Perfect

I started this a couple of days ago:

I'm just finishing up with a long couple of days of clinic visits (pre-surgical checklist) and labs and a Covid vaccine shot which went OK and I thought I might only have mild symptoms but now I feel feverish and have a headache and sore throat and itchy arm and I just want to go back to bed. 

We had rain night before last and today it's cloudy out and cold and wintry.  There was a bit of a snow flurry earlier but no snow since. Alexa is sticking with the lie she's been telling all day, that it's going to snow again, but from my nest in the sofa I can see blue skies peeking through the wintry clouds. 

My sleep schedule this week is a follow: A few broken hours of sleep from early evening, say 6 or 7 p.m. (last night I was up at 8, then again at 10:30, 11:30, midnight and finally up for good at 2:20). I try to go back to sleep but it doesn't work-- it never works-- so I've been getting up and sewing for a few hours in the night.  In the past few days I finished forty-nine quilt blocks (economy blocks using scrap fabrics) before figuring out a layout that needs forty-eight. This is where orphan blocks come from--or one of the places anyway. 

Back to today:

I'm in a slightly better headspace today. Maybe it was the bad weather messing with my head. I do get more headaches and my arthritis flares up when the weather is bad, which is something I used to wonder about when I was a kid and I would hear old people complaining about such things. Back when I was a shiny brand new human, it was inconceivable that parts would wear down or wear out. I guess I'm lucky to have lived long enough to have parts wear down or wear out. Doesn't always feel that way though.

I've started preparing for our trip and for surgery. It's a lot of moving parts, but I'm doing what I can even though nothing I'm doing seems like enough. I know one thing though:  At some point, the clock runs out on my preparatory efforts and I get on a plane. It reminds me of Tina Fey's story about when she was on Saturday Night Live and she was feeling unprepared for a show. Lorne Michaels, the creator and producer, told her: "The show doesn't go on because it's ready; it goes on because it's 11:30."

Speaking of 11:30, my mother is coming for lunch today so Dave and I spent part of the morning picking up the house a little bit because it's gotten very messy. We also have a potential pet/house sitter coming this week to meet Gray Kitty. I hope things work out because I think I'm more worried about his care than I am about having surgery. Anyway, she has experience taking care of animals who are not in the greatest of health and is willing to take him to the vet as needed for extra care. So that's lucky.

What else? Trying to think of good things. Netflix put the movie Pitch Perfect back in their lineup. That's a good thing. I love that movie. It's one of my favorite "play in the background" movies because it's catchy and fun and I don't have to pay super close attention to it if I don't want to. So I play while I'm sewing or cleaning up or getting ready for the day. I told Dave about it yesterday and told him that I had already watched it one and a half times (though really it just played in the background one and a half times while I was working on my newest quilt).

Pitch Perfect, man. Watch it. 

 

The New Year

It's been an eventful first week of the new year.

As I write this, a plumber is cutting holes in our wall, looking for a leak that has apparently been going on for weeks and weeks. The house we live in is a mishmash of good and bad work, some of it done by professionals, some of it done by amateurs. In an amateur move, an old water heater was left in a closet and a new furnace installed in front of it in such a way that it blocks the old water heater from being removed. I think the water heater was never emptied or the pipes going to it never turned or capped off, so that water has been sitting in the heater all this time (who knows how long, but long enough for it to rust and spring a leak). This plumber doesn't seem to think it's the water heater--and anyway, he can't get to it without taking out the furnace, so he's trying to get around it by going through the bedroom closet wall that the leak soaked (along with the wood floor).

I wonder what this is going to cost us. (Though insurance may cover some of the cost. We'll see.) [An update: The plumber found the leak in a hot water pipe that goes to the master bath. It's old plumbing--the plumber said it's "illegal" now to install that kind of plumbing or pipes or something--I don't know, Dave's the one talking to him--but he thinks he'll be able to repair it.]

Speaking of insurance, I had to pay my surgeon up front and after the surgery our insurance will reimburse us (ha ha ha).  She is not inexpensive. This surgery is largely considered elective (it could be argued that it's not in my case) and elective surgery is expensive and insurance does everything possible not to pay for it. I also have to pay for the hospital up front (which includes the anesthesiologist and cost of the OR and my overnight stay). But the hospital charge is actually less than the surgeon's fee, believe it or not.

We also bought plane tickets this week. Round-trip and refundable, of course, just in case something happens. And I have yet to book a hotel room for us.

Last month being Christmas,  we spent more than we usually do. But I think that this month is going to put last month to shame.

Have good things happened? 

Yes, but you wouldn't know it by looking at the news. We're so fucked in this country right now. It is just depressing how much damage is being done, but much destruction. I have never been so disheartened by people just not caring how badly things are going--or worse, reveling in it.  

I try not to look at the news, but it seeps in. I'm glad we don't have a television--I watch shows online and that mostly allows me to bypass any network news stories. I've made it through five and a half seasons of The Waltons. I was never a Waltons fan. My paternal grandparents used to watch it, mostly my grandmother when I was a kid, but I thought it was so incredibly boring. But now as an adult, I'm finding it fairly interesting. It was made in the 70s about the 20s and 30s, but they deal with a lot of stuff that's still relevant, everything from menopause to sending young men off to war and the impact that has on families to mental illness to ecology and conservation. I'm actually enjoying watching it now. 

What else? I'm not sleeping well, but that's not news. I'm up now only because there's a stranger in the house and my brain goes on high alert then. If not for that, I might be sleepin since I got a little less than three hours of sleep between 11:30 p.m. and 2:20 a.m. That's not enough.

What am I doing to stay awake? Writing this, of course. I sewed up some new quilt blocks (economy blocks). I journaled on paper. I ate a lot of stuff, too, a piece of toast with sunflower butter at 7:30 to take my meds, then a sunflower butter sandwich for elevenses and just now at noon, a bowl of leftover potatoes with Quorn nuggets. Overeating is a function of being nervous about the stranger in the house, worry about money, and being tired. Once upon a time I would have had a coffee (or six) and a cigarette, but those avenues are closed to me now, so instead I binge. 

I'd LOVE a big bag of very crispy and salty potato chips right now, but we don't have any, so I had to make do with leftover potatoes and some Quorn, so at least it was salty, right? 

The plumber's gone off to get a part and I'm sure to have his lunch and then will be back to finish fixing the mess. Hopefully he'll be done by the end of the day. After that, we'll have to dry everything out somehow and arrange to have the wall fixed. 

Happy New Year.  

Let's Hope For A Better 2026

 Happy New Year!

(An origami project completed in 2025.)

Left

That's me in red with my two brothers. This photo was taken in our backyard, sometime in the mid-1970s. 

My younger brother Scotty died in February 2006. My older brother Rudy died exactly one year ago. 

I'm the only one left. 

I don't usually remember the dates when people die--I had to look up when my younger brother died--but with my older brother I don't think I'll ever forget. It will always be three days after Christmas. 

Dave and I took Rudy's truck out for a drive.  We went through the neighborhood where I grew up, past the house where we grew up and my grandmother's old house--strangers live in these places now-- and past the elementary school my brothers and I attended (which is now a construction site, the old school having been knocked down). 

We went by the burrito place where Dave and Rudy often stopped after their Saturday grocery runs. The place closed a few minutes before we got there though so we didn't get our burritos. 

We came home after. 

It was an unsettling day. 

Merry Christmas

We have had a quiet Christmas at home. 

Christmas eve we went out driving to look at lights and luminarias with my mom.  Not many people put themselves out decorating this year, so the pickings were slim. We did see a few good houses and we listened to some Christmas music and chatted.  We also exchanged cards and presents. 

After we dropped my mom off, we came home and had a dinner of cheese and bread, homemade sourdough. Dave's coworkers had sent a sympathy box full of soup and rolls and cookies, so we had some of that as well. Gray Kitty and I shared a can of albacore tuna, too. Dave opened a bottle of prosecco, the only wine in the house.  (I don't drink anymore so he had a couple of glasses and put the rest in the fridge. )

We spent Christmas day in our pajamas.  We didn't exchange presents this year but I did buy some candy, chocolate mostly, to put in our stockings. 

Dave spent the day mixing up more dough, some for bread, some for pizza tomorrow. He also made rough puff pastry to make a tart for our dessert. He also made dinner, roast vegetables, gravy, chicken for me and vegetarian sausages for himself.  Seems like he spent the whole day in the kitchen but I think he also got some time to focus on his latest video game too. 

I spent the day making a kusudama ball, watching episodes of The Waltons, and napping. I did make lunch (a vegetarian omelet, beans, tortillas). But that was the extent of my participation in kitchen matters today. I did eat well, though I did eat way too much chocolate.