Things

June 19:

What a week. I had a mammogram on Thursday and therapy on Friday afternoon. Friday evening we went to Costco, which was a mistake as about 80% of the people there were not wearing masks. It's a thing now, people thinking that the vaccine will protect them 100% from Covid, but it's not a done deal and there is still a pandemic going on. We wore our masks, of course, but it's still nerve wracking to be around people who are not wearing masks.

In fact while at Costco, we picked up a box of N-95 masks to supplement our stash of KF 94s from BOTN in Korea and the NF95s from the American Filti brand. The variants are coming, folks. The vaccines are holding for the moment, but take my word for it, they won't always hold and when things get bad again, I'm not going to be stuck scrambling for masks like last time.

We were at Costco not to buy masks but so that Dave could pick up a 55" television set for his mother. We don't have television set (I get way too much computer screen time and don't need yet another screen to stare at), so I can't imagine having a television set that sized. In fact, it was among the smaller sizes on sale.  also bought way too much fruit and cheese and a smaller amount of vegetables.

It's a lazy Saturday. In fact, so lazy that I've been thinking all day that it's Sunday. 

Dave and my brother went for an early grocery pickup and when Dave came home, we decided to ignore all the groceries we have in the house (today's from Smith's and yesterday's huge grocery haul from Costco) and instead go out for breakfast burritos. When we were finished with those, Dave went out to water the garden before going off to his mother's to install her third TV (also a Costco buy). 

Because my sleep has been crap recently (I'm sleeping at night, but not getting enough sleep), I took an hour-long nap, then a shower, then did some embroidery (see below) and art journaling.

This is some new embroidery, some heart stuff, which I may use for a whole new project or as an addendum to the embroidery I'm doing for my grandmother quilt. Not sure yet, but I wanted to work on something new that doesn't carry the weight of a quilt based on my relationship with my grandmother.

 I was talking with my therapist about it on Friday.

June 28:

I haven't updated in awhile. I don't know why necessarily, but I have been journaling on paper, an important thing for me to do to maintain my mental health. 

We just finished dinner (Trader Joe's cauliflower gnocchi topped with a  homemade eggplant-less garbanzo bean ratatouille and Parmesan cheese with a side of sauteed red kale with calabrian peppers and lemon) and while we ate, it rained! For about a minute! (See below, because I already complained about it's not raining.) We are finished with all of the seasons of Kim's Convenience (boo-hoo) so while we ate dinner, we watched a youtube video from Imamu Room, a humorous, young, Japanese mother who films herself cooking for her small family (herself, husband, and three-ish-year-old daughter).

Not this past weekend but the weekend before, Dave and I went to the studio and I worked on the painted bisque plates that I showed last time. Here are two that are about halfway done:

I spent part of the afternoon this way:

 I'm cleaning my desk (and finding lots of forgotten things and now procrastinating by watching youtube videos and writing this). My desk is at the point where it is completely cluttered with things (books, papers, art supplies, makeup, and so on) that have no other home, so I end up clearing off the desk, dusting it, reorganizing the things on it and then piling them back on the desk. I need about three more desks (and a dressing table and an art studio) to hold the things that my one poor desk has to hold.

But I don't want to talk about my desk for the moment. Here are some other topics: The weather and my sinuses. I guess let's start with the weather.

The heat wave in the Pacific northwest is ridiculous--113 degrees in Oregon today, thank you, global warming (do you believe the science now?)--especially considering that the 100 degree days we were having a week ago have flipped and today it is 74 degrees, unheard of for June. We're supposed to get our usual June rain and thundershowers, though I'll believe that when I see it, since we haven't had a real rainy season in years. 

So that's the weather.

My sinuses are as perplexing. About four days ago, I got a mild sore throat that went on for a couple of days before recruiting my sinuses and Eustachian tubes on my right side. They became swollen and painful. The pressure gave me a headache. I was congested unless I was lying down, then everything drained and cleared up for awhile until I sat up again. Everything on that side got painful and achy and then I started to smell an awful smell, like acrid smoke. After about 48 hours of rinsing with nasal saline and using benzocaine and menthol filled cough drops, the sore throat got a little better and my sinuses and Eustachian tubes were (are) relatively pain free and clear. But the bad smell persists. It gets worse if I tilt my head forward (like watching the screen now as I write this) or lie down and clears it up to varying degrees if I am in other positions. 

The thing is, it's happened before, this bad smell and pain and swelling and so on. It's been a few years, but it usually clears up within four to six days. (Most ear infections do clear up on their own within a few days.) The first couple of times it happened, I would go to the doctor and was put on antibiotics (which were horrible in ways that took about a year to clear up). But then I went to a series of ENTs who all said there was nothing wrong with my ears and since the bad smell cleared up there was nothing to worry about. (I actually ended up seeing I think four ENTs  and an audiologis in my search for a cause for the periodic bad smell and chronic ear pain I was experiencing. They all said the same thing (each ENT said that there was nothing wrong with my ears and the audiologist was shocked at how textbook perfect my hearing was; according to the audiologist, I have the hearing of an 8-year-old with all new hearing parts and not the hearing of a 40-something with worn out hearing parts)  and I didn't believe any of them. Finally one suggested that the ear pain was actually neck related (he was unpleasant but correct) and since the bad smell cleared up and didn't come back, I figured that was that. And now it's back. I assume it will clear up again--and if it doesn't, I'll go back to the doctor and start the whole process all over again.

So that's my current woe. That and the state of my desk.

Here is a list of things currently on my desk:

A large tin that holds my wallet, keys, watch (which I don't wear since I'm not working), an expired protein bar, a pair of purple nitrile gloves, a pocket-sized bottle of hand sanitizer, etc.)

A  box holding two of David's birthday presents that I need to wrap

A bag of bands that I use (am supposed to be using) for physical therapy

A stack of papers that defy all attempts to file, including some tax information, the paperwork from when we returned our VW to the dealer about a year and a half ago, a stack of health-related paperwork, and the printed out exercises from my physical therapist

A pack of unopened, college-ruled filler paper.

Several books (a handbook on assessment skills, my pathophysiology textbook that I like to read to scare myself, a copy of Fat!So?, String Too Short to Be Saved, Almost Everything: Notes on Hope, and Dreams from My Father)

A blank notebook that I bought the last time I was in NYC

A cup of painbrushes

Two cups filled with pens and scissors and other pen-shaped things including two thermometers

A box containing 3x5 cards, three checkbooks (two of which have no checks in them), stamps, small folded books that I use to practice zentangling

Two folding mirrors from Muji

One of Dave's birthday cards

A large card holding about 16 foundation samples from Clinique

A pop-up cell phone holder sent to us gratis the last time we ordered KF94 masks

A goose-neck holder for the iPad that has the following things draped over or clamped to it: A Mighty Bright book light, one of my two pairs of headphones, an around-the-neck lamp (like a head lamp that goes around your neck), two metal hair clips

A box containing the proprietary charger for the around-the-neck lamp

A box containing the battery for my new camera

My new camera in its new case

A box containing a head lamp that I use for physical therapy exercises

A blood pressure monitor for my wrist

A pulse oximeter

Two flashlights 

A large, plastic Sonic cup filled with iced, sugar-free fruit punch.

A small container from Muji that holds eyeglass cleaning wipes, alcohol wipes, and hair elastics

A basket that I made from cotton clothesline that holds: CBD lotion, nasal saline, arnica gel, a spare pair of eyeglasses, nail clippers, a 12 oz bottle of saline solution, deodorant, CBD balm, Clinique moisturizer, Vicks Vaporub, an eyeglass cleaning cloth

These are the things that normally go on the desk but which I moved from the desk onto the bed so that I could dust the desk (and which will have to be returned to the desk at some point):

my iPad and charger

Two sheets of stamps 

A small pouch containing random cables and an iPod

A box that normally holds my flashlight and other small things

A small pile of fabric that needs to be washed so that I can make my brother some new masks

A tin that holds 12 Derwent Inktense pencils 

A tin that holds 72 Derwent Inktense pencils

A tin that holds 24 Derwent Inktense Blocks 

A tin that holds six Derwent Colorwash pencils

A tin that holds 12 Prismacolor colored pencils

A tin that holds 48 Prismacolor colored pencils

A set of Grumbacher transparent watercolors

A box of 15 Posca pens

My water bottle

Four journals

A Moleskine watercolor sketchbook

A pile of photos cut out of a National Geographic to be used for collage 

Two stuffed animals (Puppycat and Pusheen)

A pair of jeans and three bras

Three books (What Fresh Hell Is This?, Beyond Polite Japanese, A Thousand Mornings)

A book of insect stickers

A large box of Kleenex

One pair of headphones