonald's drive-through and I got my order quickly. The man taking the cash recited the order back to me, then peered at me. "You're not the usual woman who places this order."

I laughed and explained I was her daughter. "She'll be back sometimes, though, I'm not always picking it up for her."

He told me to tell her hi. I forgot to relay this anecdote to my mom; I should do that tomorrow.

At the house, I nuked my mother's burger for 12 seconds, got a diet Coke for her, and delivered the food to her and my dad. I forgot to get my mom's bbq sauce from the fridge for her, though. So close! I set out for Kage's place at 11:33, about 10 minutes behind schedule. Not too bad.

Ten minutes from Kage's place, after I'd turned off the interstate, a cop car popped his lights on behind me. Startled, I pulled over. He pulled in behind me, while I was thinking 'what the heck? I haven't done anything.'

He'd pulled me over for having an out-of-state plate. -_-

Which is not a crime, obviously, but cops love ticketing visitors because they won't come back to contest the ticket. In my particular case, his excuse was that he couldn't read the state on my plates because, he said, it was obscured by the plate frame.

The plate frame came from the dealership and has been on the car since I bought it eight years ago. It did not obscure the state name. It touched the very top of the letters for the state name. But in his defense: my old state uses a smaller font than my new state, and puts the state at the top instead of at the bottom. I could see him initially thinking the state name was competely hidden because he expected it to be at the bottom, until he'd pulled me over and was close enough to the license plate to read it. (I couldn't read the state name on my plate from more than a car length away, either.)

He told me he was just going to give me a warning, but asked me first to pull into the adjacent parking lot (we were blocking the exit where he'd pulled me over) and then come sit in the front seat of his car. That was, on the one hand, kind of creepy and outside the norm? And on the other hand, it was less frustrating to sit in his car with his A/C running, where I could watch him check my registration and look for outstanding warrants and whatnot and have an idea of how long this would take, than it would've been to wait for 10 minutes in my own car wondering what the heck he was doing and when I would be able to go. He asked various questions: where I was from, why I was in the area, what I did for a living, etc. I thought about all the "shut the f up" PSAs from lawyers, but answered anyway because the odds that I was actually a suspect of anything seemed vanishingly low and I figured cooperating would get me out of there faster. He let me text Kage to let him know I'd be even later. I did not attempt to explain to Kage via text why I was late, because any short explanation would make the situation look worse than it was.

The whole encounter took maybe 10-15 minutes; unsettling but not serious. I double-checked that the plate frame was the whole issue and getting rid of it would rectify the matter: yup.

At Kage's place, I asked if Kage could get the license plate frame off for me because I knew he had All The Tools and I don't know where mine are, or if I even brought them all with me. Maybe? I remember looking at Lut's socket wrench set and thinking I hadn't used it in years and did I really want to bring it? But I don't remember what I decided. I think I donated it? My parents might have one, though. But Kage's were right there. For some reason, the bolts holding plate & frame on were two different sizes. Weird. The plate didn't want to come out of the frame, after all these years, but Kage got it apart and now there is one less excuse for cops to pull me over. Yay.

This accomplished, I took Kage to the car place and waited with him while he paid and verified that his car was in good shape now. Then he headed back to his place to resume his workday, while I went home.

At home, I had lunch and a few cookies, then contemplated writing or playing The Exile Princes before deciding on napping.

Post-nap, I had dinner. I fired up Spirit City but still didn't feel like doing anything creative. I looked over my to-do list again, and decided to get new health insurance. Healthcare.gov is state-based, so moving to a new state means I need new insurance. I have 60 days to get it but figured I might as well get it over with. It's annoying to have to switch insurance right after reaching the out-of-pocket cap on my old policy, but there's no help for it.

With that taken care of, I got up to finish unpacking a box I'd started yesterday. I unpacked two more after that for good measure. The remaining boxes and floor are littered with things I do not have a good place for. I unpacked most of the books that actually fit on a bookshelf, though, so that was nice. "I have a place for this!" *shuffles all the knickknacks currently on the top shelves to new spots to make room for the books where they belong.*

After I showered, I chatted with my mother about my day for a bit. When I told her about the incident with the cop, she said, "You know, you're welcome to take my car as long as I don't have any plans to use it."

Me: "Yeah, I was thinking I'd do that next time."

Back upstairs, I had a few more cookies, and played Time Princess and Race for the Galaxy while waiting for Coffee's stream to start. I feel very drained of energy. Tomorrow, I'm going to visit Sophrani, where I'll do some drawing and she'll do quilling. (Kage will be working). A little bit ago, Lyric mewed for me to let her into the attic, which I am Not Doing. She has settled for Garage Time instead. I'll be up for another hour or two, but I don't know if I'll do much of anything before going to bed. I started a monster with a 24-hour timer in 4thewords; I like those because they're big but I don't have to finish them on the same day.

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April 19-20: Visiting friends, videos, unpacking, and bagels

2025-04-21T04:15:26Z

Saturday, April 19

I woke up around 8AM, which was too early given that I'd stayed up until 1:30AM. I got up anyway and had the rest of the cereal for breakfast. My mother used to eat Raisin Bran Crunch but hadn't been having it lately and I'd been eating it for breakfast since I got here. There's no reason I couldn't have the same things here that I had at my old home; I just haven't been.

I can actually still get groceries from Walmart, it turns out; the nearest Walmart has the same "In Home" service I previously used. But my parents are used to ordering from a local grocery and I doubt I can persuade them to use a different one. Even though Walmart offers better service for less money. My mother has had a grudge against Walmart since they botched delivery on a TV she'd purchased.

After breakfast, I played some Time Princess. I remembered that I unpacked my requisite box, and took a shower. By the time I finished with the shower, I was tired. I was seeing Kage, Sophrani, and Envoy at 2PM, and had about two hours, so I lay down for a nap. I mostly failed at nap but managed forty-five minutes or so. I got up again at 1PM and got ready to go. Fussing with various little things before I left took longer than I'd expected, and I left a bit late. And also forgot to bring up directions, so I had to stop to do that. I still haven't memorized the route to my friends' house, but I remember their address and my own new one now.

This morning, Kage had been helping his father get his house ready for sale, but he'd already gotten back by the time I arrived, which was a pleasant surprise.

Sophrani: "You know, since you live in the area, I just wanted you to know that you're welcome to see us more often now."

Me, joking: "So, like, more than once a year?"

Sophrani: "Yes! A lot more often. If you want to get together for lunch or stop by for an afternoon or whatever, that'd be great."

So Sophrani and I made plans for Thursday afternoon to do crafting together: she'll work on quilling and I'll draw.

Envoy arrived shortly after I did. I generally come by in the early afternoon, so that we have time for lunch beforehand and also Envoy has time to wake up. He sleeps very late on the weekends.

For an hour or two, we chatted in the living room. Kage had recently purchased a laser engraver, and talking about that reminded me: "Wait, you have a working regular printer, don't you?" Terrycloth's executor had sent me a form to sign in early April. I don't own a printer and usually went to the library on the very rare occasions when I needed something printed. But I hadn't gotten around to it before the move. I sent Kage both attachments even though I only needed one page printed, because I wasn't sure which attachment it was. Before I sorted it out, Kage had printed both of them. Oops. But I could finish this task finally!

After chatting for a while, we went to the theater room to watch some "Witchy-poo", their nickname for the anime I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level, which is rather unwieldy to say every time. We watched three episode from Season 2. I haven't seen all of season 1, but it's a cozy, episodic fantasy with basically no actual conflict, so missing some episodes isn't an issue.

We went to dinner after that, at a local italian place. Sophrani ordered a crostini appetizer and shared it -- very tasty! They have a crab & ricotta manicotti that I probably got last time and got again this time -- it's tasty, but I should try something else the next time we go. I saved room for dessert because they had cookies and cream cannoli and and amazingly everyone else decided to get dessert with me.

After dinner, we went back to Kage & Sophrani's house to watch "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves", which Envoy and Kage were both enthusiastic about. Sophrani and I hadn't seen it. I expect living near the three of them will catch me up some on my deficit of sff-viewing. It's nice that Kage and Envoy are so content to re-watch the things they've enjoyed.

I remembered to get my leftovers out of their fridge and headed home after the movie. I felt peckish when I got home, so I ate the rest of my cannoli (the restaurant has served me two and I took one home). I played some Time Princess and then crashed.

Sunday, April 20

I had no plans for today except to get bagels for breakfast, since I'd eaten the last of the raisin bran. I woke around 8AM again, and got myself out of bed at 8:30AM. There's a Panera maybe a mile and half from the house, and a Brueger's a little further. I went to the Panera because I like their Asiago cheese bagels. They don't have onion bagels, but my dad likes everything bagels fine. My mother prefers he have onion bagels because he gets poppy seeds all over the place when he eats everything bagels, but whatever. They have a cleaning service. It's fine.

I told Dad the plan.

Dad: "Great! Are you getting cream cheese and lox, too?"

Me: "Cream cheese, yes, but tragically bagel places nowadays seldom sell lox. We'll have to get some from the store."

Dad: *mock-pouts*

I checked the fridge for the status of cream cheese: they had a brick of plain, so I figured that was plenty for Dad and I could get honey-walnut for myself and my mother. They also had an unopened package of smoked salmon, which I excitedly showed to my father. "I don't need to get lox*! We have some."

* Smoked salmon and lox are not the same thing, but my father is a Jewish man from Brooklyn and has been calling smoked salmon "lox" his whole life. Close enough.

I got a bagel pack from Panera. Back home, I fixed bagels for my parents and myself, and went upstairs to eat mine. I had smoked salmon with honey-walnut cream cheese on mine, which did not seem like a natural pairing but I like sweet with almost anything, so I figured it'd be fine.

It was so good. I wanted another bagel right away. I restrained myself and waited 75 minutes until it was 11AM, so I could call the second bagel "lunch."

Lyric remains fascinated by the garage. She went into it before I left, came back inside for lunch, and then was lurking by the door to the garage when my mother wanted to get McDonald's. I had to come down to grab her while my mother left. Lyric seems to have accepted the garage as an acceptable substitute to going outside, though. Long-term, I think enclosing the back porch will be preferable. My parents don't go out through the back door, so Lyric wanting to use it won't be an inconvenience the way the garage can be.

After lunch, I unpacked two boxes while listening to podcasts, then took a shower. Post-shower, I felt pretty worn-out, so I put on some lo-fi to nap. Listening to lo-fi while I sleep/try to sleep has been working very well. It makes my room feel peaceful and cozy, and even at low volumes, masks enough of the noise from downstairs that it doesn't keep me awake. I managed to nap for 90 minutes or so; that was nice.

I was tempted to have a third bagel-with-lox for dinner, but ate my leftovers from yesterday instead.

My brother called to ask us about groceries: he had the grocery list for my father from my father's home health aide, but hadn't ordered on Thursday like usual. He told us to email if we needed anything else, and I said I'd just add to the cart the stuff I wanted. Mom didn't want it delivered until tomorrow because the store has a surcharge for Sunday deliveries, and we didn't need anything urgently.

I added stuff to the cart throughout the day, as I remembered it.

I played some more of the Exile Princes, and discovered there's some kind of soft-cap on number of units, where their morale is bad if there are too many of them, even if you're able to pay them all. But I'd discovered where you could dismiss units, so I got rid of some. And then accidentally didn't have any people who were good at defense left. Oops.

Somewhere in here, I unpacked a third box. I also moved two boxes into the unfinished section of the attic where the upstairs furnace is. There's not much room in there, but I can stack some stuff in the space without obstructing access to the furnace. One box is just the gigantic tabletop Ogre game, and the other has my Jyhad collection and a bunch of Magic: the Gathering cards.

Around 7PM, I closed the game down and finished re-reading Kingdom of Beasts in Time Princess. Around 8:30PM, Coffee canceled stream. Cutsycat encouraged everyone to fight the Flame Mountain God in the current 4thewords event, because the community challenge to defeat it has been running for 3 days and the community is still less than halfway through it.

I have a timed quest to defeat a hundred tiny monsters, so I did a few for that first, then switched to fighting Flame Mountain God for the rest of the night.

All my writing has been journaling, though. I keep thinking "I'll get back to writing fiction now" but not actually getting back to writing fiction.

For now, though, it's after midnight and I'm calling it a night. I'll go downstairs to refill my drink and let Lyric back inside, then go to bed.

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April 8-12: The Chronicles of Moving

2025-04-18T03:12:30Z

Tuesday, April 8

Today has been tough.

The movers are coming either Thursday or Friday, and I won't know which until tomorrow. So I've been trying to sort the remaining stuff that is in the "might come with me" category. I'd already spent two days on the kitchen without making much progress, because I'd work for an hour or two and then stop for the day. Today, I probably spent 6 hours on it. Lots of "work for an hour, sit down for an hour, get up again, repeat throughout the day." Around 7:30PM, I decided to quit for the day. I made pancakes for dinner, because I haven't wanted to buy groceries and have run low on some usual staples. There's still frozen food I should eat, but I forgot about it.

After dinner, I went back to the kitchen and did a few more things anyway.

I wrote down a list of the things I want to do before the movers get here and before the car leaves (car is scheduled to go on Thursday). Because I've been afraid I would forget them. There are 12 items on the list. They are not quick items. I am not getting all of them done tomorrow.

One item is to scatter Lut's ashes in the backyard. I want to do it here because the one thing he wanted most, whenever he was at a hospital or rehab facility, was to come home. Every time I think about it, I start to cry again. I didn't want to write it down because it's making me cry again. I plan to bring a little bit of the ashes with me. They make memorial necklaces that will hold a little bit, and I want to use one, but I haven't picked one out yet.

Anyway, I was feeling pretty good about getting most of the kitchen done, until I made the list and realized that, ideally, I would do all of it tomorrow while I still have the car and when the movers definitely won't be here. Now I feel panicked instead.

Most of it isn't that important and the stuff that is That Important is not time-consuming. So I shouldn't panic. But I'm panicking anyway. I'm gonna go do an easy important thing: Pay Taxes, which is separate from File Taxes; I can get an extension for filing but I need to at least guess at what I owe and pay it, since I am retired and do not have withholding. Ideally, I would do this after actually doing my taxes, so that I could pay the correct amount instead of guessing. But no. Paying taxes now lets me cross both "paying" and "filing" off the list of Things To Happen Before Saturday. I can file an extension on Sunday or whatever. It's fine.

There, now I only have 10 things to do tomorrow. That's more manageable, right?

o_o;;;

I'll go do another one.

Okay so I did the important part of another little task. And then added another thing to the list. But it's only a little thing! (Clean the litter boxes I'm taking with me.)

It's 10:17PM and I think I'm just gonna be done worrying about stuff for the day. Tomorrow may have 11 items on the list but only four are critical to do before the movers get here. Good enough. I'll finish editing the chapter of The Jewel-Strewn Night that I started this morning.

Wednesday, April 9

Before I went to bed on Tuesday night, I added another item to the list, bringing it to 12. I fell asleep around 1AM and woke around 6AM. When I couldn't get back to sleep after an hour, I got up and made pancakes, then sat down to watch Veo's stream and completely ignore my looming to-do list.

Veo defeated Ganondorf and then Ganon to win Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, after several months of streaming it. So watching the grand finale was time well-spent. But after it finished, I got up to start working on my doom-filled list.

I carried some bins of stuff to donate out to the car, adding to the bins already waiting to go. With six bins filled, I delivered the donations to the thrift store, then came home and cleaned out the car. I even, for the first time ever, brought my dustbuster out to the car to vacuum it. The dustbuster works great on furniture and carpets, but was not good at car floors for some reason. Still, it helped. The car had to be cleaned today because the auto transport was supposed to pick it up on Thursday. (It didn't need to be vacuumed, just have all the loose stuff taken out.)

Once I finished with the car, I came in, undressed because I don't like outside clothing, and checked what else was on the priority list.

Oh right. Cry. Because I needed to scatter Lut's ashes.

I dressed again, putting on my favorite comfy black dress and a necklace, because Lut always liked it when I dressed up for him.

It was a little windy out: the tornado warning siren had been going off when I got home, though it was quiet now. I transfered a little bit of Lut's ashes into a small bag to take with me, and scattered the rest over the daffodils planted around the patio. I still had some left, so I scattered the remainder by the peonies. Lut didn't much care about the flowers, one way or another, but I always liked them. They came with the house. I made a few minor attempts at gardening in the first spring after I bought the house, but I never cared for it. The peonies and daffodils have survived 22 years of my neglect. They're pretty hardy.

And I thought about Lut, and I cried.

Lut is home, and he's staying here.

He didn't care what happened with his remains, but I had them anyway and this was the most appropriate thing I could think of.

Afterwards, I did the next item in priority order: pack my jewelry. The movers can't pack jewelry, not even costume jewelry, so I had to handle this one. I am not very good at packing but I managed it.

The last must-do-Wednesday item was pack luggage. Because even though I don't leave until Saturday, I needed to set aside everything I was bringing with me to make sure it didn't get shipped over land. Since the movers may not deliver my stuff for as much as two weeks.

But instead of doing that, I decided to work on pruning more of my stuff. This was also on the list, but lower down because while it would be annoying if some stuff I didn't want got packed, it would be much more aggravating if I didn't have luggage for the next two weeks.

However, the thrift store stops taking donations at 5PM, while I could finish packing any time before bedtime.

So I went through the kitchen and bathroom and filled up the car with 5 tubs plus the roaster oven. Because I was weeding out stuff from the kitchen, much of it was ceramic or glass, or oversize, making it unfeasible to fill the car with 10-11 tubs for a trip the way I had for the used bookstore.

As the day grew later, I became hopeful that perhaps the movers wouldn't come on Thursday and the move would happen on Friday, giving me more time to prepare. But around 2PM, I got the call: they'd be here on Thursday morning between 9 and 10AM. Alas.

Around 4PM, I returned to the thrift store. While unloading, I realized I'd forgotten to grab the DVDs I wanted to donate. I checked with an employee that they took DVDs (yep) and considered trying to squeeze in a last trip before 5PM. Maybe I could do it in the morning before the auto transport came for the car? Maybe the thrift store could take later donations if I didn't need a receipt?

Then the auto transport place called and asked if they could pick the car up tonight.

Me: "Um, I guess? Tomorrow would be better, but it's fine."

Them: "Great! We want to deliver it Friday, is that okay?"

Me: "...I don't arrive until Saturday. But my parents and also my brother and sister-in-law will be around so...sure. It's fine."

I called my mom and emailed everyone with this new development, and then started packing my luggage because another trip to the thrift store was out of the question now.

A little after 6PM, the driver arrived. He took a zillion pictures of my car, very sensibly documenting its current (dinged-up) condition.

Me: "So you should have the phone number for the destination. No, wait, I mean, I gave the people who contracted your service the destination phone number. Whether that has been passed along to you is another matter entirely."

Him: *checks phone* "Yeah, they only gave me your number."

So I gave him my parents' number.

Him: "Okay, let your mom know I'll be there before noon tomorrow."

Me: "..."

Me: "HOW? It's a 16 hour drive and it's after 6PM?"

Him: "I'm getting gas and driving there as soon as I load your car."

Me: O_o

Him: "I'll call your mom in the morning with an exact time, once I'm closer."

After he left, I realized I'd forgotten to take the empty bins out of the trunk. Oops. I had wanted the movers to pack stuff in the plastic bins where possible, because the bins are sturdier and it's likely stuff will be in boxes for A Long Time. Oh well.

So I called my mother and sent a new email, and went back to packing luggage. Packing luggage took longer than usual because I kept getting distracted by other tasks, but I finished it around 8PM. After a short break, I went back to the task list. The extension had almost nothing I wanted to keep, so I moved the handful of items I did into the living room. Then I poked through the accumulated piles of stuff to see if there was anything else. The stuff I'd collected from my office in 2020 after 6 months of working from home was still in there, unsorted, because anything I hadn't needed for 6 months couldn't be important.

Lut never liked to be photographed. I have very few pictures of him, and most of those are of the cat and he's partially out of frame. Once, when we dressed up for an office party in the early 2000s, the party photographer took a film photo of us and we got a copy later. It is the only good photo I have of him.

I'd forgotten I kept it on my desk at work.

If I hadn't gone through that stuff, I would've left it behind.

I was profoundly relieved to find it, all the more so because I hadn't been thinking about it during the move prep. I'd looked for the photo a few times since Lut passed, but figured it'd turn up eventually and there was no reason to worry about it.

After that, I went to the basement, partly to look for more stuff I wanted to keep and mainly to clean off the free weights. I have several sets of dumbbells that I'm bringing with me. They were kind of nasty from being unused in the basement for 15+ years and I didn't really want to bring them into a new house in that condition. So cleaning them was on the list. And I was running a load of laundry anyway. While I was in the basement, I updated the disclosure form for the house sale with some things I'd forgotten to mention. I also moved some other items I wanted to keep: model horses and the tiny artificial Christmas tree Lut and I owned.

After getting the dumbbells clean and dealing with laundry, I cleaned out some of the stuff stored under the center of the bed (not in a convenient drawer). I threw out a bunch of stuff and then decided there was nothing to rescue there and I should do a different task. I cleaned out two of the four litter boxes so they could be packed.

By 11PM, I had added 6 more items to my move-prep list, and completed 12 of the now-18. I decided this was much as I was going to do, and stopped for the night. I played some Time Princess and did some reading before going to sleep at my usual 1AM.

Thursday, April 10

I woke up at 4:30AM, thought, "I have to get back to sleep" and spent the next 90 minutes or so alternating between playing with my phone and trying to sleep. A little after 6AM, I gave up and got up. I figured I could nap after the movers were gone.

I ate breakfast and then went back to work.

Finding the lost photo last night inspired me to conduct a more thorough search of the rest of the basement and Lut's closet. I rescued two sweaters from the office stuff, and found a box in the basement with my extensive Vampire: the Eternal Struggle collection and also some Magic: the Gathering cards. I don't think there were any valuable M:tG cards in this box, though I didn't go through them. My collection (from the early 90s) has some valuable cards, but I am pretty sure my collection was upstairs. Lut had started M:tG even earlier than I did, but he had traded in all his valuable M:tG cards for Warhammer 40,000 miniatures in the mid-90s. He had kept lots of commons and uncommons that had no meaningful resale value, though. For a little while in the early 2000s, we'd used his collection to build decks and play M:tG because if no one's using rares the game is pretty balanced.

I also found a mostly-empty box with some books in it, that I'd missed when I went through the basement and donated all the books. Aww.

Lut's closet had nothing of particular value to me, but it held two full bins of books.

Oh no.

It's also very likely that I am the one who put those bins there. I remember clearing out Lut's closet in 2017, when I was trying to make the house easier to navigate for him. I suspect the bins had been elsewhere on the first floor, and that I'd stuffed them into Lut's closet after throwing away enough empty electronics boxes and dead monitors to make room for them.

A few weeks ago, I’d bought a 3.5” external disk drive. Lut and I met on FurryMUCK in 1996, and we talked and roleplayed there for around a year before meeting in person. I saved logs of most of our interactions; before we met in person, I often re-read them. After I moved to his city, I seldom looked at them again, though. I saved them on my hard drive and backed them up to ten or so 3.5” disks. When moving computers at one point in the late 90s, I failed to copy over the logs from my hard drive, and didn’t realize it until it was too late and I’d reformatted my old computer.

Of the 10 backup disks, I’d found three on the first floor while going through stuff, and one more in the basement, along with a box of other disks, mostly for writing that I still had on my current hard drive. I hadn’t plugged in the drive yet to see if any of the disks worked.

I hadn’t yet tried using the new floppy drive, but I had put it on the list of “do before moving”, because I was afraid if I packed the disks, it might be months or years before I unpacked them again. And the odds of them being readable after almost 30 years were already slim.

So a bit before 10AM, I finally unboxed and plugged in the drive, and started checking disks, starting with the ones from the first floor.

I had some trouble with the files from the first disk I checked, one of logs between Lut and me. Some copied over to my hard drive fine. Others wouldn’t copy until I changed the name to have a .txt extension instead of .LOG. Some wouldn’t copy over but I could open them from the floppy and manually save them to the hard drive. A few were corrupted and wouldn’t open no matter what I tried. But I got most of the files from the first three disks. Not as nice as getting all of them, and I’m still missing so many. But it was nice to get some.

The disks from the basement were all unreadable. I threw away most of them, since I was 95% confident that they’d contained stuff I already had copies of. The last one was of logs with Lut, and I kept it just in case there’s another recovery method that would get some data out of it.

The window for the movers to arrive was 9-10AM. Around 10:15AM, I called the office to ask for a status update.

Office: “Hm. Let me call them and call you back. They left over an hour ago, so .. they should be there by now.”

Me: “Oh gosh, I hope they’re all right.”

A few minutes later:

Office: “Soooo they were double-booked for 9-10AM. They’re delivering now and will come to you around 11:00-11:30AM.”

I got two calls from the driver, the first confirming that estimate and the next when they left.

Around 11:30AM, three movers -- Nicole, Xavier (guessing at the spelling; he pronounced it “Ex-zavier,” which is pretty cool. Nicole called him X), and...Roger, I think? It’s been two days and he made less of an impression on me than the other two. Xavier was really kind, admiring the artwork I had hung up and asking if I was an artist, so I showed him and Nicole some of the books I’d written and did the covers for. I have print copies of most of my books and they were gonna see them while packing them anyway. Xavier liked Lut’s sword, too. Lut used to fence and owned an actual combat rapier made by a swordsmith, from when he and his wife did Renfaire and SCA events. He’d wanted to get rid of it when we moved because he didn’t fence anymore or take care of it, but I kept it because it’s beautiful. I’ve worn it with costumes a few times.

It turned out this team was just here to pack. Another team would be here on Friday to load. I don’t know if I’d misunderstood when Travis explained, or if it varies whether they pack & load on one day or break it into two.

The movers were there until a bit after 6PM, taking a break around 1PM for lunch. They waited to pack my office last, and left my computer and its peripherals unpacked so I could use it after they left.

At 10:15AM, my sister-in-law, C, emailed: the car transport would deliver at 4PM. Later, we found out that he’d been delayed by trouble with the truck, rather than, say, needing a nap or lunch or something.

Nicole and Xavier were very conscientious about labeling the boxes they packed, writing down not just where it came from but what it was. Roger marked where it came from but for many boxes he packed, he just wrote “stuff.” This is less of an issue for the basement, where almost everything was Kill Team, Warhammer 40k, or painting supplies for them. For rooms like the office and bathroom, more inconvenient. But there were only a few boxes from the office and basement, and he did a better job with the bedroom. Overall, I think it’ll be fine. The labels will be particularly nice because much of my stuff is likely to stay in boxes. I just won’t have anywhere to put it, and the miniatures wargame stuff tends to live in boxes anyway.

Although I’m hoping to make a place to display the painted miniatures. I brought one big bookcase and four small ones, and very few books. So there may be shelf space for knickknacks. We’ll see. One advantage of storing them in boxes is that the miniatures won’t get dusty in them.

While the packers were there, I alternated between pruning more stuff that hadn’t been packed yet, checking areas that weren’t being packed (extension and most of the basement) for stuff I wanted, and sitting at my computer to play games. It was many times easier than packing things myself, but still tiring. My parents used professional movers for every move when I was growing up, and I used them when I moved to the house in 2003, but I’ve never done a move like this, where I had to explain what to take and what to leave.

Before they left, I realized Nicole had packed Lyric’s gabapentin (100% my fault: I forgot to put it with my luggage despite knowing I needed to give Lyric some for the flight). I only remembered because Nicole had written “pet meds” on the side of the box. She fished it back out for me cheerfully.

Roger also packed my trackball (I took it out of the room when he went to pack, but then needed to check something on my computer and brought it back.) They got it back out for me, too.

They packed 49 boxes.

49 seems like so many boxes.

It was actually under the estimate in almost every category, because I’d pruned out a bunch of stuff that I’d told Travis I was taking. Even at the original estimate, Travis had called this a “small move”. Maybe it’ll be fine.

The loader, Joey, called in the afternoon to say he’d be at my house at 8AM. The moving company called a few minutes later to give me an 8AM-9AM window.

I asked Nicole if she knew how long it would take to load, and she waffled for a bit, then gave up. “Just assume it’ll take all day. It’s hard to estimate because every house is different. Like it goes faster if you can back the truck up to the front door and you don’t have any steps, but neither of those is true here.”

Around 4:30PM, my sister-in-law called because my car still hadn’t arrived (it was 5:30PM there, so 90 minutes late) and his voice mail was full.

C: “And I can’t text him because...”

Me: “Oof, what happens if you text him?”

C: “Just a minute.” *taptaptap* “Okay, that went through.”

C: “We were going to go out to eat but when we got outside we realized the car wasn’t here. He’d said he’d leave it in the driveway and the key in the mailbox. I didn’t want to leave if you want us to wait here for the car, though.”

Me: “It sounds like he wasn’t planning for you to be there anyway? So go ahead, have a nice dinner.”

A little later, she texted me that the car had arrived. It showed up while they were heading out. Yay!

After the packers left at 6:30PM, I went “oh good, I feel gross and I can finally take a shower.” I went to the bathroom and realized they’d packed the soap/shampoo/conditioner.

This was a mutual fail: Nicole had asked if I wanted them to leave it, and I had said “yes, please do”. But I’d left it in the shower stall instead of moving it to an area marked "do not pack". I’d put a towel and hair towel with my luggage for this reason.

I waffled; I had a bar of crappy soap I could use, and I could skip washing my hair. But it’d be Saturday before I’d be at my parents’ house, and I didn’t want to go three days without washing my hair. I don’t really like skipping it for one day unless I’ve kept it braided (which I hadn’t).

So I opened and searched 2 of the 3 bathroom boxes to find the shampoo and conditioner (already regretting the lack of informative labels), sealed the boxes again and put better labels on them, then showered.

Much better.

I spent the evening at home, mostly just trying to decompress. I made dinner with the stuff that hadn’t been packed. (I left most of my cookware because my mom has lots and mine is only better in a few cases.) I think I played some Time Princess and Race for the Galaxy. Maybe I edited The Jewel-Strewn Night? And wrote about April 9. I didn’t get to much of the 10th. It’s the 12th now as I’m writing this.

I called my local friend to give him a status update. We planned to get together on Friday after the loaders left.

I went to bed early but stayed awake until 1AM like usual.

Friday, April 11

I woke at 7AM, and couldn’t get back to sleep. After a bit of playing with my phone, I got up and tended to some remaining tasks. Somehow there were still things left to take care of, even with virtually everything being packed.

I hadn’t noticed how much stuff had been left in the pantry unpacked; apparently I forgot to look. Peanut butter and nutella are “liquids” for purposes of both TSA and movers, and cannot be transported. I stuffed the three nutella jars in my suitcase. I figured if it was over 50 lbs when I got to the airport, I could throw it out or put it my carry-on.

At 8AM exactly, while I was still eating breakfast, the driver for the movers arrived. I showed him the furniture and boxes that I was bringing. He got to work moving boxes. His assistant arrived a little bit later. I watched Vicorva’s stream; they were playing The Exile Princes, which looked pretty fun. I might play it sometime.

They left the office for last, but by 9:00AM, they were ready to start loading it. I switched the stream to my phone and got up to unplug my computer and all the peripherals.

By 10AM, they had everything loaded, went over the paperwork with me and had me sign everything, then headed out. The driver told me he would deliver on Monday -- the earliest date in their time frame! -- which was great news

I sat down in Pretend Coffee Shop, which still looked mostly-normal because I’d only brought the robot vacuum, wall decor, and bookcase from that area. I read fediverse and played Time Princess while the movers finished fiddling with things in their truck and headed out.

A few minutes after they’d pulled away, I realized I’d forgotten to tell them to take the free weights. Oops. I had the driver's number but I didn't try calling him to ask him to come back for them. I haven't regularly used the free weights in over a decade, and I was only bringing them with me because I thought I might be more likely to use them if they weren't in a nasty basement. I was put out that I'd gone to the trouble of cleaning them and now they'd just be thrown away, though. But so it goes.

Around 1PM, I called my local friend and we agreed to get together along with another friend around 3-4PM.

While I waited for them, I remembered that I needed to close my safe deposit box at the bank. Many years earlier, a teller had asked me to get a safe deposit box. "Employees get one for free, so it won't cost you anything, and the front line has an incentive program running now for opening new safe deposit box accounts." So I got one. I'd thought to put data backups in it, but I was pretty sure I never had.

I hadn't seen the keys for the box in years and had no idea where they were. I'd had some mystery keys in the jewelry armoire, but they didn't look like safe deposit box keys and two of them said "property of state of Ohio" on them, so those couldn't be it. The last time I remembered seeing the safe deposit box keys, they'd been in my desk at work.

...

Wait, did that mean they were still inside one bag of stuff from work?

I went to the extension and dug carefully through a bag that had something jingling in it. I thought it was an empty key ring that I'd noticed on my earlier search, but I found at the bottom a key-sized red envelope. Inside: two safe deposit box keys.

AW YEAH.

Triumphant, I set off on foot to the bank. It's less than a mile away, and checking the box's contents and closing it would take a little bit, so I didn't want to make my friends come with me for it.

The box was, indeed, empty; I'd never even gone to it. Let this be a lesson in accepting complimentary things you don't particularly want: they can come back to haunt you later. I was just relieved I wouldn't have to pay to have the box drilled. (No, there are no backups for safe deposit box keys. No, bank employees cannot open the box without the customer's key. If the customer loses the keys, the bank pays a locksmith to drill out and replace the lock and charges the customer for the service.)

I went home and played on my Chromebook while waiting for my friends. After they arrived, we hung out in the living room for a bit, then headed off to the thrift store to drop off the remaining stuff I'd bothered to bag, and Half-Price Books to get rid of my remaining 2.5 boxes of books. I hadn't realized Half-Price Books was an actual used bookstore. They have more of a discount retailer vibe. I don't expect a used bookstore to be a chain. Anyway, they wanted me to wait around while they priced everything (and presumably entered it into their system), so we hung out and looked at used books and chatted for a bit. I got $20 out of it and used it to defray the cost of buying dinner for my friends.

We went out for Mongolian barbecue, where all the sauces were weirdly much spicier than expected. Like my friend got "sweet soy" which doesn't sound like it'd be spicy, but was. The roti was so tasty I got a second order, though.

Afterwards, we went to my friend's house to hang out, because he and Other Friend had work to do -- mostly running ice-dyed clothes through the washing machine. Around 9-10PM, he took me home.

At home, I gave Lyric her gabapentin for the trip, played some Time Princess, and flopped early.

Saturday, April 12

This was it: the worst day of Lyric's life.

Lyric hadn't come to bed with me the night before, but she was at the foot of the bed when I woke at 5AM. She walked up to the head of the bed and flopped down on top of me. I stayed in position under her until it got too uncomfortable, then rolled over. Usually if I move when she's on top of me, she leaves, but this time she stayed flopped on top of me in the new position. She had an "I'm too stoned to leave" weight to her. I managed to fall back to sleep like that.

I got up around 8AM, took care of a few things, then sat down for a bit to eat breakfast. A little after 9AM, I resumed Final Chores. I packed the GFiber router and extender in my bag; the fiber was already out, though they'd said it wouldn't be turned off until 4PM. No real issue, though.

What was much more inconvenient was that I was suddenly out of space on Google services: drive/email/photos. I wrote an angry email to Google support, because why did I only have the 100 GB I got from paying for Google One and not the other terabyte that I'd had for as long as I'd been using Google Drive.

I was at 120 GB, so I started deleting big files that I didn't really need -- things that had gotten sucked up by Google Drive when I started using it to backup my data. Getting down to 103GB was easy. Getting below 100 GB was painful because I had to dig through lots of small files for ones I didn't want. I abandoned this effort to do physical tasks around the house instead. I cleaned out the fridge and put one full trash cart on the curb for pickup on Monday. Then I started emptying liquids into the sink so I could throw those out, too.

I got increasingly anxious as time went on. I have never had a panic attack but I felt as if I was on the brink of one. I focused on breathing, telling myself I was doing great, and continuing with steps. The realtor will hire someone to clear the house (and bill me for it) so I didn't really need to throw away the food. I just thought that food was a particularly gross thing to leave sitting around and I didn't want to risk that the pantry wouldn't get emptied (since the kitchen didn't have much junk left in it the way the basement/extension did).

I discovered a bunch of chocolate I'd been keeping in the freezer, so I put that in my luggage since it wasn't as if it needed to be frozen. It was just there so it'd keep longer.

I gave Lyric her second gabapentin around 10AM, an hour before she'd go in the carrier, per instructions. She was pretty mellow.

My friend arrived a little early. As I'd told him the night before, I was not ready to go. I wanted to put Lyric in the carrier as the last thing I did before leaving the house. I finished throwing food away and taking out the recycling while he petted the cat.

During one trip from the house, I accidentally left both the kitchen door and exterior door open and Lyric followed me out, but she hung out on the sidewalk and only complained a little when I picked her up to carry her back inside.

Loading Lyric into the cat carrier was easy: I put some catnip in it and she followed. She was quiet up until I carried her out of the house, and then she started meowing. She did intermittent meowing, every minute or two, for most of the drive to the airport.

At the airport, my checked bag was a few pounds overweight, so I threw out all three jars of nutella to get it under again. If I'd wanted to check another bag, I could've put it in there, but I wanted to keep my devices with me.

The line at security was short, but they needed to run the cat carrier through the X-ray machine with no cat in it. Because I wasn't sure I could get Lyric back into the cat carrier again without her escaping, they took us to a private screening room. With the door to it closed, I let Lyric out and held her while one TSA person took the carrier for screening and the other waited with Lyric and me.

When he returned with the carrier, I flattened out the puppy pads again and coaxed Lyric back into it with some kitty treats. She was not thrilled.

While we waited at the gate, Lyric started scratching at the puppy pads, the way she would at a litter box, and I smelled urine, although the scent wasn't strong. The puppy pads ended up crumpled together at one end of the carrier. I hadn't brought any puppy pads to replace them because I hadn't expected to be able to take Lyric out of the carrier. Southwest's instructions had been clear on this point: once the pet arrives at airport, the pet must stay in the carrier until you leave the airport. The actual airport was more flexible; the TSA person told me there was a designated free-roam area where people could let their pets out.

But Lyric didn't appear to have made much of a mess: nothing was leaking or detectably damp from outside of the carrier, and I didn't have much time before the plane left.

I freed up enough space in Google Drive that I could modify files again, which was important to me because I wanted to be able to write on the plane. I opened a few files in offline mode before the plane took off.

The plane was mostly empty and I got row of three seats to myself. The flight attendants said Lyric could stay on the empty seat beside me during take off and landing, and I'd figured out how to get the carrier to expand as well as condense with the cat still in it. Lyric was quiet during the first part of the flight; I don't know if the engine hum soothed her or just made her think drawing attention to herself was a mistake. She started mewing again partway through. I wrote a little on the plane, about Thursday and Friday, but mostly I read Angel's Grace and Feathers of Dawn.

The flight was nonstop -- if I hadn't been able to get a nonstop, I would've driven with Lyric so she could have food/water/litterbox while traveling instead. At our destination, I went to baggage claim, while my sister-in-law texted updates about their status. My bag was one of the first few on the conveyor belt, so I grabbed it while I waited for them to come to me after parking.

In the car, I learned that the litter box I'd added to my parents' grocery order two weeks ago had never arrived. So we stopped at a store on the way to my parents' house, because I didn't want to let Lyric out of the carrier without having a litter box available, and I still wasn't sure if she'd peed in the carrier.

Once home, I filled the litterbox and opened the carrier. Lyric had urinated on the puppy pads, which had soaked it up entirely. Both cat and carrier were clean. That worked much better than I'd expected! I washed the liner on the cat carrier anyway, just to be thorough.

My sister-in-law cooked a delicious meal for us -- coconut rice, chicken, roasted asparagus, and marinated cucumbers. It was great. :9

Lyric wandered her new home, meowing loudly for a chunk of the evening. This surprised me, because she's been a quiet cat for as long as I've had her. She'd mew when she wanted to come inside, if she could hear me near the door. She'd mew if she caught a mouse. On rare occasions, she'd meow when she wanted something, but that was very rare. Here, she mostly didn't seem to want anything. To go outside, sometimes, but that was about the only thing.

It turns out that not only does the HOA prohibit outdoor cats, but the city does as well. Doubly confined. I talked to my brother and his wife about having a catio built for her. My sister-in-law suggested a kennel run, but that would be much more awkward, since I'd have to carry Lyric to and from it and she'd probably complain every time.

But a catio will require asking the HOA about what my parents are allowed to modify on their property. Whee.

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April 1-7

2025-04-08T04:45:01Z

April 1, 2025

It's a new month and I get to do my month-in-review, yay!

I haven't started it yet, even though it's 9PM and I look forward to it. I have done Other Things instead.

I woke at 8AM and did my usual "breakfast and goof off" until 10:30AM, then went back to bed. At 12:30PM, I got up again and made lunch. Shortly after I finished lunch, Telnar called. Usually when he calls, I either go for a walk outside or pace about my house for some minimal exercise. (Telnar typically also walks during our calls, either on his treadmill or outside). Since I still needed to gather stuff for donation, I did that instead. I filled two 25-gallon bags with stuff from Lut's closet and decided that was enough work and started pacing instead. Then went back to pack one more bag before we finished the call. We usually talk for an hour or so.

It's the last day of Sprint in Time Princess, which is All Consumption Day, when every kind of spending from the last four days counts, plus "society contribution". My society has more contribution than it can ever use (I should know, I run it), so this last category is just "dump a bunch of resources into the void in return for Sprint rewards." The other spending categories, you get something for expending resources in addition to the sprint rewards, so they're more fun. On the other hand, the resources expended for society contrib are ones that I have very little use for outside of sprint, so it's not all bad.

I spent a chunk of time on both my accounts (but especially the alt because no QoL improvements) doing dailies and giving companion gifts, because that has the best expenditure-to-reward ratio of the various possible activities.

I also read through two chapters of The Jewel-Strewn Night.

While I waited for water to boil for dinner, I put today's bags of clothing in the car. It looks like I'll be making multiple trips to the thrift store just because there's more than one carload of stuff. Lyric went outside since the door was open for long enough for her to decide she wanted outside. Also she likes having me outside with her so she often goes outside if I do. Even though she usually wants to stay outside after I've gone back inside.

During Coffee's stream, I wrote about my day so far. I also decided that I would Finally Post the last several days of entries, but I wanted to read through them first. So I've been alternating reading with writing this and also with finishing up some things in Time Princess. It has not been efficient, is the thing.

Now that I'm current on today, I'll start the month-in-review entry.

April 2

I woke up around 5:30AM to a ferocious thunderstorm that'd probably started much earlier. I knew the storm was coming because the power company had emailed about their preparations for it. I stayed awake for an hour or so, petting the cat and reading on my phone, before finally getting back to sleep.

I woke again a little before 8AM, briefly contemplated watching V's stream, and went back to sleep instead. At 8:45AM, I woke from a bad dream where I was GMing a game I hadn't finished reading and one player had gone "oh we don't need to worry about that because [thing] about [group]" and I went "of course, [group] [thing], right, haha" (I should've read all the fluff). And then I dozed off while I was supposed to be GMing and slept for 12 hours and it was 8PM and the day was OVER oh NO.

Okay, subconcious, I'll get up now. Sheesh.

I watched the rest of Veo's stream while getting out of bed and eating breakfast and what not. At 11AM, I decided to work on clearing out stuff some more. I filled one bag with trash and another bag with shoes to donate, then went to the bank to discuss payment options. Single-transaction ACHs are either not a thing my bank does anymore or the front line at my branch didn't know how to do them (not clear which), so I just paid for a cashier's check.

While clearing out Lut's things, I'd found a bunch of change -- mostly pennies -- so I turned that into bills while I was at the bank anyway. I wonder if people who carry money in their pocket are more averse to carrying and spending change than people who use a purse? I always spend my change, instead of dumping it somewhere for it to grow into a big pile that's too unwieldy to spend. It's been fifteen -ish years since I last converted change into bills, and that time was also a bottle of change Lut had been feeding.

I asked the teller to verify that my debit card was still functional and about changing the PIN. Because I worked for a bank for 27 years, I have long since gotten out of the habit of using my debit card. If I needed to get cash, I got up from my desk and walked to the teller line. I didn't even have a debit card for much of that time, because what was the point when I needed it so seldom that I couldn't remember the PIN. Even after I stopped working in the branch in 2020, I still didn't use my debit card, although I'd gotten a new one and set the PIN to something I thought I'd remember, just in case. The branch is less than a mile from my house, so going to the teller line for transactions was still easy.

So I hadn't used my card in years. The teller said I could change the PIN at the teller line, but I figured I should check to see if I remembered it first. So when I left the lobby, I went to the ATM.

The ATM was out of order.

Okay then. The lobby had several customers in it when I left, so I drove to the thrift store next and donate seven 25-gallon bags: almost all clothing and shoes, plus a few miscellaneous items. A staffer brought out a shopping cart for me and helped me load it. Very quick, especially since I didn't need a receipt.

Then I went back to the bank and changed the PIN, possibly to the same thing it was already, who knows? I figured that was easier than finding a working ATM to check the PIN at.

Afterwards, I went home and fed myself and Lyric lunch. Lyric had no interest in going out today because even though the storm had passed, it was still heckin' wimdy and also noisy, both from road work on the nearby street and a leafblower in the neighbor's yard. Lyric loves outside but hates both wind and noise, so she wasn't even poking her nose outside while the door was open, like she normally does.

After lunch, I did a bit of editing on The Jewel-Strewn Night, played some Time Princess, and called my local friend to let him know my move date. I decided to take a nap around 4:00PM.

I woke from my nap around 6:30PM, got up to make dinner, then ate and goofed around until Coffee's stream started. I finished up my March-in-review entry and posted it, then grudgingly wrote a little of The Secret Dragon over the next two hours. After Coffee's stream, I finished up dailies in Time Princess, and chatted a little on Discord. Just before midnight, I put in a bit more work on the portrait of Raeku.

Somewhere in here, I also emailed Google Fiber about cancelling my service.

Then more Time Princess until a bit before 1AM, when I went to bed. Did a little reading in bed and fell asleep around 1:30AM.

Thursday, April 3

I woke around 8AM, then lazed in bed for an hour, reading Fediverse and playing Time Princess. At 9AM, I made breakfast and played Race for the Galaxy. Around 10AM, I decided I should try to be vaguely productive, and started writing up yesterday in lieu of being actually productive.

It's now 11:30AM. I was about to take a nap when I realized that I was almost done with one of the daily quests in 4thewords, and if I finish it before noon, I can take another copy of it just before midnight (if I remember). So I wrote another handful of words to finish the quest. Now: nap time!

The rest of Thursday, Friday, and Saturday is a blur now (it's Monday as I write this.) These are the days when I cleared out excess stuff from my closet. I still haven't emptied Lut's -- I donated most of the clothing but there's a bunch of boxes of unknown stuff, probably ancient graphics cards/motherboards/other electronics parts. But I know I'm not bringing anything from his closet, and I am bringing everything from mine. So pruning out my own stuff was more of a priority.

It was also much slower, because I wanted to sort through it. I donated or threw away (depending on condition) anything that I didn't like or that didn't fit. I had so much cosplay stuff that I bought 20+ years and 40+ lbs ago, and I finally disposed of it, huzzah. I also had three giant stuffed animals and I pruned that down to one. (My inner child always wanted a giant stuffed animal, so I bought her some when I found them cheap at Costco 20 years ago. She gets to keep one but the others can hopefully find a good home with an actual child.)

I heard back from GFiber on Thursday that I could cancel by email and specifiy a date. So I emailed them on Friday with the bits of information needed. I have to return the router and the extender by presenting a QR code at FedEx. Haven't gotten the QR code yet, but I can do this at any FedEx. So I will probably just pack the router and extender in my luggage (and have wifi until the last minute!), then ship them back from Durham.

On Saturday, I finished pruning my closet and dropped off everything at the thrift store. I wanted to be sure to do it on Saturday because I'd have a friend in the car on Sunday and I didn't want it full of donations still.

Sunday, April 6

I started on the kitchen today, filling one bin with stuff to donate before I ran out of steam. I had plans to see my local friend at 2PM. I did a little bit of editing as well, before I headed out.

We went for food at my favorite local pizza chain, then I took him back to my house for a bit. Several years ago, I'd told him he could store some of his stuff in my garage. Months ago, when I told him I was moving and he'd need to get his stuff, he said, "Oh, I got it all already."

And I went, "...really? Because there's a lot of stuff in the garage that I didn't put there."

He's been by the house a few times since, but we'd never remembered to have him look at the garage. So I brought him to it today. He poked at one box that was full of broken reclining loveseat parts (mine; I'd had the repair guy drop it in there and forgotten it, because he couldn't do haulaway). And then looked at a few more boxes. "Oh crap. This is my stuff."

Me: "...well, you've done without it for years, so you can't need it too badly?"

Him: "But now that I remember it exists, I want it back."

I feel kind of bad because he has a tiny house and way too much stuff for it, plus a storage locker already that's full. And I'm leaving Saturday. But he has the option of leaving it, and I tried to tell him months ago that he still had stuff here. So I don't feel too bad.

We went back to his house and spent several hours talking and entertaining ourselves. I had a diet Coke at the pizza place and wne to the bathroom like 6 times in 6 hours, which is why I do not normally drink caffeinated beverages. I didn't look at my phone, or even think about my phone, until my friend finally had to use the bathroom. I felt like this was a socializing triumph on his part and told him so. "Usually I would sneak off to the bathroom at least once to check my phone, but I didn't bring it with me any of the times. Because I didn't think about it."

I got home around 11PM and hurried through all my pre-bedtime stuff, including putting the trash cart and recycling cart on the curb. The trash cart was exactly full! That was nice: maximizing free disposal. I got to sleep around my usual time, 1AM.

Monday, April 7

The move grows inevitably closer, and it becomes correspondingly more difficult to do things. Today, I loaded two plastic bins with kitchen stuff to donate and put them in the car, then stopped to load other donation items in the dishwasher and run it. (These were things I'd put away years ago, and dust and whatnot had accreted on some of it since.)

At 2PM, I met with the realtor and signed documents for her. I am leaving a bunch of stuff in the house because I don't have space for it in my parents' house, and I ran out of time/energy to get rid of all of it. She thinks the house will sell faster/for more if it's cleared out, so she's gonna hire a service to haul everything away after I leave and bill me for it, which is fine with me. She left the seller's disclosure and lead disclosure with me to fill out alone, because they're long.

I completed those after she left, and then poked tiredly at games and the web for a bit, before remembering I could just nap. So I took a nap from 5:30PM-7:00PM.

There's this theory that you should nap for 30 minutes or less at a time, but I think this is one of those "true for the average person but you personally may not be average" things, because I generally nap for around 2 hours and prefer it that way. Short naps don't feel restful at all. I hadn't gotten a lot of sleep last night; I woke at 7AM and couldn't get back to sleep.

I made dinner after I got up, put in laundry, and did some editing on The Jewel-Strewn Night when Coffee started streaming at 8PM. A little after 9PM, I switched over laundry, then opened 4thewords in the hopes of getting some fiction-writing done.

Fiction-writing has not happened, and it's after 11PM now. So probably not happening. But I will go look at the file.

All right, I have written a token amount of The Secret Dragon. Good enough.

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January 13-14: Editing, walking, and Flamecraft with an agitated cat

2025-01-17T00:24:35Z

January 13

I got up around 8:30AM, and actually convinced myself to look at Be That Way in the morning, instead of spending the entire morning on RftG, Time Princess, and social media. I made some small fixes: moving a description to a more sensible place, and replacing all the placeholder names. I hadn't meant to start reading it but I kept reading several pages wherever I happened to be making fixes anyway, so I decided to start from the beginning. The list of changes is very short and most of them are easy, which makes me think that reading through it will bring other things I want to change to mind. Maybe not, though. Be That Way is a fantasy rom-com where the only conflicts are "people being annoying and ridiculous", so the plot is much less convoluted than some of my books.

In the afternoon, I asked Eliyahu if they were up for a walk. It was still below freezing outside, as it has been every day for the last week and a half. But they were leaving on Wednesday, so we wouldn't have any more opportunities to walk in pleasant weather, and at least it wasn't windy.

Eliyahu: "Are you feeling like you either have to go for a walk or declutter more, and you can't face decluttering?"

Me: "Kind of? I don't mind decluttering but yeah, if I don't go out, I'm gonna declutter. And it would be nice to get out. We've barely left the house in the last week and a half." (We literally didn't go farther than the porch from Saturday until Thursday evening, when I finally gave up on the snow melting off and shoveled the walk.)

So Eliyahu agreed, layering on Lut's winter coat atop Lut's jacket, plus two shirts and two trousers, hat, scarf, hood, and mittens. I wore leggings, t-shirt, sweatshirt, and my winter coat.

Around 3PM, we drove off to see if the trail was walkable or if it was still covered in snow from the snowfall the weekend prior. Just before parking, I remembered that my biggest reason for going to the trail -- to get bubble tea as a reward afterwards -- was foiled by the bubble tea shop near the trail being closed on Mondays. Alas!

We parked anyway and followed the sidewalk towards the trail. The sidewalk was not shoveled and still snow-covered. After a few hundred yards, we gave up and turned around without even reaching the trail, which I assumed would be worse. So that the trip would not be completely in vain, we walked a few laps around the arena parking lot near the trail, which was perfectly clear. The arena has a skating rink and some people were parked to use it, but no events were going on so it was deserted compared to the size of the lot. After the first lap, I stopped at the car to drop off my jacket because I was too warm. After a half-dozen yards, I went back to the car to take off my sweatshirt and put the coat back on; there was just enough wind to merit a windbreaker.

The cold really wasn't bad at all, to my surprise. My rule of thumb used to be that below 40F was too cold to walk for exercise, but apparently I'm more cold-tolerant these days.

In the evening, I listened to CoffeeQuills' stream and did multiplayer 4thewords with them while I wrote daily entries and The Secret Dragon.

January 14

The last full day of Eliyahu's visit. They are at their limit on "time spent out of Canada" until June and have to stay in the country to retain their benefits, so I will not see them again for a while. ;__; I am not sure how visits with them will work after the move to North Carolina, either. My plan is to live with my parents and I know my parents will not be as keen on month-long visits as I am. Maybe I could rent a furnished apartment for a month so Eliyahu and I can hang out together and I'll just check in on my parents for that month instead of living with them? Which seems ridiculous, but I'm rich and can afford to spend money to solve problems.

In the morning/early afternoon, I read through more of Be That Way and drew a picture of Caliper, a goblin protagonist from the story. The goblins in the setting are cute little people, like the goblins in Alfie and Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic, so I've been wanting to draw one for a while. Picture came out okay but not great, so I'll probably try again. Maybe I'll try drawing a scene from the story next time.

After I finished the picture, we went for a walk around the arena parking lot again, this time with actual bubble tea reward at the end. Mm, bubble tea. :9

I joined Coffee's stream for a bit in the evening, while Eliyahu was busy with prayers and dinner. Got in some writing of The Secret Dragon.

In the evening, we played a game of Flamecraft while Lyric was uncharacteristically attention-demanding. We've played Flamecraft at least a dozen times, and Lyric had never before shown an interest in the board or jumping on the table while we were playing. This time, however, she would not stop. She hopped on top of it several times, batting at the pieces and lying down in the middle of the board and generally making a nuisance of herself. We tried playing with her, letting her outside, and giving her catnip, but she quickly lost interest in all of these things and as soon as we returned to Flamecraft, she wanted to jump atop it again. (Eliyahu also tried petting her, although she was very obviously not in a mood to be petted so I didn't). I don't know why she was so fixated on the game this time. I joked with Eliyahu that she realized they were leaving tomorrow and was demanding their attention while she could still get it.

Eventually, we managed to finish the game. Eliyahu won! We're pretty sure this is the first time they've won. \o/ I don't know what I do in general that makes me better at this game than they are. We have equal amounts of experience with it, because I've only played it when Eliyahu was also playing. Anyway, it was nice to have them win for a change, although Eliyahu is a very good sport and enjoys playing regardless of the outcome.

After the game, Eliyahu went to bed early so they could get up early for prayers. I stayed up until my usual bedtime and got some reading in. For the first time since I made the 2025 habit tracker, I checked off every habit on it. \o/

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December 11-13: Chilling, health insurance, taxes, and administrivia

2024-12-14T05:26:36Z

Wednesday, December 11

I woke very early, maybe at 6AM, and spent some time petting Lyric because she comes to collect early-morning pets if she sees I'm awake. When she was done being petted, I went to the bathroom and then back to bed.

Around 8:15AM I woke again, completely forgot to check if Vicorva was streaming (they were) and lazed in bed playing Time Princess until 9:15.

After getting up and eating breakfast, I illustrated and posted the day's Apothecaria.

I spent some time writing about the past two days in the early afternoon, starting before and finishing after my afternoon nap. Before CoffeeQuills started streaming, I went through everything I'd written during the 44-day challenge, because the only part I'd tracked separate from the total was "fiction drafted" and it turned out I wanted a more granular breakdown than that. If I do something like this again next year, I'll have to devise a new spreadsheet for it so I can track the breakdown more easily as I go.

I started writing up the challenge details before stream started, and finished it during the stream. From there, I switched to writing The Secret Dragon for a few paragraphs. Next, I worked on the Apothecaria illustration for the 12th. This one was pretty complicated. I spent more than an hour on it and still hadn't finished by the time stream ended.

After stream, I let Lyric in, gave her an evening snack, and poked around the web and Time Princess. I eventually went to bed around 11:45PM and fell asleep around 12:30.

Thurday, December 12

I woke around 8:15, and lazed in bed for an hour, mostly playing Time Princess, plus reading a little on Tapas and the fediverse. I unlocked the rest of a completed series on Tapas but have not been rushing through it.

Around 9:15, I got out of bed and made breakfast, then played Race for the Galaxy while I ate and for a bit afterwards. Around 10AM, I saw the Gneech had announced Surprise Art Stream. I wanted to finish up today's Apothecaria so I could post it, so I used the excuse to tear myself away from RftG, and hopped into the stream to chat and draw. Around 11AM, I finished the illustration but hung around the stream until it ended.

Then I made lunch and descended back into playing RftG for a while. RftG games are so short that they're like potato chips: I keep playing Just One More Game. I eventually did the text layout for tomorrow's Apothecaria, but instead of drawing it, I took a nap. I slept for an hour, and played Time Princess when I woke up. There's a new event story, so I read about half of it.

Around 4:15PM I got up and made hot chocolate, this time by melting chocolate chips into milk using improvised double boiler. (Fill big pot with water, heat on stove. Put smaller pot inside big pot, make sure there's enough water that the smaller pot floats, put milk and chocolate in smaller pot. Stir until melted. You don't need to use a double boiler for this, but it ensures you won't scald the milk or burn the chocolate because it can't get as hot as a pot resting directly on the stove, and it's easier to stir than using the microwave.)

I had meant to work on the next Apothecaria Illustration, but when I sat down, I saw Maggie had launched the Jokka caravan play-by-poll game she'd discussed on Discord several months ago. So I read the post and various reader comments and RP regarding it, then put in my two cents. By then, it was dinner time. Food and more RftG! This is the pattern of my days.

I poked at the emails on my real-name account, which gets basically no personal email so I let it pile up. I just check now and again that nothing important is in it without bothering to clear it out. It doesn't get much Real Spam, but it gets email from Patreon and newsletters and I like looking at these things but not as often as they show up to be looked at. It also gets lots of confirmation emails and while technically I want the confirmation I don't really need to actually open it. I just want it to exist. As confirmation.

Many of the piled-up emails are from Healthcare.gov, which nags me every day or two that I should go to Healthcare.gov and check what insurance plan I want. It's not a disaster if I don't; it just means I stay on the current plan. The available plans are not that different. But it's still a good idea to look. I genuinely appreciate Healthcare.gov's tireless nagging on this point. An actual human would've given up on me by now, but Healthcare.gov is still trying. Keep it up, website. I'm gonna look at options on Friday or Saturday, before the window to change closes.

This reminded me of the estate tax form that the executor of Terrycloth's estate had mentioned I should expect back in October, and which never materialized. I texted the executor Thursday evening about it. He's on a trip at the moment but said that if I remind him on the 17th, he ought to have a copy he can scan to me. Which would be good. I need to figure out what my approximate taxable income is by the end of the year so that I can move money around to make sure it's in the right range.

There was no CoffeeQuills this evening; they've moved their one no-stream day per week to Thursdays (Wednesdays their time). So I have to conjure my own motivation if I want to do anything. I thought about reading more Time Princess stories, but remembered that I hadn't gotten my streak in for today in 4thewords

Then I thought about writing The Secret Dragon, but decided to write about the last two days as warm-up instead. The warm-up strategy worked pretty well during the 44-day challenge.

4thewords has started the Winter Wonderland event. This event lasts for a full month but it has far fewer quests than the 44-day challenge, so it's pretty relaxed. It does mean I get another month of battling ice ponies for mastery, which is nice. I loaded up on quests from it before I started writing this. One quests suggested writing about the year in review as a topic, while another offered the year ahead. Which are both things that I write about! But not until the next year actually starts, so mid-December is way too early for them. It feels like most web services want to do year-in-review stuff in December and I can't get used to it. The year's not over yet! When do you count things that happened in December if you do your review in December? Is the rest of December part of 2025? Do you just assume nothing that happens between December 15 and January 1 mattered?

When I did reports for the bank, we did tons of them for end of month/quarter/year. We always waited until after the last day before starting on those reports, because they had to cover the whole period. Perhaps this is why it seems so unnatural to me to start earlier.

I am thinking about it already, though. I will not be completing my year's goals for 2024. That's fine. It was a tough year for me. One goal was "Be gentle with myself." I'm gonna do that one.

When I finished writing about the 11th and 12th, I spent some time illustrating the next day's Apothecaria, and wrote a few hundred words of The Secret Dragon. I am content.

I stayed up late for no particular reason, and fell asleep around 12:30 again.

Friday, December 13

I woke up at 6AM and struggled to go back to sleep. I kept giving up and picking up a device to play with it, then putting it back down and trying again. I finally dozed off around 7:30, then woke up at 8:15. This time, I remembered that V would be streaming, so I hopped into the stream on my phone and got up. I played Race for the Galaxy through the stream. Grocery delivery arrived a little after the stream ended. I'd ordered ingredients to make more pasta sauce, including chopped onions. Which pretty much meant I had to make the sauce immediately.

I had accidentally ordered only one can of cream of mushroom soup instead of two. I considered adding some milk and canned mushrooms as a replacement, with a little flour for a thickener. And then realized that I was only making sauce for one (1) person and I could just halve the recipe. "But then I won't have as much leftover sauce. Only, like, 3-4 servings instead of 6-8!"

You have to understand that I really love eating the same thing meal after meal. I generally get on a kick for something I love and then keep eating that thing daily for months. I cannot relate to the "but we can't have [thing] tonight, we had [thing] last night" mentality at all.

I halved the recipe because that was better than leaving the house to buy a second can or risking a ruined batch with an ill-conceived substitution. I will have to order more groceries soon if I want to keep having sauce on hand, though.

At 11:10, I finished cooking and ate lunch.

Around 1PM, I dragged myself away from games and social media. I couldn't quite get myself to do art or writing, so instead I finally caught up on some administrivia for the Time Princess society I manage. I suppose that only half counts as getting away from games, really.

I lay down for a nap at 2:30PM and woke around 4PM. I stayed in bed, reading comics and Time Princess, until it neared 5PM. Then I got up to make a coke float before CoffeeQuills's stream started. Which turned out to be starting at 6PM. So I did some more Time Princess administrivia and then, at long last, went to Healthcare.gov to pick an insurance carrier. I had to fill out the form twice because I realized too late that I'd used the wrong estimate for my income. And you can't just change one thing on the healthcare.gov application: you need to go through the entire application any time you have to make a change to any part of it. x_x It's generally a good site for what it does, but that part is Not Great.

Once I'd finished picking health insurance, I looked into my 2024 income. I need to make sure my income this year is at least enough that I qualify for ACA coverage. My state never expanded Medicaid, so if I don't make enough money then I have to pay the full cost of health insurance for the year. Thus, I needed to know my total income before the end of the year, so that I could sell stocks or convert traditional IRAs to Roth IRAs to boost it up to the minimum if necessary.

I did not have the foresight to send myself my income for the year-to-date from the bank so I only have a guess as to what that is, based on the number of hours I worked and my extremely vague memory of my hourly rate. (I can find the amount the bank deposited in my account each pay period easily enough. But this is useless for determining my income because I was putting 75% of my paycheck into a Roth 401(k) and 20-24% went to taxes and other withholding.)

But assuming I am not wildly off on the income from my job, I have reached the minimum income for ACA coverage. Yay! I suspect the missing estate tax form will push my income up further, but I won't know until I see it. I possibly won't know after I see it, either, depending on how cryptic it is. Ideally, I should do my taxes before the end of 2024 to be on the safe side. Bleh. This will be especially challenging without the tax information from my job, which I probably can't get until January.

Still, I have achieved Minimum Necessary Adulting on the taxes-and-health-insurance front. Please be proud of me.

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December 5-8: New tablet, walking in the cold, writing, and LawnGuy

2024-12-09T03:52:31Z

Thursday, December 5

Too long ago; I don't really remember what I did on this day. I recall that my new tablet had been originally scheduled to arrive on Wednesday. Then I got an email that it was delayed until Friday. At 10PM, I checked my phone and discovered it had been delivered an hour ago. Eliyahu brought it in for me but recommended I let it warm up before playing with it. They'd actually damaged a motherboard by using a too-cold computer once, which surprised me. I've had issues with batteries being unhappy about cold weather. Regardless, I left it in the box overnight.

Oh, and I illustrated three Apothecaria entries on Thursday. One in the morning to post, and two in the evening so I'd have entries to post on Friday and Saturday. I laid out a fourth entry and made the sketch for it, but didn't finish it.

Friday, December 6

I got up around 9AM and unboxed my tablet while making breakfast. I spent some time getting it set up. As soon as I got it connected to the internet, it went "Conducting set up, this may take a few minutes", and downloaded a ton of apps I didn't want. It also tried to convince me I wanted to copy things over from another device (I don't; I have welcomed our Cloud Overlords and don't store anything locally that isn't backed up in the cloud). Eventually it let me log in to my Google Account and install Time Princess.

I also deleted every pre-loaded and loaded-upon-connection app that it would let me uninstall, and disabled some that it wouldn't let me uninstall so I wouldn't have to look at them when I was searching for the few apps I care about. (Seriously, there's like a "Youtube Music Kids" app or something that can't be uninstalled. So much cruft taking up so much space on the apps list.)

A little later, the tablet popped up a notification asking me to either "complete setup" or "remind me later" because "no" isn't a thing modern tech bros understand. x_x I picked "complete setup".

It reinstalled all the cruft I had uninstalled, and re-enabled everything I'd disabled.

...

So I uninstalled it all again. It has not asked me to complete setup again, so there's some hope that I'm not just gonna spend the rest of this device's life telling it "remind me later". We'll see.

I understand why people jailbreak Android devices, though. I don't enjoy digging into the inner workings of my devices but I may yet end up being one of those people who does it.

This aside: Time Princess plays nicely on the new tablet. I had primarily gotten the tablet because my phone has two issues: 1) the battery is pretty degraded and 2) it doesn't have much storage space free.

1) is a little inconvenient but given how rarely I am away from home for any length of time, it's fine. For the rare time when it matters, I can use an external battery.

2) is because Time Princess is enormously, ridiculously, storage-intensive. It had grown to consume 33 gigs of space on my 64-gig phone. You can tame this growth by telling it to prune individual books, or, more dramatically, prune everything. But both approaches mean that you have to re-download a bunch of stuff to access various aspects of the game and eventually it'll bloat up again and you have to prune and then re-download and bleh. Anyway, my phone is like 50% Time Princess and 40% OS and 10% everything else* at this point. From a storage perspective, I practically don't have anything else* on the phone.

*Technically, I have installed a total of 12 apps on my phone. The Tapas app also bloats up and can only be pruned by uninstall and reinstall, but it's still under 5 gigs. The Kindle app is just over 1 gig. Everything else is tiny.

So I wanted a device that could easily handle Time Princess's bloat and -- perhaps! -- even let me install a Second App. Obviously, I could get a new phone, but I thought that a tablet would not only be significantly cheaper than a modern phone, but might be more pleasant for things like Time Princess and even some other things I do on my phone (reading comics and books).

I'll probably try ArtRage on it at some point, just because, although I don't think it'll have any advantages over my Surface in running that. I also installed Learn2Speak, a gamification app for learning languages that I backed in Kickstarter ages ago and that just came out for Android. I should put some reading apps on it, too, but haven't yet. For now, I've only used it for Time Princess, but I enjoy it for that. Time Princess is a lovely game and it's nice to see the details on a larger screen.

Around 10AM, Eliyahu woke up. I asked them if they wanted to get challah for the Sabbath from the Jewish bakery.

Eliyahu: "...well, if you have the energy for the drive."

Me: "I wouldn't have offered if I wasn't up for it. Also, we can get bagels." I like their bagels; their onion bagels are definitely better than any other onion bagels I've tried in the city. But my favorite bagel type is asiago and they don't make that, probably because asiago is a bagel abomination in their eyes (fair). My second favorite is cinnamon crunch, also, one presumes, an abomination, and definitely not available.

We drove the 20 minutes to the Jewish bakery and acquired challah, six bagels, and a tub of rosemary-garlic cream cheese.

Me: "So, do you want to go for a walk while we're already out or do you want to go home and enjoy our bagels?"

Eliyahu: "Will going out for a walk later be an option or...?"

Me: "Probably not. I mean, I might have the enthusiasm later? But I definitely have it now. When we're already in motion."

Eliyahu: "We'd better do it now, then."

So we drove to the park. It's 20 minutes to get to the bagel place from home, and then 20 minutes to get to our usual park from the bagel place, and then 20 minutes from park to home. They're not all equidistant; the park is physically closer to both home and the bagel place than home and bagel place are to each other. But the park is in midtown and there's no highway near it, so getting their takes longer for the distance. The drive time was another reason I didn't want to go back out later, especially if we were going to the park.

It was high 40s Fahrenheit out; Eliyahu wore their jacket and leather hat. I wore a sweater. After two laps, Eliyahu tapped out of the third because they were too cold. This was partly my fault -- if I'd mentioned the possibility of walking before we left, they'd've brought their mittens/scarf/toque. In any event, we returned to the car, stopped for Reward Bubble Tea, and went home.

During the Coffee's stream in the evening, I made good progress on The Secret Dragon outline, resolving most of the remaining plot issues.

Saturday, December 7

I gave up on sleep relatively early, at around 8:15AM, I think. I heard LawnGuy outside raking leaves. I don't usually do anything with the leaves because there's only a few places where the leaf cover is dense enough to impede plant growth, and also I don't care about the yard beyond making sure nature is not going to eat my house and the city is not going to fine me. However, I plan to sell the house next spring, so having the lawn look less awful would be helpful. Plus, LawnGuy's wife passed away from cancer a month or two ago, and I wanted to help him out. He's messaged several times asking for work, so he's clearly having a bad time of things.

I first hired a lawn service back in 2017: LawnWoman, as mentioned here: https://rowyn.dreamwidth.org/615832.html and here: https://rowyn.dreamwidth.org/616357.html. LawnWoman never ran the business in a very formal way. I've always paid in cash on the day of service, and she seldom bothered with receipts or invoices. She often had people working for or with her, though. At some point, a year or three in, LawnGuy became one of those people. Then LawnWoman and LawnGuy got married. At some point, LawnGuy more-or-less took over the business; I stopped seeing or hearing from Diane. The reason for this became clear later, when we found out LawnWoman had cancer. x_x She outlived Lut, but not by much. I will never forget her kindness in taking on my much-neglected lawn and doing an incredible job with it (she charged for much more than a mow but did SO MUCH MORE than mow it, ZOMG.)

LawnGuy asked me to give him half after he'd done most of the work, so that he could pay for his room. And then he'd come back to finish up. I gave him the full amount and a little extra and then he didn't come back. o_o;;; But he came by while I was out the next day and finished the job, so that was fine.

In the morning and early afternoon, I struggled to start writing. The outline for The Secret Dragon was mostly complete, but still needed some denoument scenes. Eventually, I started to poke at those. Around noon, Lyric stopped lying on my feet in the loveseat, so I was able to get up, feed the cat, and make lunch.

Eliyahu got up in time to eat lunch with me. After lunch, I poked a little more at the outline, then gave up and took a nap. Which meant we didn't go for a walk today, alas. Though after the cold walk on Friday, Eliyahu was kind of relieved to be absolved from walking Saturday.

I got up from the nap about an hour before Coffee's stream, and poked at the outline a little more.

During Coffee's stream, I spent three hours in multiplayer, working much more diligently at the outline. I outlined the denoument scenes and made some adjustments to earlier parts of the outline to reflect material I'd come up with later. I also started writing this entry. In the last hour of stream, I took a break and spent most of it playing Time Princess on my new tablet.

After stream, I started reading through the outline, making adjustments as I saw issues or remembered things I need to reference earlier. And also reading my favorite bits aloud to Eliyahu. Eliyahu commented that it was nice that I enjoyed my own outline so much because it'd be sad if, having put so much work into it, I found it tedious and unpleasant to go through. I know some authors don't like their own books very much, but I have no idea how they keep themselves motivated to stay at it.

It's getting near bedtime now, so I'm working a bit more on this entry before I play more Time Princess near reset. The new tablet's battery is perfectly healthy and capable of making it through an entire day of my playing Time Princess on and off, which is nice after getting used to plugging my phone in often throughout the day.

Sunday, December 8

I got up early, around 8:15 AM, but didn't do much in the morning beyond finish the Apothecaria entry I'd started Thursday night, so that I could post it now. Because I'd forgotten to finish it at any point in the last two days.

Around 11AM, I lay down for a nap. When I got up around 1PM, Eliyahu was making food. We waited for the food to finish cooking and then I ate some for lunch (Eliyahu had already eaten and had made it to have ready for their dinner in the early evening). Afterwards, we went out for another walk at the park. The weather was very nice for December: mid-50s Fahrenheit, albeit breezy. We each dressed as we considered appropriate for the weather.

Eliyahu, who I feel compelled to note is from Canada and grew up in central British Columbia, wore two pairs of slacks, two scarfs, a toque, mittens, and a jacket over a long-sleeved shirt.

I wore a t-shirt and leggings. I brought a sweatshirt in case I got cold, but left it in the car.

90% of the other people walking at the park: pants and a hoodie/sweater/sweatshirt.

Over the course of three laps, I didn't add any layers and Eliyahu didn't remove any. (Honesty compels me to admit that I was chilly during the windier stretches, but it didn't bother me enough to get the sweatshirt out either time we passed the car.)

We saw a few people in shorts and hoodies but no one else in a t-shirt. So basically, we were both freaks.

I have always been a heat-tolerant person: I keep my house at 78-81F in the summer because I am quite comfortable at those temperatures as long as the humidity is low. (The outside humidity is high in my area, but AC does a great job of keeping it low inside my house.) Eliyahu is the only healthy person who's ever made me feel like I'm cold-tolerant, though. They walk all the time in Canada -- they don't drive so they've always considered it unremarkable to walk several miles in a day, just for things like groceries or appointment -- and they manage winter weather via Many Layers and warm clothes.

After three laps, we picked up bubble tea (Eliyahu got malted hot chocolate with crystal boba, and thereby discovered the difference between crystal boba and popping boba) and went home.

I showered, drank my bubble tea, worked on this entry some more, and played Time Princess. My tablet started bonging at me, as if it had some important notifications. It had many irrelevant notifications. I couldn't even tell which notification it thought was important enough to bong over. I have taken away its Making Noises privileges. (Its speakers were already muted but apparently that is not enough to keep it from making notification sounds.

I am down to 13,600 words and 2.5 days left for the "250k in 44 days" challenge. I haven't done any dictation in the last two days. I should really do some tonight because I haven't written much else today, either, and there's only two hours left until my bed time.

It'd be reasonable for me to start writing The Secret Dragon now, but I'd like to finish looking over the outline first. The outline is Very Long -- over 20,000 words! -- because I've gotten in the habit of making very detailed outlines. To the point where I wonder if they qualify as zero drafts now. Anyway. some of that is me talking to myself as I try to work out a solution for a plot problem. You would think that there'd be no difference between me thinking "the characters need to come up with a clever solution here. Which unfortunately means I need to come up with a clever solution." "..." "clever solutions sure are hard, aren't they?" and me writing those exact thoughts down. But it's much easier to keep myself focused on Resolving This Issue if I force myself to write about it. Talking about it is almost as good. I solved some of my plot issues during dictation this time around. But writing about it is somewhat better.

If I'm just thinking about it while staring at a blank screen or into space, I'm more likely to let my attention drift to something more interesting and immediately rewarding. I have occassionally managed to focus on plotting entirely in my head, but it's rare. (One notable incident was when I accidentally locked my phone in a rental car after returning it after hours. I spent the four-mile walk home plotting out the climactic scenes of Golden Coils in my head instead of on my phone, as I'd planned. But doing it in my head actually worked for a change and I was able to write out the outline of the stuff I'd worked out when I got home.)

Anyway, I want to make sure I've got all the details in the right places in the outline before I start writing it. Even if it's unlikely that any changes to the outline will affect the first few scenes.

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November 28-30: Canadian Visitor, Snow, and a Sick Cat

2024-12-01T01:36:48Z

On Thursday, I got a message from Eliyahu that they wanted to move their planned arrival from "December 20th or so" to "tomorrow" and would that be okay?

Sure, sounds great.

I'd told them previously that I was working on this ridiculous "250k words in 44 days" challenge and therefore would be even less social than usual until it wrapped up on December 10th. But I'm happy to have them around.

When I got up and let Lyric inside yesterday, she made a hacking noise with her mouth wide open. Not like a retching motion, but more like she was trying to get something out of her throat or mouth. Before I left to get Eliyahu from the airport, I put down her lunch. She wanted to go outside with me instead of eating, though -- pretty typical of her; she doesn't like eating unless someone is there to watch her while she does.

Eliyahu's flight arrived early, so they had almost enough time to get to baggage claim before I arrived. I circled the area a few times until we could coordinate a pick-up spot.

They're from Canada, so as we drove out of the airport, they looked around and said, "Oh, you don't have snow yet."

"Yeah, we hardly ever get snow in November here. Sometimes we don't even get snow until January."

When we got home, Lyric still didn't eat lunch, despite people around to watch her -- very unusual for her. I offered her dry food and she had a little, but not much. She ate the two kitty treats Eliyahu put out for her, but clearly not normal. She vomited afterwards -- not a big surprise, cats do that. And she sneezed, exactly once. I decided I'd call the vet on Saturday and bring her in if she wasn't doing better in the morning.

Despite not eating, Lyric is very happy to have her Backup Human around again and has devoted significant time to snuggling them. It's cold outside, so while she still wants to go out, she doesn't want to stay out for long.

I went to bed on time and had some trouble falling asleep (*shakes fist*) but got to sleep around 12:30AM, so not too bad. I woke up a few times during the night. At 7AM, I noticed through a window a dusting of snow on the ground and thought "heh, Eliyahu brought some with them." I played with my phone for a bit before going back to sleep, and then got up at 10AM.

At which point it was snowing in earnest and there were two inches on the ground.

And Lyric still couldn't eat. She was interested in food and led me to her food bowl as usual, but she only nosed at the food and maybe licked it a little. I put kitty treats on the floor before her and she nosed them but didn't eat. I put one in my palm to offer her, and she took it in her mouth for a moment before dropping it again.

I called the vet to make sure they were open and could see her. They offered an appointment at 11.

So I went to wake Eliyahu. "I need to take the cat to the vet. Also, look what you did." I gestured with a flourish to the window. "Look at it."

Eliyahu peered blearily at me. "Huh?" And then followed my motion. "...I didn't know it would follow me!"

I asked them if they'd shovel the driveway for me, which they were happy to do. <3 I ate breakfast and got dressed. Lyric went outside with me and I was like "fine, she's not going far in this weather." I put the (empty) cat carrier and my purse in the car and cleared it off while Eliyahu finished shoveling the driveway before the car so I could get it out.

My usual tactic for getting Lyric into the cat carrier is "lure her with kitty treats" but this was obviously not going to work when she's not eating. Once I was ready to go, I retrieved Lyric. She had been watching us from beside the garage but hurried to the front door as soon as I moved, on the assumption I would let her in. She meowed in protest when I picked her up and took her to the car instead. I stuffed her into the cat carrier but couldn't get it zipped closed before she escaped into the car. I gave up and closed the car door instead. Cat is in car, I can get her to the vet, the carrier bit can wait.

I drove to the vet (it's only 2-3 miles away) with Lyric on my lap and meowing anxiously. The drive had a moment of excitement when my car kept spinning wheels on the unplowed slope of the street leading to the main road. I kept stopping, putting the car in reverse, backing up to where I could still get traction, and trying again. On the third try, with me singing encouragement to my car, she made it up the slope. After that, it was just a matter of going slowly; the major roads were bad but drivable.

At the vet, Lyric got out when I opened the door and hid under the car. It was a few minutes after 11 now. I spent a minute trying to coax Lyric to me, then got the (empty) cat carrier and my purse from the car to bring them into the vet's office. "Hi! I'm here for an 11AM appointment. My cat is also here but she is still outside. We are experiencing Technical Difficulties."

The receptionist laughed. "You're fine."

I put the carrier and purse on the counter and went outside to coax Lyric some more. She ventured a few inches out from under the car while I was a few feet away, but retreated if I moved. At length, I started the car.

Lyric knows that Cars With Running Engines Are Not Safe. I didn't move it, just got back out with it still in park. She had moved to hiding under the trunk. I coaxed her some more. She relented and emerged, mewing in protest at Snow and Car and Vet and life in general, one assumes. I carried her into the vet, got her into the cat carrier, and successfully zipped it shut with her inside this time. "Now I have to go turn the car off," I told the receptionist. "Be right back." Thankfully, there were no other customers -- no surprise, given the weather. Between the holiday and the weather, I was grateful they were open at all.

Lyric was in a bad mood for the vet and the vet tech, too, but she didn't succeed at clawing anyone: just a lot of hissing and angry swatting. After the vet tech weighed her (she's up to 15 lbs) and went to get the vet, Lyric hopped onto the floor and retreated into the cat carrier. She may have figured out that the only way to escape the vet is via the cat carrier.

The vet checked her teeth for obvious decay and listened to her innards for signs of a blockage. "There's nothing obivously wrong with her. It might be that she's got some sinus drainage from allergies that's going into her throat and upsetting her stomach, which would explain the sneeze and the hacking attempts." He gave her a shot to settle her stomach and said to keep an eye on her and bring her back on Monday or Tuesday if she wasn't better.

At home, she didn't eat for the next few hours either, though she made more of a try at it, opening her jaws and getting tiny bits of food in her mouth when at her food bowl. Around 4PM, I gave her a lickable cat treat and she at half of that. Which, on the one hand: yay food! And on the other: she has never walked away from a half-finished lickable cat treat before. I put the rest in the fridge. She went outside for a bit, then came back in and hung out with us in the den. She looked around for her dry food -- I keep the dry food in the den now because Lyric wants someone to watch her eat and I'd rather do that while I'm sitting at my computer. So I opened the box for her and she actually ate a significant amount! Not up to a normal amount yet, but still, a good sign.

And then she came back 30 minutes later to eat more dry cat food. Progress!

I have not done much writing in the last two days. Mostly distracted by guest and sick cat. I did a bunch of dictation yesterday just so I wouldn't fall too far behind on the 250k quest. I'm gonna work some more on The Secret Dragon outline, see if I can get the rest of the pieces in place so I could actually write it.

Lyric keeps wanting to go back outside to play in the snow and hide in the garage. Eliyahu and I keep letting her out and then calling her back in again. And she'll come back in after a bit but she almost immediately wants to go back out. Neither of us really wants her hanging around outside when she's sick. While she clearly considers the snow to be the only effective medicine or something. I don't know. Cats.

I cleaned the kitchen on Wednesday before I made lasagna, but I did not clean up after making lasagna or at any time since. So the kitchen has just been littered with dishes from Giant Cooking Project plus additional daily dishes accumulating. Eliyahu just took pity on me and went to do the dishes without even saying anything. Eventually I noticed I was hearing a lot of clinking-dishes noises and went in to see. By which time they were mostly done. Aww. <3

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November 22-23: Time is an illusion, dreams, and writing fiction

2024-11-24T00:07:43Z

At 3:40PM today, I lay down for a nap because I was tired and Coffee's stream wouldn't start for three hours. And then instantly remembered, "oh yes, it's Saturday, Coffee's stream starts in one hour, not three." You might think that I forget what day it is because I'm retired, which would make sense if I hadn't spent all day doing specific things because I knew it was Saturday. ("It's Saturday, I should get dim sum because it's only available today and tomorrow." "It's Saturday, I should do this Saturday-only event in Time Princess.") Perhaps my brain is iffy about this whole "time" thing. Time is just a thing our brains make up to convince us everything isn't all happening at once.

I have a hard time napping for under an hour, but I decided to give it a shot. I must have fallen asleep, because I had a dream where I was at a Rush concert. Where they were playing Laura Branigan' "Self Control" (no, the dream didn't explain why) and I was flying in my oval cat-bed-esque-pillow. At a musical crescendo, my pillow landed on the stage. I woke up before I had to explain to Rush what I was doing on their stage. I stayed in bed another 20-30 minutes before coaxing myself up to wait for Coffee's stream to start.

Earlier, I went to the park in midtown, so I could get bubble tea and dim sum after my walk. The weather is cool but not too cold for walking; I did my first circuit of the park wearing a sweatshirt, then dropped it off at my car for the second circuit. I've been to various sites trying to find out how long the trail is, and gotten wildly different lengths. I think, based on how long it takes me, "1.4 miles" is probably the most accurate. I am a slow-ish walker and two laps is a bit under an hour, IIRC. I used to have Google Fit track this stuff automatically for me, but it turned itself off and then uninstalled itself after I didn't walk anywhere or open it for 6 months. Poor app.

I have since finished my bubble tea and half of my dim sum (the other half is saved for later). And tried to motivate myself to write. Unable to convince myself to write fiction, I am settling for 'let's write about my day.'

And I just remembered that I wanted to do some stuff in Time Princess, so I've started that. I have to click on it now and again while it plays so it's only a little automated. Ah well.

This morning, I woke around 7AM, at which point Lyric went "Ah, you're awake. It's time for snuggles." So I snuggled her for a while and then failed to get back to sleep after she was done snuggling. And then Lyric wanted more snuggles. I gave up on sleep and got up around 8:15, after more cat-cuddling.

I woke from a dream with an amusing note: in the dream, I watched a presenter show an AI-generated video that included a cat knitting, using two giant ball-tipped rods instead of needles. The presenter than pointed out features that proved this was AI-generated, such as that while the knitted piece grew larger, the ball-tipped rods were unsuitable for knitting and also the yarn never looped or went over the tip of the 'needle'.

Awake, I thought, first: wait is that right about yarn and needles? I didn't know I knew enough about knitting to give any remotely accurate description of what knitting-in-progress looked like. And second: it's a Cat. Knitting. Of course it's implausible. I don't feel like AI has a lock on crappy animation that doesn't reflect how things really work.

I managed to go to bed at a reasonable time last night! Around 11:30. At long last! I went to sleep a little after midnight. Still want to shoot for a little before midnight, but hey. Progress.

CoffeeQuills streamed earlier than usual last night, from 4PM to 7PM in my timezone, because they had an errand for later in their day. I had finally remembered a thing I wanted to do in my Apothecaria journal, so I worked on writing that up. I managed 3400 words! It felt like the first day I'd gotten a decent word count for fiction since I finished writing Be That Way. Which it isn't; I wrote 3200 words of the Apothecaria journal on the 20th, but I'd miscalculated and thought that was only 2200. Mostly, I worked on The Secret Dragon outline from the 18th through the 21st, but I was so frustrated by my lack of "tangible progress" (ie, words in general and words on a manuscript in particular) and also because I kept thinking I was "almost done" only to discover some plot hurdle I hadn't really tackled at all yet. x_x I do not love outlining but writing books without an outline is much worse for me. And editing books that I didn't outline is a nightmare. I don't like editing as it is. I'd rather frontload the task at the outline stage.

But it's November and I want to be writing fiction. /whinge

I have considered working on the early part of The Secret Dragon -- I outlined this part already and surely it's not going to change, right?

This way lies regrets.

So I might finish writing my Apothecaria journal instead. I ran out of illustrated entries on November 21, so I illustrated a new one on the 21st to post on the 22nd. And then a reader pointed out that there was a weird gap between entries and I realized I'd illustrated entry 610 right after entry 608 and skipped 609. I pulled it down as soon as he pointed out the mistake (thanks, MSL!) and drew 609 early on the 22nd.

Other than that, I spent some time on the 22nd petting Lyric and playing Time Princess. And doing some dictation word salad while doing those. I also managed some actual constructive writing using dictation! I still can't use dictation to "write faster", which is the big argument for dictation. But I can use it to write while petting the cat. It's slower than typing with both hands but faster than not writing at all.

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November 5: Writing and Cat

2024-11-06T05:06:40Z

This morning, I got up a little early, made breakfast, and let Lyric inside before I sat down at my computer to eat breakfast. Lyric had a few bites of her breakfast sitting next to me, while I tried to get Apothecaria posted. (I accidentally saved a few Apothecarias as png instead of jpg, and the png is like 5 times as large so I want to replace those with jpg before I post them. And I have failed to get ahead of this problem by fixing all of them at once.)

Then Lyric decided it was time to sprawl on top of my chest for most of the next two hours.

After thirty minutes, she moved enough to one side that I could eat my breakfast before it'd gone completely cold. It wasn't feasible to type around her, so mostly I browsed the web and played a little with my phone. I did not pet her very much because she generally only wants a few minutes of petting at a time. Then she gets overstimulated and her tail lashes and if you keep petting her she bites. She doesn't want to leave, tho.

When she got up, I waffled over whether to write or immediately take a nap. (Tragically, I cannot nap with a cat lying atop me). I settled for writing a few hundred words and then napping.

Post-nap, I made a sandwich for lunch and did some more writing. At around 1k, I decided it was time for a break and went for a walk while listening to another Murderbot novella, Fugitive Telemetry. While I was out, I discovered my new polling place this was the school I got past on my usual neighborhood walk route. I didn't realize it until I saw the gajillion "vote for/against [thing/person]" signs posted 100 yards from the entrance. I voted early, on October 29, so I didn't go in. I cut the walk shorter than I'd planned because it was overcast and a few drops of rain hit me, and I didn't want to end up soaked if it started to actually rain. It didn't actually rain, though, so I could've stayed out longer. But I was tired.

At home, it took awhile to work myself up to writing again. I am trying not to worry about the election because there's nothing more I can do about it now, and while the voting will be over soon, the outcome will probably take much longer to be certain. I know some polling stations were jammed.

I poked my way to 1500 words of Be That Way by the time CoffeeQuills' stream started. I've been getting into their multiplayer rooms for the last week or so, because 4thewords's multiplayer mode is one ways to get myself to crank out words. The only words I have been cranking out are for this post, but that's okay. Sometimes watching the line go up is motivational, and helps me get back to writing the thing I actually want to work on.

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January 23: Kill Team, A Dragonling's Family, Trash and Grocery Pickup Adventures

2024-01-23T20:43:59Z

Let's see, what did I do this weekend? Well, in the last three days. It's basically all weekend for me now.

Lut and I played two games of Kill Team on Saturday and I think watched an episode or two of The Bad Batch? We've watched a few episodes of The Bad Batch every day for the last three, IIRC. We only have a few episodes left and that'll be it until season 3 starts. But there will be a season 3, yay! In late February.

We haven't watched season 4 of RWBY yet. I remember it being grim and that's put me off from suggesting it, and Lut's been willing to watch The Bad Batch.

On Sunday, I realized I didn't feel like writing or drawing Apothecaria, but I felt like editing A Dragonling's Family. And I was like "aw yeah that's on the list of things I'm supposed to do! DO EEEET." So I spent much of Sunday editing and got from 0% to 25% in one day and felt Extremely Productive.

Yesterday, I poked at my notes for Possible Next WIP, and finished the last pair of characters I wanted for it, and decided on the character arcs for the main characters. And wrote the first bullet point for the outline and then metaphorically scratched my head going "huh, how do I write this?" I think maybe I want it to mostly be a bunch of goofy vignettes about the characters interacting and changing together. I want to write a slice-of-life book so I'm not sure it's gonna have my standard Big Climactic Moment that everything builds towards. Maybe? Maybe it'll have my usual Plot-Critical Party*. A Plot-Critical Party ought to fit in well with slice-of-life anyway.

Oh huh that covers three days, doesn't it? I did a few other things. Telnar called on Sunday, so we talked while walking like usual. I also illustrated an Apothecaria during Craft & Chat, and yesterday I did two more. I should do another two more today. Went a few days without drawing any, so now my buffer is down to two. At some point in the next two weeks I will need to write more so that I have more to illustrate, too.

Did a little more painting on the Death Jester. Maybe I can finish it in another 1-2 hours of painting? There's some little details still to do.

Yesterday had some fun adventures. We were scheduled for more bad weather, so on Sunday night I checked to see if garbage pickup was cancelled again, like it had been last week. It wasn't, so I got up at 4AM like usual to take out the garbage. (The city trash service will not pick up your trash if you use a garbage bin; you have to put it in bags on the curb and pickup will be at a random time between 7AM-6PM. Hence: getting up early to put it on the curb.) It was freezing rain outside and the steps/path/driveway were covered in ice. I clung to the handrail with one hand while returning to the house to get the recycling, and still slipped and fell. For the next back-and-forth, I put the recycling bin down and clung to the hand rail with both hands. Which was barely sufficient. I went back to bed and got up again around 7AM for V's bonus stream, which turned out to be cancelled. At 8:30AM, I went to Pretend Coffee Shop and opened the blinds so I could see when the Walmart grocery delivery van came up. I figured I'd go out when it arrived and if the ice hadn't melted yet, tell the delivery person to leave the groceries by the snow-covered walkway (not optimal but less treacherous than an ice-covered one) on the other side of the house, and I'd carry them inside. Around 11AM, I got an email saying, "Your Walmart associate attempted to deliver your items but was unable to. The order was returned to the store. We may need to cancel this order, and if we do, you’ll receive a separate email confirming the cancellation."

I suspected what this meant was 'we cancelled deliveries for this morning because the roads were terrible, but our automated system for contacting customers doesn't let us change the message or explain exactly what happened.' It was still a little annoying because the message feels more like 'we got to your house but you weren't home', which was definitely not the case. An hour or two later, I got a phone call from the associate confirming that, yes, they'd canceled because the roads were terrible. (Their manager had actually sent everyone out and they'd tried for an hour or two before giving up and hobbling back to the store.) They were going to try to deliver this afternoon, or reschedule for later in the week if that didn't work. I was a little worried about the potential of having to reschedule, since Monday had been the soonest available slot four days earlier. But not worried enough to go through pick-up for it (which the associate offered as an option).

Happily, the weather warmed and the sun came out and the ice melted off both the roads and my steps, and we got the delivery in late afternoon. Victory!

I want to schedule our next grocery delivery for next Monday or so, and do so in the next day or two, just to ensure I don't keep telling myself 'I'll do it soon' and then not successfully doing it for six consecutive days like this time. But right now the refrigerator and pantry are full, so it's hard to tell what we'll want ordered for next time. Caffeine-Free Diet Coke and ice cream for me, and breakfast sandwiches for Lut, for sure, though. We go through a lot of those.

Oh, and my trash was never picked up. Although the city website still hasn't been updated to say it won't be. Sigh. I don't know if I should leave it on the curb and see if they get it today (a thing they have literally never done) or drag it back into the garage/house. I bought two outdoor trash cans when I moved into this house 20 years ago and didn't yet know I couldn't use them to put out trash. But I think only one of the trash cans is still functional and I can't jam my now-up-to-three bags of trash in it. So one bag will have to wait in the extension.

Okay, decided to deal with it now and ended up putting all the trash in the garage. My second trash can is missing a lid but otherwise intact; with some misgivings, I put the third bag in it. It's sopping wet and I didn't want it in the house. Not even in the unheated extension. The garage is broken and can't be secured, so animals will probably get into it. But probably the mess will be contained to the trash can (the animals around here usually do targeted strikes rather than scattering trash everywhere) and I can just dump it all into a fresh bag. Good enough.

*Almost all my books have a Plot-Critical Party/Festival. No, I don't do it on purpose, no, I don't know why.

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January 16: RWBY, Shadow Seer, Time Princess, and Apothecaria

2024-01-17T02:11:22Z

The days have been blurring together. I've been trying to create an artificial urgency around the idea of "soon another week will have passed" so that I'll still get stuff done. It mostly gives me a sense of artificial sorrow that I'm not getting anything done.

I am doing things, though.

We haven't gone out much in the last several days; snow and the cold have kept us indoors.

*checks notes*

Yup, last time I drove the car was also the last day I posted an entry, and I mentioned it in that one (went to pick up meds for Lut).

I don't know if I can reconstruct what I've been doing on a day-by-day basis. Lut and I have played two games of Kill Team and watched some more of The Bad Batch. We've also begun our second attempt to see all of RWBY.

We first watched RWBY several years ago, when there were, I don't know, three or four seasons. Then we forgot about it or lost track because of cancer or something. Years passed and there were a bunch more seasons and Lut and I only half-remembered the series. So a few years ago, we started a re-watch from the beginning. We got through one or two seasons and no farther, for reasons lost to time.

Then Lut told me about the Justice League x RWBY crossover (how did this become a thing? amazing) so we watched those and decided it was time to try, again, to see the rest of RWBY.

And of course we still didn't remember most of what we'd already seen.

Rather than start of with season 1 again, we read the Wikipedia episode summaries for the first season and started with season 2. We watched all of season 2 yesterday. The Rooster Teeth website for RWBY grouped season 2 into one "movie", 2.5 hours long. It's weird watching it as a single film, because there's not a single narrative that unites it throughout. It all flows as a continuous whole -- it's not episodic in the way old TV shows used to reset at the start of each episode. But it still feels like a series rather than a single long story.

Season 3 was broken into part 1 and part 2, so we watched part 1 today and will probably watch part 2 tomorrow. I think here's where it starts getting bleak and then for all I know continues to be bleak for the next 6.5 seasons? Guess we'll see.

It's interesting that Lut likes RWBY, because he's usually annoyed by shows about kids/teens or with prominent kid characters. The Bad Batch focuses a lot on the sole child character and Lut's not thrilled with that. But RWBY doesn't bother him. My guess is that it's because it's kid/high school drama stuff that he doesn't care for. So if the plot is focused around evading curfew or parent/child relationships or 'how do I become popular', Lut tunes out. RWBY's center is 'defending your values/friends/humanity against violent enemies', and while it has a lot of subplots, they tend to be handled with maturity rather than having the story become 'this wouldn't be a problem except that all the characters are so childish.'

I've spent a chunk of time on Time Princess, too. A society event started on Monday so I've been poking at the game regularly to refresh quests for folks. I also started 100%'ing some stories. Time Princess is interactive fiction, and my approach to the stories has pretty much always been to (a) see all the endings I am interested in and (b) to craft all the clothing. Time Princess gives a bonus if you (c) 100% a story, which it defines as "read every variant on every route, good or bad, minor or major, and craft all the clothing." Sometimes doing (a) and (b) would get me close enough to (c) that I'd do it, but with so many stories I crafted all the clothes but never bothered unlocking and going through each variant on every route. The game recently added a "spend stamina" quest that I often didn't bother doing because I'm hoarding stamina and it didn't seem worth it. But I decided to use that quest as a reason to spend stamina working on seeing the last bits of all these mostly-completed stories.

I use a walkthrough while doing this because I do not have the patience for working out on my own which choices I need to change in order to unlock some scene. (How difficult this is to do varies wildly -- in some stories, almost everything is very obvious and you don't really need a walkthrough. But on others, it's a tangled ball of obscure changes and replaying stages to make the changes stick.) There's a handful of stories where I'm not sure a good walkthrough exists, so I may never get around to getting those to 100%. :D But I've finished two since starting this project, and am working on a third.

Ooh! And I finished painting a miniature! This is the Shadow Seer I started painting back in October. Despite taking almost three months to finish it, I think actual hours spent was more like 8-12. Which is still so much time to spend painting a single figure. I should take some pictures of it. It does not look like 8-12 hours of work but it came out all right. I started painting another of the Void Dancer kill team today -- a Death Jester. I think the Death Jester will go faster. The sample color scheme for that model doesn't bother me so I can use it more as a guide and not have to make as many creative choices. Also, I don't like the model itself as much so I don't care as much how well it comes out. And there's way less harlequin print for the suggested color scheme. Painting tiny diamonds on a miniature is so time-consuming, and I painted so many on the Shadow Seer model.

In between all of that, I've been playing/writing/illustrating Apothecaria, in roughly equal measure. My illustrated Apothecaria buffer is at 6 as of this writing. Unillustrated: zero. It's sort of fun to illustrate them as I write them, but I want to get back to having a big buffer of written-but-not-yet-illustrated entries. Mostly because once I illustrate an entry, I am done with it. No more changes, no matter how minor. It's not so much "because a picture exists for it" as "because I already decided exactly where the text goes and how much room the picture takes up and I'm not rearranging the text and picture NOW. Imagine if it messes with the layout on subsequent pages. HORRIFYING." This is an editing-hostile style. Which is fine, because I'm doing this For Fun and it doesn't need to be The Very Best It Could Possibly Be.

But it is nice to have a bunch of writing done well before I'm gonna illustrate it so that I have some time to think about it and squeeze in any changes I want to make while it's still easy to change things.

I have continued to Not Work on my nominal creative priorities for the month (editing and outlining). I decided that since Apothecaria is on the list of things I both want to do and want to have done, I might as well lean in to that and just work on it. At least until I have a large buffer again instead of just a small one. Or until there's more creative resistance to working on Apothecaria and something else feels easier. I might actually get to editing. I've been postponing it in case the new outline prompted me to change some things in the first book. But I doubt I'll want to make such substantial revisions to A Dragonling's Family that editing without knowing what those changes are will be wasted effort. And making some progress on one of the creative things I was supposed to do this month will make me feel better about the way time is slipping past me.

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January 11: Another Work Week, Prescriptions, and Writing About Writing

2024-01-12T03:50:22Z

I am officially an hourly employee again as of today. They made me a salaried employee back in 2019, even though I was already part-time and was not going to change my hours. I remember it was 2019 because it meant I could finally work from home if I had to, an option that would've been useful early in 2018. I didn't generally mind going to the bank to work -- it's less than a mile from my house -- and didn't bother getting set up for remote work until March 2020. My boss set up everyone else newly-qualified for remote work at the same time. We got in just under the wire: the day after we sent the request through, the IT department closed to new requests because their remote-work options were already overtaxed.

Of course, now there's no talk of me showing up at the bank to work. From the perspective of my department, I've been working remotely since the merger with Teenage Bank in 2012. My whole team is in another state, as are the teams of virtually every department I work with. It's not like showing up at the bank changed how I communicated with anyone I was working with.

Anyway, HR wanted me to be hourly again for HR reasons. They demoted my title, too, although I still get the same pay rate so I don't care.

I make almost as much working 7 hours a week now as when I first started in banking in 1997 (without adjusting for inflation). Funny thought. My real wage has gone up substantially over the years. But the money I saved in 1997 is worth much more now than the money I make in 2024.

I still don't need to take a lunch break; that used to be mandatory but I guess the regulation changed or maybe doesn't apply to people who work under a certain number of hours. Either way, I'm just as glad.

This work week was a little dull but fine. Had four Zoom meetings in it, which seems like a lot. But one was only 15 minutes, and the others three were one-on-one and actually productive. (One of me chatting with my boss about work stuff, plus two where co-workers wanted help with queries.) In between meetings, I worked on documentation. Went well enough.

After work, I zooped out to pick up Lut's prescriptions. I have successfully gotten all the prescriptions back to Wal-Mart, yay. Several others had run out and been called back in while I was getting the transferred ones transferred back. I picked up seven today and still have two more waiting to be filled. One of those is out of refills so...I guess we'll see if Wal-Mart can finally break their long-running inability to successfully ask a doctor for more refills. -_- It's not one of the ones Lut needs every day, at least.

I wanted to be sure to pick up everything else today, though, because tonight's forecast is potentially ugly and I didn't want to have to do it tomorrow or Saturday. Although I expect the roads will be fine by Saturday. Tomorrow will be a good day to stay home, though.

After my entry on Tuesday about exercise not giving energy, I was wondering if that was accurate. I was feeling less tired lately. I used to have a regular refrain of "Everything is exhausting and I am exhausted: the L. Rowyn Story" going through my head, but I hadn't thought it recently.

And then today, as I dragged through seven hours of work, it ran through my mind several times. Ohhh. It turns out everything isn't exhausting. Just day jobs.

Lots of medical appointments and administrivia are also exhausting, but they haven't been adding up to nearly as much time as a day job so it's easily managed.

I tried to work on notes for my next WIP yesterday, with a little success. I still don't feel like I'm getting anywhere but I will persevere. It's bound to add up to progress at some point.

On Monday I ran out of Apothecaria to illustrate so I played some more Apothecaria. I'm out again now! Oh no I'll have to play MOAR.

This is why Apothecaria keeps going even when I'm dragging my feet on everything else. :D It's not just that I have prompts for Apothecaria, but that I'm not worried about pacing and editing and all the hard parts of writing when I'm playing Apothecaria. I write, and if it's long-winded or doesn't lead anywhere: oh well! Better luck next entry! It's a game, and I don't feel obligated to make it As Good As I Possibly Can.

Lyric is increasingly annoyed that (a) Outside is Broken and (b) I have done nothing to fix this despite Lyric's numerous requests. She has now concluded that if she just goes in and out of the house enough times, then one of those times, outside will be working again. Especially if she tries different doors. Just because Outside is broken when she leaves by the kitchen door doesn't mean it's broken if she leaves by the living room door, right?

It's the triumph of hope over experience, again and again. I got her back inside tonight and I'm not letting her back out again, because there's probably gonna be freezing rain or snow or something nasty tonight and I don't want her outside for it. She'd go hide in the garage from it and I'm sure she'd be fine, but also sure she'll be more comfortable indoors.

Okay, gonna finish up the next Apothecaria entry and then maybe a draw a little if I have time before bed.

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January 4: Work Week

2024-01-05T04:09:55Z

Logged in for my first work day of semi-retirement. As far as I can tell, my team has largely been handling things in my absence. Yay! They did have a few things to ask me to help with; nothing onerous. Day was pretty mellow, with enough to keep me occupied but not so much that I felt rushed. Although one of my co-workers did ask for something just as I was getting ready to log out. I dithered for a moment and then told her I was logging out. She wanted me to do the review on her query, and anyone can do a review so didn't sound like it was important for me specifically to do it.

The nice part about having told my boss several years ago that I was planning to retire "in the next few years" is that I've had an easy answer to the "what do you want to do in the future?"

"Retire."

I remember having one conversation with my previous boss where I literally said, "My career goal is to become expendable and then, at long last, to be expended." Somehow or other, I've been regarded as indispensable in my position for actual decades, notwithstanding that my position has changed multiple times over that period. I'd get moved from one thing that I was good at to a different thing that also suited my temperament, time and again. My career became laser-focused on "work tasks I enjoy and have accordingly gotten really good at doing." But I still didn't want to work at a day job for the rest of my life. Not even until I was retirement age.

It's good to be here now. I want my workplace and my team to flourish when I'm gone, and I'm not 100% confident that there aren't still things that I can do much better than anyone else on the team. But eh. They'll be fine.

It's nice that this isn't really my problem anymore. Do my best for seven hours out of the week and then forget about it for another week.

One perk of working one day a week is that my seven hours of work don't take much more than seven hours of my time. When I worked consecutive days in a row, the evening between workdays in particular always felt constrained: free time, but not as useful as free time before a day off, or on a day off. Even working two non-consecutive days still had some of that halo effect, where the need to work at a certain time or to recover from having worked made the time surrounding work less constructive and enjoyable. There's still some of that -- I didn't feel much like writing or drawing after I got off work today.

But I've done other useful things. I exercised and stretched. I skipped napping (despite not getting my usual 8.5 hours of sleep last night). I put together a stuffed French toast casserole to bake for breakfast tomorrow (this was quite a production! Took most of an hour. Reminds me of making lasagna. I should make lasagna again, it's been a while.) I loaded and ran the dishwasher. And I wrote about my day!

It's been a good day. Not as good as the days when I don't work. I have not yet achieved "yay! I get to work today!" which I genuinely hope to accomplish at some point -- being actually excited to do my day job. It's mostly "eh, it's fine" instead. Although there are parts of my job that I enjoy doing, they don't make up enough of my day to have me looking forward to it. YET.

I am looking forward to going to sleep in a little bit, though. Good night, Dreamwidth.

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Almost Month-End

2023-04-28T17:36:05Z

I should be writing The Jewel-Strewn Night. I've made some progress on the draft this month; it's at 29% complete and started at 20%. But my goal was 40%. So you'd think "well, it's the 28th, you're not gonna make as much progress in the next 2.5 days as you did in the entire rest of the month. May as well give it up." But the book is projected to be short, around 80,000 words, so 11% is less than 3000 words per day. Which is a totally normal pace for me during Nanowrimo and honestly not ridiculous for a three-day weekend (all my weekends are three days: the joys of working part time). It's not a matter of possible: it's a matter of "I don't feel like it." It's been a struggle all month to get myself to work on it. It's not writer's block, or even more resistance than I usually have to writing my next draft. It's that, this time, I have some things I actually do feel like doing, so it's competing against them instead of "what else you gonna do? You're already current on your fediverse feed. Checkmate, procrastination."

My Friday started out a little weird. I've been waking up at around 5AM the last three days, which is normal, and then failing to get back to sleep and instead getting out of bed around 6-6:30AM, which is not normal. Today, I woke up at 3:30AM, checked my phone out of habit, and saw that I had a text from my credit card company. "We declined a transaction from amazon.com.br because it looks super fishy. Was this you? Respond 'yes' if it was, though you'll still have to place the order again because we already declined it. Respond 'no' and we'll cancel your card."

Me: (This seems weird but maybe Lut did it? I'll ask in the morning.)
Me, waking again at 5AM: (well, Lut came back to bed a few minutes ago, I'll ask him.)
Me to Lut: "Did you place this $$$ order from British Amazon?"
Lut, half-asleep: "yes?"
Me: "Really? What was it? Chase declined it so if you really want it you'll have to place it again."
Lut: "paint."
Me: "But you already have a ton of paint and you backed a kickstarter for yet more paint, why would you order EVEN MOAR?"
Lut: sleepily gets back out of bed to figure out what happened
Me: thinking he got up to place the order again (Well, he said 'yes', I guess he placed the order.) texts 'yes' to Chase.
Lut: "Can you send me the message?"
Me: copies the text to Lut
Lut: comes back to bed 15 minutes later "Okay, no, this wasn't me. Also, this is Amazon Brazil, not Britain."
Me: "...oh."

Lut initially thought it might be him because the Kickstarter he backed in February had just shipped the first installment of its fulfillment process, and he'd bought some add-ons through the KS's fulfillment process. But this was (a) the wrong amount and (b) would not go through Amazon of any nation and (c) KS had taken most of the payment back in February. No relationship.

Me: gives up on sleep and gets up to log in to my Chase account, where the card in question no longer exists. Not 'is closed' but 'has no record of any sort'.
Me: "????"
Me: calls Chase

So it turns out that sometime between 2:30 and 5:30AM, Chase decided "if this was her, she'd have responded by now." So they automatically cancelled and reissued the card. The old card number vanished from my account after the cancellation, but the transaction history will reappear under the new number when they're done processing the new card issue.

Me: "So it turns out I actually misplaced my other Chase card so can you cancel and reissue it too?"

That one had not had the numbers stolen: I'd lost the physical card. The one which had its numbers stolen wasn't missing: Lut and I still have our copies of the physical cards (we're both on that account, which is why I had to ask him if he'd made the suspicious charge.) Anyway, the upshot is that I have zero working credit cards at the moment. Oops. No online purchases for me for a while.

By now, the sun was almost up, so I went outside for a bit. A sleep article I read on Tuesday suggested getting some sunlight when you wake up. I am not sure this has done any particular good for me, so far? But it doesn't do any harm. On Wednesday and Thursday morning, I went for a long walk, but on Thursday I was starting to develop a blister so I thought I'd just sit on the porch today. Maybe I'll do something else for exercise later.

I ate breakfast, played a little Race for the Galaxy, and then discovered Veo Corva had cancelled their stream. So I decided to go back to bed for a nap. I may take another nap this afternoon, too. No guarantees.

After napping for an hour or so, I got up and started this entry by way of putting off anything more productive. I think I will illustrate an Apothecaria entry. I've been trying to make at least one each day and haven't done one yet for today. I've done extra ones on a few days, so I have entries to post for Saturday and Sunday already, though. But if I want to keep my buffer, I have to keep doing a new one each time I post one.

(Why do I want to keep a buffer for the story I am writing and illustrating for fun? Why am I keeping to a 7-days-a-week posting schedule for it? Why aren't I posting it to Dreamwidth at all? I don't know any of these things. Looking at all the illustrated entries does make me happy, though.)

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Gender and the Internet

2023-03-15T16:09:53Z

Sometimes, when people talk about trans people in a "wow, there sure are a lot of trans people now" way, I think about how long I have known trans people.

I have been an extremely online person from the moment I got to college and had access to "online", in the late eighties. I created a character on FurryMUCK in 1990 or 91, played for a few weeks or months, and then left. I returned in '92, I think, and remained active there for some years. I also flitted between various other online spaces before/between/during my FurryMUCK years, but Furry is the space I remember best from this period.

MUCKs were text-based MMOs but without the "fight monsters and get loot" part. People built rooms and lands and worlds and characters out of text descriptions, and hung out there together to chat. Like Discord, but with a lot more atmosphere. FurryMUCK was -- is, it's still around -- a MUCK for furries. And furries have always been a queer lot. In the late 80s and 90s, people created characters with every kind of gender: male and female were the most popular, but neopronouns and nonbinary characters were commonplace. The last was often fetishized -- but not always. "Nonbinary" wasn't a term yet. Most of the enby characters labeled themselves as "hermaphrodites"; some of them as "neuter."

One of the many things that's changed about "online" in the last thirty years is the gender ratio online. In the late 80s and early 90s, most people online presented as male in person. It was so overwhelmingly male that even most people who presented as female online presented as male in person.

I don't really know how many of those people who played female or nonbinary characters on Furry were trans. It was undeniably easier to get attention with a female character. I rarely played male characters myself, not because I disliked male characters but because when I played one, I recognized how hard it was to stand out from the crowd. I knew several AMAB people who preferred to play female characters online but who, so far as I know, were cis men.

The first trans woman I met was in the early 90s: 1991, perhaps? She came to one of the periodic furry meet-ups that one of my friends hosted. She was older than most of my friends, although I do not know how much older; I'd guess she was in her thirties or forties, when most of my circle were in our early twenties. She was polyamorous and kinky and dated one of my friends who was perhaps twenty-one. I don't know how that relationship turned out in the long run, but they struck me as happy together. I hope they did well.

One of my closest friends on Furry usually played male characters. But she* played one character who was a water elemental and genderless. She used "it/its" for that character. At one point, she told me that character was the one she most wanted to resemble, but that she had a hard time playing it because it was too much her idealized self. She didn't feel like she could live up to that ideal.

*I'll use her present in-person pronouns for her.

Years later, she came out to me as a trans woman. To my everlasting shame, I argued with her over it. I didn't think there was anything wrong with being trans -- my logic was something like 'you don't seem especially feminine to me and you never played female characters so you can't be a trans woman.' (To be clear, this is complete nonsense and I had no idea what I was talking about.) I didn't argue for long -- it was one conversation that went roughly:

Friend: "I'm a woman"
Me: "what no you can't be"
Friend: "NO REALLY"
few more exchanges
Me: "...okay, I don't understand, but I do support you"

Later, she told me that she would have preferred to not have a gender at all. But getting recognized as nonbinary in the late 90s was basically impossible and transitioning to a woman was something cis people could wrap their heads around, and "woman" was much more acceptable to her than "man." That stuck with me, because it fit so well with everything else I knew about her. She had always been one of those feminists who'd thought the world would be better off without genders.

Another person I knew on Furry in the early 90s played a shapeshifter character. Most often, I saw them* in female shapes, but they had male and neuter shapes as well. Sometimes changing little but the pronouns from one description to the next. (They used it/its for the neuter forms. I recall they had one exaggeratedly mixed-gender shape that existed solely to make fun of other people's fetishized/sexualized descriptions which gave prominent attention to three or more sets of genitalia.)

*likewise using their current pronouns here.

Years later, when I knew them much better, they told me that their preferred pronouns were it/its. Many years after that, they started asking people to use they/them, because they being treated as nonbinary was important to them and because too many people would assume that anyone using it/its would be doing so to be offensive.

Around 2016, as I was thinking about my next book, I realized that I had finished three books in three different settings, and none of them had an explicit trans or nonbinary character. I'd had friends since the 90s who were nonbinary, a fact I had long ago accepted. But I'd never put nonbinary characters into my work. Dragons and magical healing and prophecy: sure, those were reasonable elements to expect a reader to accept. But a nonbinary person? A BRIDGE TOO FAR.

...

Me to me: "seriously WHAT. What is up with that. Why are you writing books that don't include this normal component of your own life."

I decided, at that point, that I would never again write a setting that didn't include nonbinary people. Not necessarily as major or even minor characters, but: nonbinary people had to, at a minimum, exist in the world. Even if it was just as a throwaway mention somewhere. In two of my settings -- the Demon books and the Etherium novels -- I use it/its for some nonbinary characters and they/them for others. Because I had two friends who'd wanted to use it/its and never felt like they could in the real world, and I couldn't change that but what the heck, I could at least make a space for them in my fictional ones. In the Demon books, it was particularly important to me to use "it" for some nonbinary humans because the demons in the setting don't have sexual reproduction and the pronoun for all of them was "it". I did not want the book to come across as 'agender = evil'. x_x

The first trans woman I met wasn't someone I knew well or stayed in touch with. But the people who later came out to me as trans have been good friends for most of my life, at this point. Sometimes I think about all the other people I met on FurryMUCK who used nonbinary or genderfluid forms, but who didn't become lifelong friends. How many of them weren't cis, either? How many of them thought they were cis for years and only much later realized they didn't have to be?

Do I really know more trans people now, or do I just know more people who are comfortable being open about being trans?

Furry fandom was open to a variety of forms in a way that other online spaces weren't. I don't know if this is because there's something innately queer about liking anthropomorphic animals as "when your setting is all about nonhuman characters like dragons and bipedal cats and such, characters who aren't male or female seem pretty reasonable." But "AMAB people presenting as female online and male iRL" was commonplace throughout the internet, in every online space I saw. And I knew some women who preferred to play male characters for the exact reason I preferred female: they got less attention as male and they liked that. Having a medium where no one could see what you look like or hear what you sounded like made it easy to be whatever you wanted. To experiment.

And in an environment where it's easy to experiment, of course people will learn things that they didn't when it was almost impossible to do so.

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Online Courses

2023-03-10T04:36:09Z

Work today was busy. One of my co-workers wanted me to go over in Zoom how to put together a particular query, and then once she had me in Zoom went "and just one more thing" a few times with unrelated queries, which amused me.

Annoyingly, the way I'd thought should work -- use a UNION with NULLs as placeholder values for the columns that didn't exist for one of the queries to unite -- generated a conversion error message for absolutely no reason. HMPH.

My bank has been planning to replace pretty much all of our software packages, which is kind of amazing given how long they have resisted changing some of these systems. One element of the overall strategy has been "get everyone more training" so they contracted with a huge online tech training site to let everyone take as many online courses as they want. I started one for BigQuery, Google's query tool. We're not using it yet but it looks like we will at some point in the future.

The course includes labs using BigQuery, which is pretty cool. Each lab has you make a temporary student account in BigQuery, and then you can use the student account to do the lab assignments. Three weeks ago, I got to the first lab and was completely mystified by it because the instructions for the lab in no way matched the actual options available in BigQuery. I spent ten or fifteen confused and frustrated minutes trying to figure out how to match what I could do with what the lab was telling me to do, and then gave up.

I was out sick the following week. Last week, I went back to try the lab again and see if it had miraculously fixed itself. I discovered that the course had marked the lab complete, with a grade of 100%, instead.

...

I thought about wrestling with the lab again ANYWAY because I actually want to learn the product and not just get a digital record that says I learned the product. But I decided to take the win and moved on to the next lesson. There would be more labs and this lab had looked like more like a tutorial on how to use the GUI than anything more detailed.

Today, I made it through some video lessons on SQL (I even learned things I didn't know, which might seem surprising given that I've been writing SQL queries for ~20 years. It did not surprise me because everything I know about SQL I learned either by dissecting someone else's code or from Stack Overflow.) And I got to the next lab.

This time, I got to a confusing part at the start of the lab (I don't remember what happened three weeks ago so I am not sure if it was the same confusing part) and made Lut look at my screen while I said "where is this option, it's supposed to be here, oh now I see it, thank you." Rubber ducking ftw?

Anyway, the actual lab part was "take our broken queries and fix them", which was pretty fun. The lab also included muItiple-choice questions to test whether you understood the fix, which were incredibly bad and obnoxious. One of the multiple-choice answers it insisted that I select before it would mark the section complete was "SQL code is missing a page title".

Reader, I do not know what a "page title" is supposed to be in a SQL query. I have been writing queries for 20+ years and I have never put a page title in the code for any query. The videos that went over writing SQL code did not mention the phrase "page title". Nothing in the example of "corrected code" appeared to be a page title. I have no idea what the lab meant by this question or why it thought a page title was a necessary component.

I did a lot of cursing at the terrible questions.

The lab was timed, but the timing was generous -- it allowed fifty minutes and I finished in twenty-five or so.

The funny part about this, to me, is how anxious and upset the timer made me. When I was in school and had timed tests all the time, and school was my only priority, I never worried about tests or completing on time. Now, when I often contemplate retiring early and have zero concerns about staying employed or getting another job in this field, the idea that I might RUN OUT OF TIME is EXTREMELY UPSETTING. Never mind that I can retake the lab an infinite number of times until I finish it within the allotted time frame. I am yelling at these multiple choice questions for not making sense when literally I can pass them just by picking options at random until it tells me I'm done. I do not know why I am so wound up over these things.

Anyway, I passed the lab and the test and then discovered that the next "week" of lessons were all pretty short, so I finished that week and now I'm ahead of the course again, yay!

I worked an extra 40 minutes today, which I never do. But there was a live Google workspace tips thing that started right after I normally log off work, and I wanted to attend it. And I wanted to finish the last few minutes of week five's lesson plan so I could take the quiz while the lessons were still fresh. Week five was boring, though, just going over pricing plans for BigQuery. Which is sort of important even for someone totally uninvolved in the purchase decisions, because you need to know how to optimize your queries for the pricing structure so that you don't wind up racking up unnecessary processing charges.

I like the online course structure overall, though. The hands-on labs using the actual software are a good touch; I feel like I'm actually learning something useful.

After work, I took a nap, and then picked up takeout at Lut's request, and visited my local friends for a little while. I tried to call Terry, but his phone didn't even go to voicemail this time. :/ Just got a "person is not available -click-" message. Hopefully I can reach him tomorrow.

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Hospital Again Again

2021-06-30T18:13:38Z

I was supposed to go to Seattle on Wednesday, June 9, but Lut was admitted to the hospital on June 6, after he grew increasingly confused over the course of the weekend.

The hospital never quite figured out what he had. “Maybe pneumonia.” But it cleared up after a few days, and he was discharged on June 9, about the same time the flight I’d originally scheduled was leaving the airport. In theory, I could’ve switched to a later flight instead of cancelling the trip, but by that point I didn’t want to leave Lut alone to fend for himself for several days.

This was just as well, because a week later, he was readmitted to the hospital, for confusion and hypoxia (low blood oxygen).

The diagnosis was, again, “maybe pneumonia”. They gave him yet more antibiotics, and on Saturday, June 19, sent him home. This time, they prescribed oxygen for him, although this required something of a song-and-dance to accomplish.

Nurse: “We can discharge you today, just need to give you the breathing test to find out if you need oxygen at home.”
Respiratory therapist: comes to his room, takes him off oxygen, brings him back a few minutes later. “He did great! Won’t need oxygen at home.”
Lut: lies down in bed
Lut’s blood oxygen: plummets
Nurse and respiratory therapist: futz with two different monitors and sensors to make sure it’s not a monitor problem
Nurse: “Well, we can’t send him home with his blood oxygen this low.”
Me: “You mean you need to send him home with oxygen, right?”
Nurse: “No, we can’t send him home with oxygen because he passed the breathing test so insurance won’t pay for it.”
Me: “... can I just buy oxygen? With money?”
Nurse: “Sadly, no.”
Me: “So insurance will pay for additional days at the hospital but not for the much cheaper “send home with oxygen”?”
Nurse: “I KNOW RIGHT??? It’s so frustrating. >_<”

By now, the respiratory therapist had left. About an hour later, the nurse came back and took Lut off oxygen. “The RT will do the re-test in 10 minutes and presumably he’ll fail it then.”

An hour passed, of the oxygen monitor beeping because Lut’s was too low. Finally, the RT returned. The nurse and I coached Lut to fail it. “Breathe shallowly! No deep breaths!” The RT brought him back in thirty seconds. Mission accomplished.

I’ve been monitoring his blood oxygen closely since we got home. He does well enough while using the oxygen that I don’t bother with readings while he’s on it. Whenever he’s sitting without wearing it, I check it every hour or so -- we have one of those little pulse-oximeters. On the first two days after he was discharged, he still had the occasional reading of 89 or 88 (they want 90+, and when he left the hospital he was more like 85 on room air). But since Tuesday or so, I’ve only had one reading of 89, and that went above 90 immediately.

We talked to his general practitioner on Thursday 6/24. He said to keep an eye on it and experiment with leaving it off as long as oxygen levels stayed high. But even if he didn’t need it at all, we should wait 4 weeks before calling to return the equipment. You don’t actually buy oxygen at all. You rent an oxygen concentrator. While the patient is at home, the patient uses the oxygen concentrator with a 50-foot extension on the cannula so that they can move around the house. When you go out, you take a tank with you to use. There’s a machine that goes on top of the concentrator that can be used to fill little portable tanks that fit in a shoulder sling, which is a lot less annoying than the big tank on a wheeled caddy that the hospital sent us home with. We have three of those tanks, too, but those are “in case the power goes out” rather than designed for travel. The little tanks have a special valve so that they only dispense oxygen when he inhales, instead of continuously, so they last just as long despite being much smaller. I don’t know why the big tanks don’t have the same kind of valve.

After a hospital stay, they always send out home health aides, so he’ll get physical, occupational, and respiratory therapy starting next week.

My little victory during all of this has been getting back to regular exercise. Over the course of the last year and a half, I’ve dropped from 5+ times per week to 3-4 times. Every month this year, I’ve had “exercise 20 times” down as a stretch goal, and for the last three months I have ended up at 16-17 instead. In June, I exercised for the first three days, and then Lut grew sicker and I didn’t exercise for a week. On June 11, I looked at my list of stretch goals and thought “It is still technically possible to make this goal. I will do the thing.”

And then Lut was hospitalized again and I thought “okay, Imma lower my bar for what qualifies as exercise.”

So I started counting stuff like “did one 10 minute beginner’s aerobics video” or “did 30 minutes of pacing while on the phone” (Google Fit measures how much pacing I do, and I make an effort to pace as if I were walking, by going from one end of the house to the other and then back.)

Doing this reminded me of when I used to trick myself into starting to exercise by promising myself I could stop any time. “Just five minutes. You can always stop.” And then once I got started, I’d always continue through to my usual end.

Except that this time, I was letting myself actually stop.

I made it to 21 times in June -- maybe 22 if I decide to exercise later today. But I’ll take it, either way. My overall activity level this month is higher than at any point since October 2020. “Anything is better than nothing” is a good strategy to keep in mind.

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How You Can Tell I’m Old

2021-01-29T19:21:47Z

On Wednesday morning, I woke up and my back had gone out: that distinctive and painful feeling where your lower back muscles go on strike and when you move the rest of your muscles try in vain to make up for it and it hurts to do anything but lie down.

I have thrown my back out before, usually when I strain the muscles by lifting something heavy in a bad way. This time, I did it while sleeping. This is how you can tell I'm old. It runs in my family: my father permanently crippled his ankle two years ago, while asleep in his bed. No, neither of us sleepwalk or do anything more complicated than roll over while asleep. Sometimes your body just randomly breaks.

Anyway, Wednesday was also Lut's monthly oncology clinic appointment, so I had to drive him to the clinic that morning.

Also, it had snowed overnight.

I contemplated calling a cab for Lut, and also driving over the snow instead of shoveling the drive -- it was only an inch or so. But taxi service in my area is poor and Lut doesn't have a smartphone so he can't use Lyft or Uber. My driveway is at an incline and shaded, which means that (a) packed ice can trap my car in the driveway pretty easily and (b) it takes a long time to melt off. So I summoned all my determination and went out to clear the walk and the drive. It was little enough snow that I could use the shovel to push it to the side instead of having to pick it up, so this was actually possible. I don't think any amount of willpower could've made me pick up a shovel full of snow more than once. Because it was so little snow, the city hadn't plowed my street yet, for which I was grateful. It meant there was no large ridge of plowed-up snow that I would have to struggle to move and possibly not be capable of either moving or driving over. Instead, I pushed the snow out of the road in front of my drive, too.

I am extremely proud of myself for getting this done at 8AM while in significant pain and with a marginally-functional back. BE PROUD OF ME, INTERNET.

By nightfall, my back was mostly-functional again, and then I went to bed and struggled to walk again in the morning. Lather, rinse, repeat. It does seem to be improving faster today, at least. Hopefully in a few more days it'll be back to normal.

I haven't done much since it went out apart from required stuff, like dropping off & picking up Lut and also prescriptions, and finishing out my 20-hour work week at my day job. I did the color doodle of Anesh and that’s about it. Sitting up in the reclining loveseat at my computer is uncomfortable but I do it anyway. I haven't tried sitting at Pretend Coffee Shop, which is less comfortable than the loveseat in the office even when my torso is fully functional. This morning, I made hot cocoa with marshmallows and motivated myself to write this blog post, so that's something. And also, my cat is lying on the footrest next to my feet and is super cute.

I will probably get some writing done tonight, because CoffeeQuills is doing their usual Friday writing stream and those are fun.

I'm gonna write a little about CoffeeQuiills' stream because the thing I like about it is not obvious from the description. They break the stream into 10-minute blocks, using an on-screen timer: a 10 minute "progress sprint", then a 10 minute break, then repeat. During the sprints, CQ writes quietly, and during the breaks they chat with their audience (CQ talks, audience types in the chat bar). Chat is mostly casual and about whatever anyone feels like talking about -- sometimes writing, sometimes other stuff. During the sprints, the audience can watch what CQ is writing, but the feel of the thing is more "you should work on your thing while I work on my thing!" They even call them "progress sprints" rather than "writing sprints" so that people who want to work on non-writing things will feel included. The pacing suits me very well: my attention tends to wander when I'm supposed to be writing, but focusing for 10 minutes is short enough that I can generally manage it. The 10-minute breaks likewise suit me: long enough to talk a bit or to get up and stretch and refresh my drink. It doesn't leave me feeling rushed or pressured. And I write quite a bit more over the course of one 4-hour stream than I do when I just decide "I'll get some writing done today": a couple thousand words, without ever feeling as if I'm forcing myself to struggle onwards.

And it's companionable: CQ and their audience alike are friendly and encouraging. For me, the stream is much more about "hang out with nice people while you all get stuff done and say kind things to one another" rather than "spectate as one person livestreams their writing." Nothing against people who enjoy the latter, either as streamer or spectator! But I am not a good spectator so a productivity-hangout has much more appeal for me personally. I started attending the livestreams during Nanowrimo and have made a habit of going to them on Friday and Saturday evenings (my time) since. (CQ is in Japan, so their livestream is scheduled for Saturday and Sunday morning in their time zone. They have an afternoon-in-their-time-zone stream Monday through Friday, but those generally start around my bed time so I seldom attend.)

Haven’t decided what to work on, either. It’ll be either notes/outline for my next book, or revisions for Angel’s Grace.

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Working from Home and Other Life Stuff

2020-03-25T22:18:39Z

Today, for the first time in my twenty-three years in banking, I worked from home.

The work day got off to a rocky start, as I tried to connect from my desktop PC and the remote site said that my PC -- the only computer in my house that I have specifically installed antivirus on instead of just having Windows Defender -- had insufficient antivirus protection. o_O

I knew that my Surface could connect because I'd tested it already. I did not want to spend the day trying to do my day job on a 10" screen, however. I tried the laptop, which also connected fine. Okay, guess I'm working in the living room after all.

Normally, when I use the laptop in the living room to write, I lie back on the couch with my back propped up on a big cushion. It's not a comfortable position for eight hours of working, though. I decided to try using the love-seat-with-footrest that we never use, instead. That worked out fine. Now I have a Pretend Office in the living room, in addition to the Pretend Coffee Shop.

I wasn't sure how I'd feel about working from home. I haven't wanted to try it; my boss told me back in November that I was allowed to work from home, but it wasn't until the start of March that I asked her to get me set up to do so. I live less than a mile from my job. It is not an onerous commute.

So I was surprised to discover that I enjoyed it. And it wasn't because I was goofing off; I was actually much less distracted than I normally am when I'm at the bank, in fact. I liked a lot of aspects of it: I didn't have to pack a lunch, for example. I actually went into the kitchen and made mac & cheese for lunch, for that matter. My office mate was a cat and she is good company although she hardly put in any hours at all, the slacker. (She found it disconcerting when I set up on the love seat on the other side from her usual spot, and never returned to it.) I did take some mini-breaks to get drinks or poke at my phone for a couple of minutes. But I did so much less often than I do when I'm at the bank.

Another pleasant thing: I didn't feel like snacking nearly as much as I do when working at the bank. I've been eating much less than usual anyway. When I'm bored or stressed, especially at work, I will eat to pass the time or make myself feel better. But that doesn't happen as much at home. Last month, my average calories-eaten-per-day was 1830. Since I went on staycation, it's 1580. I suspect part of this is that I haven't been going out for food so I don't have to fit big restaurant meals into my daily allotment. I usually only eat half of a serving anyway, but even so.

The thing where I eat 600 calories of snacks in a day while at the bank is probably a bigger factor, though.

I'd just come back from vacation, so there was plenty of email piled up to read and tasks to do, which I imagine contributed to my ability to focus. I was never at a loss for what to work on next. Maybe when the novelty wears off, I will find myself as easily distracted at home as I am at work. But it does seem unlikely that it'll be any worse.

Being stuck on the 14" laptop screen instead of my 25" desktop monitor was annoying, but not as bad as I expected. In fact, I was probably as much inconvenienced by having to use the laptop keyboard/touchpad/touchscreen instead of a full size keyboard and trackball.

Obviously, I could get my laptop hooked up to proper peripherals but the whole thing is: I already HAVE a perfectly good desktop and I'm unwilling to spend much of my own time or money because some IT widget doesn't want me to use it. I asked IT what kind of antivirus they expect my desktop to have. The laptop is fine for now; I'll see what they say before I worry about making further adaptations.

Today, Lut had his usual monthly oncology appointment. The clinic called last night to say that only patients were allowed into the clinic at the present time, and they're screening everyone who enters for fevers and any COVID-19 contact they might have had. Lut didn't like that I couldn't sit on the physician-visit part of the appointment like I usually do, because sometimes I have useful information to contribute or think of questions to ask that he doesn't. But I was, on the whole, relieved that there would be significantly fewer people at the clinic. With just patients in it, the waiting and treatment areas wouldn't be crowded and everyone could stay 6+ feet apart for the most part.

While he was at the clinic, I went for a walk like I usually do, except outside because even if the mall was open for mall-walking (I doubt it) I wasn't going to enter it. After the walk, I ran a couple of errands, including stopping briefly at the bank to deposit some cash and pick up a couple of things that were delivered there for me. The lobby is closed to the public at the bank and I hadn't thought to bring my key, so I went to the drive-through. I have worked at this branch for seventeen years and never been at the drive-through before. It was fine. Weird, but fine. They let me in so I could get the package. It turned out My boss had sent me a big box full of snacks from nuts.com, and a couple of people I'd been doing a lot of queries for sent me a gift card to the Cheesecake Factory. Aww.

I went home and started laundry, and then headed back to the clinic to get Lut after an hour and a half.

I haven't done much since then. Maybe I'll work on the cover for Spark of Desire some more. I've been doing a lot more art than writing lately; writing requires too much brain.

Tomorrow, I'll work from home for around 4 hours and that'll be my work week. Curious to see if working 20 hours next week will feel significantly more challenging than this 12-hour work week.

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Enough

2020-02-05T16:59:07Z

For the last couple of days, I've felt as if I am doing enough.

It's very common for me to work a full day at day job, then exercise, then deal with various other chores, and at around 7PM think, "that's it, I don't have the energy to do any writing or editing or art or anything. I give up now."

But on Monday and Tuesday, I reached the evening and thought, "I've done enough. I can relax now." I hadn't done anything creative, and I didn't want to do anything creative, and -- for once -- that was OK. I didn't feel guilty about it. Yesterday I even skipped exercise! So unlike me! And I didn't feel bad about it!

Post-editing depression hit me hard after I finished the edits on The Twilight Etherium, and I'd been expecting it to come back when I finished edits on Spark of Desire. But instead I've been, if anything, more cheerful than usual. I worked on some art on Sunday and I wrote a paragraph of The Lord, His Monster, and Their Lady. But mostly I just played video games and didn't worry about things. I spent a couple of hours walking on Sunday for a Pokemon GO event. If this light snow clears up this afternoon (not looking very likely at the moment), I'll go to the Plaza for the raid hour, so that I can wrap up the "raid" portion of the monthly Team Rocket research quest.

As I write this, I am at Pretend Coffee Shop -- my living room, where Pretend Barista (me) serves me a Coke float. I go to Pretend Coffee Shop much more often than a real coffee shop these days: it's cheaper, more comfortable, I like the drinks better, and Lut is happier when I'm at home. Even when I've driven to the Plaza to walk & play Pokemon Go, I generally go home rather than visit any of the four coffee shops there. The main downside of Pretend Coffee Shop is that I don't feel as much pressure to work and it doesn't get me out of my usual rut as effectively.

I remain all out of cope: whenever some minor annoyance occurs, I hurl imprecations in the direction of my computer, or at the air, depending on what's available. I have successfully convinced my brain that screaming at people is Absolutely Never Acceptable and I don't do that. But for whatever reason I have not been able to stop myself from venting at inanimate objects. But I would prefer to treat setbacks with equanimity. I do not enjoy being angry. -_- I decided this week to ask God for help on this one. It seems like the sort of thing He'd be good at. We'll see how it goes.

Anyway, I am out of things to ramble about, so I'll poke at one of my WIPs instead.

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Health Insurance and Other Stressors

2020-01-04T18:22:02Z

This is the write-up about insurance that I mentioned never posting in one of my review posts. I finished it up and am posting it now. Contains mention of God & religion as well as insurance.

So back in mid-November, HR told me that my partner and I would no longer be eligible for health insurance through my employer, starting 1/1/2020, because I had been part time for a year.

I forwarded this to my boss, saying "Buh wha?" We had checked the employee handbook when I went part-time. Part-time employees had to pay the full cost of insurance, instead of 20%, but they were still eligible. I had been paying the full cost since January, when I went part time. Neither of us were aware of anything that had said "and after a year, we kick you off." My boss promised to look into this and get back to me.

A couple of days later, I ran over a big block of wood in the road. I wasn't sure if I'd hurt anything, but a warning light on the dashboard activated. Wednesday, while I was taking Lut to dinner after a doctor's appointment, a kind driver stopped at the light next to us honked and let us know that the front passenger tire was low on air. "Oh, that's probably what this warning light that I haven't decoded yet is."

We went to a Quiktrip to air it (they have free tire pump machines! Very convenient.) At this point, I finally noticed that I'd lost a hub cap, bent both wheel rims on the passenger side, and the low front tire had a slow leak. Lut reminded me that we were near a tire place, so I drove over there. The warning light had gone off, so that confirmed that the tire was what the car had been sad about.

The tire place had been purchased by Big O Tire since we were last there, and they were too busy to look at it that night or tomorrow. I made an appointment for Friday of that week -- since it was a slow leak and I'd already driven like 30 miles over the course of 24 hours, I figured it wasn't urgent.

I discovered I had a text message from my boss asking me to call about the insurance issue, which I figured was a bad sign. She'd texted that morning but I hadn't noticed until almost 5PM. I called her back and left a message, saying I'd talk to her tomorrow if she didn't get back to me tonight.

That night, I had insomnia, waking at 2AM with my thoughts full of the future: would I have to go back to full time work? How would I manage that? How would I manage if I didn't? How much would it cost to pay for private insurance for two ~50 year-old people per year, one of whom has cancer? What would it cost to have the car fixed? Why hadn't I waited to move into the turn lane until I was past that cursed block of wood in the road? Why am I so bad at this? Should I quit writing? My day job pays a lot better than my writing ever will. Etc.

I prayed to God for serenity and equanimity, because I have a gigantic retirement account and it feels like I should at some point be able to stop angsting about money and I would like it for that point to be now k thx. I don't even want to whinge about my problems because they are SO PETTY. "Oh no, I might have to work full time!" Girl, most of your friends already have to work full time and most of those that don't would be DELIGHTED to have the option to do so.

Eventually, I slept.

On Thursday of that week, I learned that my boss had talked to her boss, and they talked to HR and looked through the documentation. They were eventually able to discern that this was, indeed, a new policy at my employer despite the "Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia" attitude that HR was taking. The ACA doesn't require that the employers offer health insurance to employees who work less than 30 hours a week, and they had decided not to do so anymore. They'd also stopped covering domestic partners last year, although mine had been grandfathered in at that time.

But that was done now. Even if I returned to full-time work, the bank would no longer allow me to purchase insurance for my partner through them. I could get myself covered again, but that was it.

My boss said, "We know you don't want to work full-time. Find out what it will cost to insure yourself and your partner, and we'll get you a raise to cover the difference between that and what you were already paying."

!

I didn't know if the amount of COBRA would be more than my boss and her boss could convince HR to pay me, or how much discretion they have in salary. I also needed to look into the ACA exchange, in case that was more affordable than COBRA. I felt like, on the one hand, COBRA is supposed to be the same insurance I'm already getting and I'm already paying the full cost so it shouldn't be THAT much more? But everyone says that COBRA is crazy-expensive and my existing insurance premiums are low, so I just don't know. But it is good to know that my chain of command has my back. <3

The next day, I went back to Big O Tire to get the rims and tire repaired or replaced, as necessary. I showed up at 8:05 and sat down in their lobby to write and wait for the news.

Thirty minutes later, the mechanic walked in and handed me my keys. "The rims were just a little bent, so I hammered them back into place, and patched your tire. You're good to go!"

"Great, thank you!" I went up to the counter to pay.

"No, really, you're good to go. We don't charge to patch a tire."

!!!

Apparently RANDOM STRANGERS also have my back and I am absolutely going to this place when I need new tires. O_O

I went to the mall to walk and Panera to write for a few hours afterwards. Big O Tire hadn't gifted me with a new hubcap, naturally, and it struck me that I knew exactly where I had hit the block of wood and that must have been where I lost the hubcap. So I went back there and LO! The block of wood was gone but my hubcap was right next to the median . :D

I can't get it back on, and I'm not sure if the hubcap is slightly bent, or the wheel is, or if I'm just not being sufficiently forceful. I may go back to Big O and ask if they can puzzle it out, but it hasn't been a priority.

In early December, I got the Cobra packet. Now, bear in mind that my bank's policy says that employees get an 80% discount on their insurance, but employees pay the full cost of any family or dependent insurance they purchase.

Lut's insurance through COBRA was almost three times what I paid through the bank. My insurance through COBRA is thirteen times what I had been paying.

Buh wha?

Either the bank's "you pay all of family and 20% of your own insurance" is FLAT WRONG, or COBRA is charging an illegal amount more than the bank's payment. I am inclined to think that the bank is wrong rather than that COBRA is ripping me off, however, because COBRA's premiums were in line with the ACA premiums. My COBRA premium was actually lower than through the ACA, although assuming I could actually collect the subsidy I am purportedly due, it'd be cheaper to go through the exchange. I didn't check for Lut, because he gets Medicaid and is therefore not eligible for ACA subsidies. I have wrangled over whether or not it is worth it to continue to pay for private insurance in addition to Medicaid. The oncology clinic that we use (and which I love; I have a lot of experience with different medical providers at this point and the Sarah Cannon Cancer Center is far and away the best overall) takes Medicaid. But some of his other providers don't, and Medicaid doesn't appear to pay for prescriptions, and I just feel better if he's got private insurance as well.

So I took the COBRA packet to work and told my boss. She called me and told me that she and her boss had secured a 65% raise for me starting in 2020.

Yes, you read that right. My take-home salary will be SIXTY-FIVE PERCENT more in 2020 than in 2019. This is enough to cover the increase in cost from COBRA, the extra taxes that I will pay on the raise, and still have some money left over. It's not a LOT left over, because the insurance premiums by themselves will eat up more than half the raise, and state/federal/city/social security/medicaid will take another fifth or so. But it does more than make up for the hit I took from losing insurance.

My boss: "So normally, you'd get a raise at your annual review, but my boss wanted to be sure you knew that this was taking the place of that."
Me: "THAT IS FINE thank you."

Anyway, I feel like I prayed to God for serenity and He looked down at me and said "Aw, you poor thing, let me fix this stuff for you. There you go."

Thank you too, God. <3

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