Dandelyon's Worlds

It's cold and grey outside. The peas, spinach, turnips, and beets we planted last week have not sprouted yet, which is doubtless a blessing, since it's supposed to drop below freezing tonight. But those are all cold-weather crops, so they'll be ok.

The warm weather crops that I've planted so far are all safe inside, though some of the tomatoes are very badly in need of thinning, and I don't really have things set up for that. My old flats are also getting really fragile, so I'll have to obtain some newer ones.

I'm feeling really frazzled right now. I know that's because of doing taxes. I have senseless anxiety about that, and it isn't as simple as it ought to be. Tax laws are truly unnecessarily complex and written in confusing jargon, and since that person appointed a new head of the post office, I never get all the forms I need in the mail and always have to spend time chasing them down on the internet or by phone. And the increasing trend of identity theft means that not only do I have to cudgel my dyscalculic brain to focus enough to copy a zillion numbers accurately from forms and my records into the depths of the online program I use, I also have to cudgel my brain to remember the last five digits of my social (which is stupidly hard), and copy numbers from third party authentication notices.

On top of that, when I had questions, I had to sit and wait and twiddle my thumbs, waiting for calls back from the experts on call, and some of the experts were just as frustrating as the numbers. The women ranged from OK to good; the men from bad to horrible this year. (Yes, I know you are trying to help me, but you are telling me to enter a lie in order to get rid of this error message the program is giving me, and I know better to lie about whether I stopped using a particular car last year...) (And then there was the guy who hung up on me when he didn't want to bother to answer my question.) Ugh.

And now it's done, and I feel like I should be able to just sigh in relief and move on, but my brain feels like a wet noodle and my back and neck are still all stress-knotted. Some of this is just stupid anxiety stuff, some is being tired from the forced focus needed to enter so many numbers accurately, but a lot is just an unwanted reminder that the stupid long covid isn't gone. And that feeds my anxiety--did I do something in the on-again off-again, tired, long-covid brain-fog that wasn't correct, and might I have failed to catch it when I reviewed everything?--which won't help me to recover and get on to recording some music or writing new songs or even maybe new fiction.

It's a lot more fun to consider my gardening plans. And gardening, while it requires simple actions on my part, really doesn't require much ability to think.

I don't mind tasks that don't require thinking, but many things that require thinking are a lot more fun, and I really mind not feeling up to doing those fun things!

Here is the arch I worked on yesterday. I do have a couple more shinies to attach to it, and after having some of my tomatoes stolen last year, I want to construct an equally rustic looking door so it won't be easy for thieves to enter.

Today I woke up late, got My Angel off to her brand new dentist appointment to glue the temporary crown back on, had some food, fed the outdoor cats, and got the mail. And then instead of going outside to garden, I picked up my phone. My call was in response to a letter saying if I didn't register to get a bill online I'd be charged a $1.99 monthly fee. I object to this in principle, but I'm doing enough "fighting city hall" due to the person in the white house, I don't have spoons for crap like this. But I also don't have spare money for stupid fees, and I was, indeed, already set up to view and pay my bills online, and had been long before they sent that letter.

So I called, listened to the robot waste my time telling me all about my balance and recent payment and how much more I could charge, told it no I didn't want to ask to increase my credit limit, and finally was allowed to start the unnecessarily confusing decision tree to try to get to talk to a human being. Eventually I figured out that the magic words at this facility were not "person" "human" "operator" or "agent", typing "0" was ignored. No, I needed to ask for customer service and listen to the robot tell me about long wait times and really, it can help me with most things. Did I want to hear about my current balance and recent payments or pay a bill or change my address or... Eventually it let me through, and someone picked up immediately.

I spent way too long talking to the guy who answered before he got off his mental butt and actually looked to see why I got the letter instead of just repeating that he could see I'd paid online so I wouldn't be charged that fee. But then why did they send the letter? (repeat, rinse, repeat...) I said ok, and asked his name, saying I was documenting the call in case I was charged that fee. Finally he said that they didn't have my email and so they couldn't notify me when a statement was ready and that's probably why I got the letter.

He offered to put it in for me. Sure. I spelled my email address slowly, because it includes my first name, and asked him to read it back to me. It was wrong--he left out one of the Rs. I told him it was wrong, he had left one of the Rs out, and spelled it again, slower, and had him repeat it back to me again. He assured me he had it right and with obvious annoyance repeated what he'd said before. Wrong again. It took two more iterations before he could repeat it back to me correctly. As soon as I said I didn't need help with anything else, he hung up really fast. If he had paid attention in the first place, he wouldn't have took up so much of my time, so he gets no sympathy from me.

Then I took the important piece of mail for someone else I'd just received with me and drove to the post office my mail delivery person works out of instead of the one closest to me. I mailed the two pieces of mail I hadn't been able to stick a stamp on last night (the clip board with return address stickers and stamps is not where it's supposed to be) and talked to a very nice and sympathetic supervisor. She nodded when I noted that mail delivery was not as good as it was before 45 appointed DeJoy, and said that she was hoping things would get better now that he resigned. DeJoy resigned? Really? I'd have been ecstatic to get that news this time last year. Of course, now 45 is 47 and working even harder to dismantle the government, so I'm not holding my breath.



Finally, after I got home, we pulled some of the old support poles out of the fence and replaced all but one. (That one had become non-functional last summer when it had bean plants twining around it, so I added new support then, but left the broken wood where it was to protect the bean plants.) I dug some of last year's leaves into the ground while My Angel picked up trash that had blown into the yard, then I worked on removing dead bean and morning glory vines while My Angel planted about six feet worth of peas. I want more planted, but it was getting cold and we went inside to work on dinner.

As expected, I did not get anything but peas in the ground, but we're not expecting rain until Friday, so tomorrow we should be more peas and some other stuff into the ground too. Assuming, of course, that there are no more time-wasting diversions.

You know, the pictures look so much more bleak than it feels to be outside in the garden with sun on my skin! Give the garden time, it will look prettier soon.

One of my favorite podcasts decided to do a series on pregnancy. The first episode is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx0ewmmMjnQ

They spend almost 50 minutes talking about how you know you're pregnant, and the history of pregnancy tests. Then they turn to the definition of pregnancy, which most of us think of as "the period of time starting when a fertilized egg implants in the uterus".

Except, for historical reasons, the medical definition is "the period of time starting with the first day of the pregnant person's last period." After all, that's a clear reportable date, unlike ovulation and conception, which have no obvious physical markers.

For most women, that's two weeks before ovulation. Two weeks before there's even an egg to be fertilized. But that's not true for everybody. My cycle was nearly always 30-32 days, though for part of my perimenopause it was 21, except when I skipped a month and it was 42-60 days. One of the hosts said that her cycle had always been 36 days, so the docs always had to adjust her due date.

But anyway, for the average pregnant person, the implantation of the sperm into the egg doesn't happen until "Week 2" of the pregnancy.

Then they looked at the cycle of implantation. That fertilized egg takes time to grow and change, developing an outer membrane that will eventually become the placenta, and implant into the uterus. That takes more than a week. So, for most pregnant people, they are nearly "four weeks pregnant" according to the medical definition, before even the most modern pregnancy test can detect the hormone that they test for.

So, it's not just that "at six weeks most women don't know they're pregnant", it's "at two weeks the egg is still an unfertilized egg" and "at three weeks, the urine won't have any pregnancy hormone to detect".

And then I remember all those right-wing men saying that six weeks is plenty of time to decide if you want to continue a pregnancy". For someone whose cycle is 36 or more days long, instead of 28, they might have a day or two before the six-week mark from the first day of their last period where they could even detect a pregnancy, if they spent money on a test and took it. I will note that most women don't have symptoms indicating they might be pregnant at this point, or if they do, the symptoms are milder than eating something that didn't agree with you.

I have always thought it's wrong to say a person is "four weeks pregnant" at a point in time that's only two weeks past the date of fertilization. How can you be "pregnant" before you even introduce sperm to your body? It's logically and semantically incorrect.

But legally, with our reproductive health care under attack, it's horrible and unfair.

And having the medical definition of pregnancy start two weeks (or more) before conception and almost four weeks before implantation (and the chance to detect a pregnancy) just increases the confusion about what's really happening. To say nothing of when it's reasonable to expect a person to even know they're pregnant.

So, this rant was brought to you by the belief that science should change its terminology when they learn something that proves the words they've been using don't reflect reality.

So, I did FAWM. For some reason, words were being hard, so a number of times when I stared at the blank page for too long I switched tactics, and started noodling on one or another instrument and started recording a backing track, which usually eventually led to writing lyrics. But it was always a slow process. On the 27th, I did song #13 and #14, and headed to bed. (And those were two songs because the backing track led to words that just didn't go with it, so I had an instrumental and a song with words.

Then, the next day, suddenly my brain work up and I got 6 more songs between when I went to sleep and when the site closed. WTF brain?

I didn't manage to post here or set up a card draw. I didn't manage to get seedlings started for the garden. I did manage to pick up a fish tank with "Pleeky the Plecko" from someone in the neighborhood who had a dispute with his landlord and needed to rehome the fish. I did get my health insurance straightened out, but it'll be more expensive than the plan that claimed to cover MCW but did not, in fact, cover my MCW doc. I got my poor cat an appointment for surgery and yesterday she got the mass on her neck removed.

And then last night and this morning, I somehow got two short albums up on Bandcamp in time for Bandcamp Friday, when Bandcamp doesn't take their usual fee out of payments made to the musicians.

The longer, more filky one is here: https://wylddandelyon.bandcamp.com/album/by-the-dreamside

And the shorter one is here: https://wylddandelyon.bandcamp.com/album/make-a-fuss

I'll be putting the proceeds toward paying off the cat surgery. (That makes three cat surgeries in less than a year--Ri's eye enucleation and neutering; Keigan's spaying; and Donnflaith's mass removal. No more, please, oh universe!). ((If you want to donate toward cat surgery without buying music, the paypal.me/DeirdreMMurphy link is still working. Please put cat surgery in the notes if you do.))

I got a thingy designed to block noise to stand in for the horrible cone or onsie that cats usually get to wear after surgery, since the placement on her neck meant neither of the other items would cover the surgical site. Of course, she's not wearing it over her ears, just around her neck, but it is doing the job I bought it for, so I'm pleased.

When she's less freaked out, I'll get a picture of her wearing it.

And after I pay bills, I will schedule some actual recordings to post in the future over at my Patreon, at least some of the ones on Bandcamp (to people at the designated get-music reward level) and some of the other stuff too.

One of my frustrations was that Bandcamp won't accept visual files that are "too small" or "too large", so I made some cover art for the songs that I couldn't use. I'll use them on Patreon, though, since I am continuing to post lyrics publicly there, but the actual MP3s will be for members only. Having some art from pictures that were too small to make Bandcamp-acceptable art will let me not repeat the art in my posts there.

Well, I hope to see you here again soon, and to have energy and focus enough to do the promised card draw.

Ri is doing well, and is unfazed by nearly everything. I guess having had a horribly infected eye left him saying something akin to "life is good, and so are adventures." He certainly doesn't seem to miss the eye. He has also earned a nickname: Cuddle Bug. He is growing huge, and looking moreso because of the long hair.

Keigan had her first heat shortly after my brother died, when I had no spoons to deal with anything at all. After the second one, barely three weeks later, we took her in to the vet to get her spayed; she's at home recovering and glad to be here. Since her brother is Cuddle Bug, her new nickname is Lady Bug. She remains more diminutive than her brother.

Faegan Zorion, who will be 2 soon, enjoys playing with the kittens. He is the not-really-a-kitten-anymore who ran into the kitchen from outside last year. The ambassador between Faegan and the kittens was the red dot. Faegan, who previously hissed if they got within five feet of him totally understood having a kitten practically run into him if they were following a red dot.

Nebula, who is 7, seems reasonably happy with her smaller roaming range (she's restricted to half of the second floor). Her weight is not going up and down now that we have better control over the food that she can reach, and is trending slightly downward. She is also quite happy to only see Faegan Zorion when he wants to nap (he has no trouble getting over the baby gates that are totally impassable for her very chubby self).

Donnflaith is our oldest cat, about 13 years old. She was born in my living room, to a Mamacat who had never been inside before, but while drugged by her own pre-birth oxytocin, she let me carry her in before a super-cold blizzard to give birth in safety. I held Donnflaith and her four littermates the day they were born. The ambassador between Donnflaith and the kittens was canned cat food. Getting the treasured "good food" more often made it worth her while to let them wander around near her. She is also happy that they distract Faegan from pestering her to play. She won't let them up on my bed when she's there, however (though she's recently become accepting of Faegan occasionally sleeping there, so long as I'm not in the bed).

Overall, all the cats are happier for the addition of the two kittens, which was my hope when I decided to try keeping them. I had thought that three cats was plenty, until I had three cats who seemed to always be unhappy, so I'm very glad that worked.

I can also offer updates for the other two feral kittens I caught last summer.

Kaiju is doing well in my sister's house and is huge and healthy. Seeing him makes me happy, even if I'm not one of "his people" and he will only play with me through the stair railing.

Sadly, the sweet little black kitten that my daughter was caring for because she had (just barely) enough space in her tiny apartment to quarantine a sick FELV+ baby from her two cats, didn't find a new home. From the start, he struggled to gain weight, reaching a maximum of just over 4 lbs before he started losing weight again. When he lost all interest in food and had dwindled to just 2 lbs, my daughter put him to sleep just a few days ago. I feel bad about this, since I think she feels guilty that she couldn't save him. She called him "Little Guy"; I had tentatively named him Dorchadas (darkness in Irish) before I caught him. Rest in peace, Little Guy. I know you had a much longer and happier life in my daughter's kitchen than you'd have had living outside in the Wisconsin winter.

But back to our cats. When we took Keigan in to get fixed, we also took Donnflaith in because she has a thing that was originally diagnosed as a cyst on her neck, and nothing to worry about. But it had gotten scratched and became a regular source of scabs matted in her fur. Donnflaith is a long-haired siamese, so seeing the thing was really not happening without shaving her neck, and while she isn't bothered by the thing, it bothers me. The vet shaved it and upgraded (or down-graded) its description to "a mass" and recommends surgery and pathology. "It's not an emergency," she said, "But sooner is better."

That is not good news, either for my sweet old lady or for my budget. I haven't even started paying off Donnflaith and Keigan's vet visits from this week (I got a care card, so if I pay it off on time, I avoid interest). The estimate for the surgery to remove the mass isn't quite as horrible as the one for Ri's eye enucleation, but it's about four times the cost of spaying a kitten and way out of my budget. So I'll be setting up a card draw soon (yes, even during FAWM), and trying to get more songs up on bandcamp to raise money. (If anyone would like to simply donate a bit toward the surgery, please put "cat surgery" in the paypal (paypal.me/DeirdreMMurphy) or zellepay notes, so I know what's earned income to track for taxes and what's a gift.)

I also have a patreon (https://www.patreon.com/c/Wyld_Dandelyon) and I have been scheduling posts "from the archives" for a while into the future, fiction from Torn World and old Live Journal posts and songs I'd never posted anywhere yet, and I will be posting new things too, starting with the first song I posted to FAWM this year, just an hour or so ago. You are welcome to join my Patreon as a free member, if you prefer, and read the many posts that aren't earmarked for only paid members. I will be putting the patreon funds toward this new cat surgery as well, until it's all paid off.

Life has been hard since the election. Some of this was remembering the horribleness of that man's first term (to say nothing of the rest of his life), and dread of what he will do this time. But there have been a lot of things that have nothing to do with politics or the bad acts of politicians in the past, present, and future. But that, and problems sleeping related to that, made all the rest harder.

Skipping Windycon and there being no Chambanacon didn't help. But if I could manage one con, I wanted GAFilk more than Windycon. And I wasn't sure I could do even that.

But then, other things happened. The first one was the loss of my car, to an idiot who ran a red light. Sadly, My Angel was making a left turn and the other guy claimed he had a green light, and there were apparently no videos to prove who was lying, so was also out my deductible. But I didn't get official word of that until early on the morning of Christmas Eve, which is when my insurance company chose to call me and give me a deadline (the 30th) for getting out of the rental car, waking me up so I headed into the holiday too tired and emotionally stressed. More emotionally stressed, anyway. I mean, who could fall back asleep after that phone call?

And the need to buy a new car meant I needed to skip GAFilk, and I knew I needed to skip GAFilk before all the rest happened, though I didn't manage to act on that right away.

Next was a really horrible food reaction, much worse than usual and bad enough that I (eventually, for a while) wondered if somehow I'd caught the current terrible norovirus. The first wave of that hit the day after Christmas, when I'd hoped to go car shopping with my sister. I eventually felt well enough to drive home that night, where the second and much worse wave hit shortly after we got our stuff in from the rental car. So, the next day was a total waste in terms of acquiring a new car. I dragged my tired and hurting self to the car dealership the day after, and then for an abbreviated trip to a grocery store, which we were overdue for even before the holidays, and got two calls from Chicago that told me first that my brother had been found unresponsive and then confirmed that he had died.

Now, he was in really bad shape, medically, but we really didn't expect him to die so soon. (An autopsy showed it was a type of heart attack that, statistically, even if someone had been in the room and called 911 immediately he would have had less than a 10% chance of survival.) He was ready to go, since there were a number of things wrong the doctors couldn't fix or meaningfully improve. All in all, he got to see his whole family on Christmas Eve and Christmas, he got to taste the Mulberry Strawberry Jam I made and give it his stamp of approval, and when he died, he died quickly. But still, he was my little brother and how can you be ready for that? His memorial was during GAFilk, and I'm very glad I was at his memorial, though I missed my friends and the music and the magic of the con. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I ended up at the dealership on the 29th until they closed, and on the 30th for far too long (after going to turn over the title and get my plates from the old car, so they could be transferred), talking to a young man who I swear had never sold a car before. He couldn't answer basic questions about anything without going to ask his supervisors what to say. And finally they couldn't get the car I wanted because it was too far into the holidays to get the intense blue car from one of the other dealerships, and why get a car in a color I don't like when I can get a color I like? (Though I still miss the sparkly purple car after five+ years in the blue one.) Because the rental was due on the 30th (and they were a drop-off spot for the rental), they eventually gave me a "test drive" of a car I wasn't interested in, so I wouldn't have to start paying the rental company.

That led to me missing hours of the New Year's Eve zoom filk back at the dealership doing paperwork, because to my surprise and theirs, they were able to get the car on New Year's Eve. And all this still sick from whatever contaminated food I ate on Christmas day, exhausted from being up sick with norovirus-type symptoms, and with no emotional spoons whatsoever because my brother had just died. I'm sure that dragging myself out of bed to go anywhere, much less deal with a nice but totally clueless salesperson, did not help me recover from the bad food.

And it was a singularly odd experience to be sitting in a car dealership while being informed that people were crying on the radio in Florida, where my brother had spent decades teaching drumming and inspiring people to heal their hearts and make joyous sounds.

I had planned to do a new year's card draw, but even if the only thing that'd happened was the food reaction, that wasn't possible. At least I got focused enough to sing a little during the zoom NYE celebration, eventually.

And then, on NYE or NYD, My Angel started to complain of belly pain, at just the point in time that she might have gotten norovirus from me if that had been what I'd had. But she had no other symptoms for a day or so, just the pain, which then developed into abdomen and soon overwhelming chest pain. "Like a panic attack" she said. But she had none of her usual triggers for a panic attack. So, on the 2nd day of the new year, I took her to urgent care, who sent us to the ER.

After the last two experiences at Sinai, we instead went to St. Luke's South Shore, which was a much better, kinder, less chaotic, and much faster ER experience than Sinai had been. They took pictures, and told her she had an enlarged, very ugly and unhappy gallbladder and admitted her. She had the gallbladder out on Jan 3. In the meantime, my sisters were scrapbooking and planning the memorial gathering, none of which I could join in on. But at least the surgery went well (the surgeon was able to do it laparascopically, though it took a lot longer than expected. My Angel is doing well, and it is a very good thing it is gone. The pathology report was appalling (no wonder her body was panicking), but at least there was no cancer or other signs of future trouble.

Before my brother's memorial, one of my niblings' significant others had a medical emergency leading one of my sisters to run off to a different state, where another ER trip was needed, and happily happened quickly enough to let the doctors prevent some very serious consequences, though we didn't know the outcome would be as good as it has been during and after the memorial. (The cause is still, so far as I know, a medical mystery, not something anyone did foolishly or wrong. But that's someone else's story, the details aren't mine to share.)

My brother's memorial was very nice, and well suited to honoring his memory. I played Jammin Hands and got the whole room to join in clapping or tapping tables or stomping their feet, since he was always doing that, until his body started to fail. A few people even played percussion instruments he'd made.

And then on this last Friday, I let My Angel drive the new car the very short distance to her dentist (I have zero desire to spend hours at a dentist office where lots of people have to lay there with their mouths open during a quad-demic) and on the way back, while she was going over a four-lane bridge, some intoxicated pedestrian decided to run across three lanes of moving traffic (not in a cross walk) and roll over the hood of my brand new car. Happily a witness (another pedestrian) stuck around to talk to the police officer, who assured me that My Angel did nothing wrong and if anyone will get a ticket, it will be the pedestrian. But still, I didn't need the emotional stress, My Angel didn't need it either, and now I have to deal with yet another insurance clam. (And probably another rental while they get the minor cosmetic damage fixed. At least, it looks minor, but someone who knows what they're looking at needs to check it to make sure.)

Oh, and in the meantime, the person who'd been promising to adopt the FELV+ kitten my daughter has been caring for didn't actually arrange for the kitten to be brought to her as promised, so we're looking for someone else to give a very sweet sick little boy cat a forever home. I'm willing to do some driving to make that happen, but not all the way to either coast. I could, however, (for instance) meet someone at Sweetwater to hand over the kitten, if someone wanted me to.

So, my family and I could really use a few less "interesting" months.

When we moved into this house, there was a line of what had been hedge, sandwiched between rusty fence segments, around most of the yard. Weed trees had seeded into this area, and we spent many days removing the fence segments, the old hedge, and plating roses. By the front walk, there was a line of hedge between two snowball spirea, where the segments of old rusty fencing were particularly resistant to being removed. But now that space is open.

We have talked about moving those two snowball spirea to the other side of the yard since we moved in; I'm not sure it will be feasible to do that, but in any case we have some lilac sprouts from the back yard to move, and those will be a lot prettier than the hedge ever was (even imagining it in its prime, before it had weeds and unwanted trees and rusty fencing as a part of the line).

We haven't cleared away all the brush from those hedge plants yet, or decided if we want to keep the ancient evergreen tree in that corner of the yard (which was topped long before we moved in), but I still smile every time I look at it. Slow progress is, as my sister Dragon says, still progress, but actually seeing something I've planned and worked toward for more than two decades (on and off, when I had energy and health and a lack of things that had more immediate urgency) actually, finally, happen, well, it feels good.

So, Sunday night I was having a little ice cream after dinner, thinking of trying to write something before bed, when I heard one of our cats yowling in the bathroom. So I went to see what was wrong, and there was poor Donnflaith, hanging from her two front paws with the (thankfully tiny) bathroom window on said paws. Her hind feet were dangling over the tub. So, I went to rescue the very panicked cat. In the process she bit my left arm, I think to have something to hold onto while I was figuring out how to both hold her securely and lift the window off her paws.

I cuddled her for a bit, letting my arm bleed, then set her down on a chair hoping to check her paws, but she ran off and hid. This upset me, but first I had to deal with my arm. I knew cat bites are potentially dangerous, so I encouraged the wounds to bleed and then doused them with peroxide, rubbing it in thoroughly with a clean cue tip. Then, once the bleeding slowed, I used hydrophilic bandaids on them and took my Zyrtek to reduce allergic swelling.

Then I returned to trying to find the cat. When I spied her, she seemed to be limping—until I almost caught her—and then she was off like a shot. This left me very upset. I didn’t want to have to take her to an ER, but if she needed it, I wanted to know that right away. By now, all thoughts of writing—or anything else productive—had long flown from my head. It wasn’t until I saw that my arm was starting to swell that I found her again, and knew that a visit to urgent care was my first priority the next day, that she showed up again, tempted by canned cat food into letting me pet her forepaws and determine that she, at least, was fine.

I iced the arm, which didn't help, and got some sleep, then shoved some food into my mouth (thank goodness) and headed to the closest urgent care listed for my current ACA plan. Where I was turned away. They don’t, after all, take my insurance. None of the rest were close, but I picked one, started to drive, and called the insurance company to complain. The woman there apologized, saying the first place must have withdrawn from their plan, and they were probably behind on getting the website updated. She didn’t ask me which site had turned me away until I asked, exasperated with repeated useless apologetic re-explaining of the same stupid explanation, didn't she want to even know that? The only impressive thing she did was, finally, after asking if I’d gotten care yet (no, as I’d already told her I was still driving), offering to call the place I was headed for and confirming they would accept my insurance.

They would. Thank goodness. So, thanked her and kept driving. I eventually get to the address. There were no parking places within a half-block of the entrance that weren’t handicapped-only, so I parked and walked to the building with the correct address in foot-high numbers only to be told to go back to my car and drive around the building to the other entrance with the same number on it. Which also did not have any non-handicapped parking within a half-block walk of their door. The area by the door is marked "drop off only" and is next to an ambulance entrance. But at least once I get there, they let me use the bathroom and took me right back to be seen. The nice nurse suggested a local Walgreens that was open until 10 pm. (Again, thank goodness.)

The people there were nice, and looked at things and took my vitals and all that stuff. They told me I needed antibiotics (yeah, I knew that) and I told them that I’d had a (probable) allergic reaction to the first antibiotic of choice, so they settled on the next one. I told them “no corn” and they came back with a prescription. When I asked again about corn, the nice, very young man told me about the antibiotic in the pill, and asked if I’d prefer liquid to a pill. Exasperated (again), I said I’m fine with pills, just not with corn in pills. After I got (minimally) graphic about why I can’t take pills that have corn as a filler (they do no good if they come back up), he went back to their pharmacist. Finally, he came back and said I’d be getting the liquid, because every single formulation of the pill had corn in it.

Somewhere in the conversation, I learned that the urgent care is open until 8 pm, not the 5 pm that the insurance company’s website claimed. (I did not have the energy yesterday to call the insurance company again to complain about their inaccurate website again. Or today.) The doctor assured me if the pharmacy had any issues, they could call him. Oh, yeah, that's when I learned that the hours on the website were wrong. Then the doc wanted to draw a line around the swollen part of my arm to make it easier for me to tell if it’s getting bigger, and for future medical personnel to be able to tell how fast it’s getting bigger, if it does. And he can’t draw. So it was wrong and on my forearm were I couldn't avoid seeing it and that was making me crazy until I got home and discovered I could erase it with rubbing alcohol and fix it with one of my markers. (Next time I'll only consent if I can do the drawing, unless I can't see it!)

Someone warned me that I should eat food with this antibiotic, and I had a happy plan to stop at a natural foods store that’s just a few blocks from there to get some fruit to eat with the first dose, so I could take it before driving home. (The night before, I had planned to grab a bag of nuts on the way out of the house, but that morning I’d been more worried about getting to the urgent care than grabbing snacks.)(
And please, let there not be a next time.)

Anyway, I left the urgent care and drove to the pharmacy, waited in the long line for the drive-through, watched as they looked up my prescription, looked unhappy, and called the pharmacist over. She picked up the phone and explained very nicely that she didn’t have the strength that the doctor had prescribed, only half that strength. So, I asked, I need to swallow twice as much to get the same dose? Yes, that’s right. Ok, I said. But no, the pharmacist can’t substitute on her own, she has to ask the doc for permission. They promised they would contact the urgent care right away. I’ll be waiting, I said. Oh, no need, we’ll text you. That text thing doesn’t always work, and I’m on the other side of the city from home, so I’m very unimpressed with this plan. But arguing with people you need stuff from isn’t helpful, so I go to where I said I’d wait and I wait. For more than an hour. I wasn’t tracking time well, but the hour-long podcast I started after parking finished, and I started a new one. Finally I get into line again, saying the text thing doesn’t always work, so I’m checking. They haven’t heard from the doctor. They can’t help me until they hear from the doctor.

By now it’s approaching 7 pm. I’m starving. I have no food, no medicine, and the words, “Start the antibiotic today, because if it isn’t working you’ll need to go to the ER for IV antibiotics” ringing in my memory. I call the urgent care. “ThisIsXUrgentCareCanYouHold[click]” and I’m on hold. I wait for 15 minutes or so, hang up and try again. Same result. It is now after 7, and the urgent care closes at 8. I hang up and drive back to the urgent care, and walk the long walk to get inside. Some poor woman is there with a sick baby talking to the only receptionist left. I move to the side and try my best to look desperate and visible to the people in the back. Happily this works.

The nice nurse with the pretty flower tattoos comes up to talk to me. (Was I really too sick to remember to compliment her tattoos? I was. Both times.) She goes back to check. They do not have any communication from the pharmacy. I tell her the pharmacist says they can’t dispense as ordered, and she asks me to wait while she calls them. Eventually she returns to assure me that they are mixing the medicine right now, she took care of the problem.

I drive back to the pharmacy. Finally, they have my prescription—or, rather, a partial fill of it--two days worth, rather than the whole prescription. By this time, Rachel Maddow has started playing on the radio, and I am beat. I drive home (no wheat, no corn, and no canola means no fast food) and finally take the first dose of this stuff. Is it OK that they only have a partial? No. But I have to start the antibiotic, so I accept the partial.

So, I get home and grab leftovers and take the medicine. It doesn’t taste quite as bad as I expected, which is good since I have to manage to swallow 20ml of it (more than 4 teaspoons) twice a day. I managed to stay awake-ish for four hours or so, long enough to take the second dose, slept for nearly 10 hours straight, got up to eat and take another dose, and fell back into bed. I eventually got up again because once the antibiotic started to take effect, I wasn’t sleeping, but I’ve been foggy and low energy all day. And of course it was 90 degrees today, so at least downstairs was less hot than laying in bed.

So far, the score is two days pretty much completely wasted, and they better have the rest of my antibiotics filled in the morning. The swelling is going down, at least a little, so the redness only goes around half of my forearm, and on some of the edges, it also isn't as long. And I get to watch for a fever or other symptoms that, if they show up, indicate that I need to go to the ER anyway. I’ve got my fingers crossed.

This is decidedly not the adventure I needed right now, and I'm not sure it's even mostly over, which is worrisome.

But at least the cat is ok!

I decided to change my mood icon set. I still like the little bats, but this one makes me smile.

Happy pride month, everybody!

Yesterday left me sad, having missed the aurora (again) and thinking on a kerfluffle in the local filk community (at least, I hope it will prove to be merely a brief fuss), and issues in a different musical group (I got to listen to an elderly man tell me that he knows what racism is because he uses Hitler's definition (!) and people don't get to change meanings of words (!) and I lost my temper with him, not that he cared.) My music communities are my social lifeline, so these things are very troubling to me. I headed to bed only to have sleep escape me for hours, despite pointing my brain elsewhere by doing duolinguo and reading frivolous fiction and petting a purring cat.

After dawn, I almost gave up and went outside to work in the garden, except it was cold out there, and I was already feeling cold. Finally I fell asleep. Happily, in my dreams, I was at a Worldcon with many friendly filkers around me, with lots of singing and friendly interactions. I particularly remember singing with someone with a very lovely deep voice. I woke feeling healed and hopeful. I hope that dream is a good omen for things going forward. (And many thanks to the filkers who came to my dream Worldcon, and sang and chatted and were good company.)

I got some of the plants I bought on Saturday in the ground, but not all of them. Waking after 3 pm leaves a very limited amount of outdoor time after doing things like getting dressed and eating breakfast, especially with clouds blowing in and rain arriving before sunset. But I now have cucumber plants in the garden! I'm still hoping the stores get Cherokee Purple tomatoes in, but I have some other tomato varieties out there, and some squash too. A few Ausilio peppers. And pea seedlings, finally. Soon I'll have to plant beans too, but they are truly a warm weather plant; no point in planting them until it's warm enough for them to germinate instead of rotting in the ground.

We are also moving some of the now-abundant wood violets that have moved inward from the borders of the garden from where they would be crowding the vegetables to other places in the yard, to make other border areas look nice and maybe to encourage the grass to stay out of where we're planting flowers and/or vegetables. It makes me smile to see all the little purple flowers! Of course, they only bloom in spring, but right now there's a lot of them, even more than dandelions.

And I got to chat with my daughter for Mother's Day (twice even, because she was hanging out at my sister's house and the first call got interrupted by dinner). She's doing well, and is past the probation period of her new job and is taking a training that she's excited about now that the new job will pay for it. So, all in all, a better day than yesterday.