Just a Sci-Fi Kid Like Me

Just really busy with Real Life and trying to stay on top of things (usually with mixed success). I've also joined Bluesky this week because I feel like I'm watching my social media starting to stutter in the wake of politics and still want to keep track of people, so, here's hoping.

 I took a whole week of staycation and did very little beyond sleep, play records, read, and play video games. So I feel calmer than previously.

Let's see: Todd's Mom died; she didn't wake up from her surgery and she'd made her wishes known, so after a week she was taken off the ventilator. He said that despite her wishes it made no one feel less shitty. The last week and change he has been involved in memorial and funeral planning and stuff.

My Mom's not well and I was thinking about how I should try to be more thoughtful about "present" about our interactions, and yet she is still her same awful self, so that's... something.

My friend with breast cancer has been to multiple appointments and is opting for a double mastectomy with reconstructive surgery. On the plus side once that's done she need never wear bras again. Although she also noted before this she had JUST bought new ones which are expensive, so fucking real life man.

My boss came back from leave and then went on leave again for surgery and she is ... herself. I am part of a cohort to receive "executive coaching" which starts next week and I'm kinda like "so are there plans to give me any kind of real authority or am I just here to be counted?" I don't know.

Did I tell you guys I got a record player? Scott bought it for me because watching me dither endlessly is apparently exhausting. I've spent the last two months getting records and enjoying listening to them: a mix of recommendations, happenstance, and things I already love. I entertain the local record store clerks with my choices. Example: This week I bought Taylor Swift's Folklore, Mdou Moctar's Nigerien EP No. 1, and The Goo Goo Dolls' rerelease of their first album when they were still punk. The clerk, a grizzled old dude who is actually pretty entertaining if you get him going, surveyed them, paused, and said, "Okay, you take the award for most diverse collection. I have never seen this combo before. Good for you!" 

Todd calls record collecting Emotional Support Vinyl and he started during the pandemic. He is fucking brilliant. It's been soothing as hell these last weeks.

 When you tell your therapist why you have anxieties because of specific family traumas and she gets so outraged on your behalf she doesn't know what to do, so you tell her to turn Linkin Park up on high, and then 15 minutes after your session she messages to say that yeah, that helped, and also "In the End" is a great song.

Yeah it is, now put on NUMB!

I know where the past two months went, but they were minor eternities all the same. There was the day of frightening ice, and there was the day of doctor's phone calls, and there were days dark and bright spent with my bestie doing our little poetry workshops.

I am so overwhelmed with real life but I am doing my best, and as ever there's no way out but through.

 First appointment Wednesday am, early. The plan is after Scott gets off work Tuesday evening we'll drive to Indie, stay overnight, have doc appt in the morning, then work in the hotel for the day before coming home. I'm supposed to get my full calendar of appointments Monday.

I had originally planned these two weeks for vacation, but as life would have it... Georgia planned postponed, for good or ill; worst case scenario, Thanksgiving. SLC trip to see Todd and co. postponed--we were looking at maybe a long Labor Day weekend, but it looks like that would overlap with the period of time I'd need to be supplying unmedicated blood samples for insurance. (Calendars are dumb.) From there, my next possible would be a weekend trip for a conference in October--we'll see if my body lets that happen.

Scott suggested perhaps we could find time for a nice vacation like the fall semester isn't imminent. Dude, that boat sailed weeks ago. Also, what about my body, absolutely beaten down my streams of chemicals, says "oh yes it would be great fun traipsing about"? Poor guy, he tries to be helpful, but. Yeah.

Anyway, the days of vacation I have that won't be filled with meds I can at least use to try to catch up on some reading and writing, I hope...

 Yesterday's surgery went well and speedily and I have been home recovering. (I've also been working a lil bit by email because I am one part control freak and one part The Only One With Sense.)

An interesting thing today: Scott saw three rainbow tarot cards in our yard by the sidewalk curb: The Star, The Tower, and The Sun. He asked if I out them there, and I said no. I texted the one local friend I know who does tarot and asked if it was her and she said no but commented on the loveliness of the deck. It's... such a mystery!

The reading of those three cards together is a big kindness--basically there will be a Big, Good Change that will bring lots of happiness and goodness. Not to vaguebook but--it's really on the nose for what we need right now and have been hoping for, especially with the surgery? And I haven't talked widely at all about my health stuff in real life, so to have this mysterious well wishing is just such a strange, lovely, thing.

And also it's threatening rain out so I have been dithering over whether to go get the cards and bring them inside?? What if the person wants their cards back?? (It truly is a gorgeous set.) How to leave them a note in return?????

Woke up this morning to robo-calls from doc's office confirming appointments that have to be rescheduled because I haven't gotten the meds yet. Last week was a whole bunch of calls to... do that. It all comes down to the unholy trifecta of the multi-state doc's office which sends scrips to an online purveyor who sends them to my actual state plan-appointed pharmacy who is like "I don't know you, I only talk to doctors." There is a LITERAL SPREADSHEET for people in Illinois who can get the meds I am supposed to get and so the fight has been to get my name on the spreadsheet.

Todd: We're librarians. We invented spreadsheets. Fuck those people.

Scott, despairingly: They'll never do it. Ever. We're in the hell loop.

ANYWAY I heard from a nurse in the patient portal just now that all appointments will be shifted five days from the start of whenever I get my meds, so I am dutifully rearranging my calendar to the best of my ability, on a Sunday.

I have a million things to do that I haven't done and the wild spark in me that needs an outlet screams to write fic or something but in reality I just got nothin'.

1) I am an Assistant Head at work now, which means more work and an only slightly bigger paycheck and trying to politic what little power I have to help others. I keep thinking of Kirk's speech to Picard in Generations, the third-worst Trek film, "Do not let them put you behind a desk."

2) Medical insurance continues to dick over my soul but may decide what they wanna do in May.

2a) This makes it difficult to plan things for summer since I'd need to be putting in some quality time with doctors and machines and such. Right now I am planning to visit friends in Utah in August and just hoping it'll happen.

3) Mom's in the hospital again, not doing well but not yet alarming enough that we need to plan to go to Georgia. Per sister, "If you got in the car and came down now she would freak out and assume she was dying." So just... waiting. Something new and different.

Insurance decided to dick me over and so medical stuff I had planned on is being postponed so my doctor can argue with Aetna's doctor this week about what's best for me. What this also means is that in the absence of certainty I've withdrawn from my favorite conference where I was looking forward to seeing a ton of friends for the first time in four years and I am so disappointed about it.

I've also had to have several difficult conversations at work because they need to be had and I'm one of only a few who will say things out loud, like calling attention to how other people are running roughshod with remote schedules and so taking advantage of the few who remain onsite, or pointing out that a colleague is Not where she needs to be in her progress. ("You sound worried." "I AM worried!") In passing I learned a new word, parrhesis, "candid speech, speaking freely. It implies not only freedom of speech, but the obligation to speak the truth for the common good, even at personal risk." I've reminded myself of this every time I've caught myself feeling guilty about trying to fix things at work, because some people are Not Gonna Be Happy if anything actually gets done, and while I like certain coworkers personally, as colleagues they are not acting for the communal good and it is showing. Humans are such messy, messy creatures and exhausting and this is why I like my books.

We've also been doing our annual spring cleaning. We bought a dish cabinet to hold the china Mom gave us last summer that had been sitting still packed since, and Scott spent the afternoon assembling it and then we put it all away. Last weekend we ordered a new loveseat to go in our living room that is going to expand our ability to have people over--our old couch doesn't sit more than three--and this is exciting.

Scott's going on a trip next weekend; historically every time he's traveled in the spring we've had a snow dump, so we'll see what happens.

I am behind on so many things, and just trying to be patient with myself and be as methodical as possible. I'm not sure how it always happens that I promise myself I'll be responsible and not say yes to everything, and then all the same I just end up with a ton of things to do...

A couple weeks ago I started having some hot/cold sensitivity on one of my teeth, then last week it became an escalating toothache, and today I got squeezed in to see my dentist. They did some poking and prodding, and then asked, "Are you stressed?"

Me: "AM I?!"

Apparently I have been grinding and clenching my jaw hard enough to basically bruise the nerves in my jaw. So they got me a temporary nightguard, took my fittings for a customized nightguard in three weeks, and hopefully that will help a lot.

But sheesh.