All about the triumph of intellect and romance

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.

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.