The Fort Mudge Memorial Dump

I have been so productive today, I almost wonder who took over my brain. After coffee this morning, I started a cleaning fit that ended an hour and a half later with me in the (newly cleaned) shower and everything I had been wearing in the washing machine. In an hour and a half, the following got done:

- Dishes done
- Tub, toilet and bathroom sink cleaned
- Stove cleaned
- Kitchen sink cleaned (twice, because I dumped out the pantry-floor-scrubbing bucket in it after the first time)
- Living room rug, cat tree, and office rug and underneath desk vacuumed
- Last week's sheets folded and put away
- One load of laundry washed, dried, folded and put away
- Pantry floor scrubbed
- Litterboxes cleaned
- Four large potatoes diced and parboiled

After that, I dissected two bundles of Swiss chard, and turned that, the potatoes, a can of chickpeas, a block of paneer, and a bottle of TJ's masala sauce into lunch for the coming week.

After that, I spent an hour on the family Zoom for Grammie's 99th birthday.

After THAT, I went out to Trader Joe's and CVS and got all the stuff I didn't get around to buying yesterday.

I think I might be allowed to lounge around all evening. Too bad I finished the latest book I hadn't read yet last night (The Aeronaut's Windlass, by Jim Butcher; supposed to be book 1 of a trilogy, but that was 2015, and book 2 isn't out yet.). I still want to sharpen knives and wash all the blinds and try vinegar on the stains in the shower and try tub cleaner on the refrigerator door, but given what I did get done, I think I can live with the remainder of the list.

I also think I'm going to stop giving Lily the joint supplement she gets every other day. On days when she gets it in the morning, she seems not to want very much dinner, and I want her to eat above all else. I'm not sure the joint supplement is helping any more anyway.

TGIF, with bells on. I'm glad it's a long weekend, because I'm done with this week in general and work in particular. I'm tired of being a responsible adult in a pandemic election year and worrying because I haven't gotten my mail-in ballot yet, and worrying about getting a flu shot, and worrying about my parents and COVID and Thanksgiving, and all the other things I either have to worry about doing or desperately wish I could do and can't bring myself to, these days. Like going to Marathon Sports for sneakers, or to the French bakery in Allston, which would be expanding the bubble of places I allow myself to go (so far, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, Star Market, Petco, Brookline Booksmith, and the dive shop), and I shouldn't do that before Thanksgiving (see "parents and COVID"). ARGH.

HOWEVER. There are good things, to wit:

- My missing regulator has turned up, so I can go get it tomorrow. Mostly that means I can bring all the other parts back down there and ask somebody who knows what they're doing to watch while I put them all together.

- My favorite uncle had his 45th and last radiation treatment today and I sent him a silly congratulatory email, and got a silly response.

- I fell down an internet rabbit hole and discovered one of my favorite madrigals at the bottom, so now I know it's by Monteverdi and called Ecco mormorar l'onde.

- I'm halfway down page 18 of the embroidery pattern, because page 18 is only one column (roughly a thousand stitches, and most of them are black, which means I don't actually have to stitch them). The pattern is 36 pages, so after page 18 I'll be really halfway done, instead of perpetually almost halfway done.

- I've decided the pet insurance isn't worth $1200/year, so I have that much I'm not spending in October. And Lily is still firmly convinced that little red laser pointer dots Must Die, so if I can't keep her off my desk any other way, I can break out the laser pointer and she has to go kill it.

Four hours of spring cleaning:

- Cleaned the stove, including the burner grates
- Cleaned the butcher block
- Cleaned the kitchen table
- Scrubbed the teakettle
- Cleaned the kitchen sink
- Vacuumed the living room rug
- Flipped the futon mattress over
- Vacuumed the office rug
- Vacuumed the bedroom rugs
- Cleaned the bedroom doorway where the cats have been rubbing on it
- Cleaned the living room doorway
- Cleaned the bathroom doorway
- Cleaned the office doorway
- Cleaned the desk leg Snip rubs on
- Swept the kitchen floor
- Swept the pantry
- Swept the bathroom
- Swiffered the kitchen
- Swiffered the bathroom
- Swiffered the bedroom
- Swiffered the living room
- Vacuumed the pantry
- Vacuumed the hallway
- Washed the pantry floor with Lysol on account of the litterbox
- Steam mopped the pantry
- Steam mopped the bathroom
- Washed the bathtub
- Washed the kitchen sink, again
- Washed the steam mop pads
- Took out the trash and the recycling

That'll do for today, I think.

Did my bit for herd immunity this morning (flu shot) and only had to stand in line for about 20 minutes. I had prudently taken a couple of Advil first, so my arm doesn't hurt. Much.

Yesterday I was definitely winning over the cold. Today I'm not quite so sure, but at least I have a silly tote bag to cheer myself up with. And it is a VERY silly tote bag, and I love it, except for the fact that it's mostly black and white and the handles are brown. So is the lining, so it didn't come completely out of left field, but from the outside it's not obvious why the handles are brown. I suppose I could replace them, someday, if they annoy me enough. But they don't yet.

I put the quilt on the bed when it started getting cold at night a couple of days ago, and Snip is still confused. The confusion is taking the form of her sleeping at the other end of the bed and not hollering at any time between 3:00 and 5:45 AM about her puffball, though, so I'm all for it. She did come up at 6:00 this morning wanting to be friendly, however, and that was nice. Especially because there was quite a lot of purring and no claws.

Today really ought to be Friday, because I can't think of an excuse for this week to be any longer. At least it's a three-day weekend, though, and the Patriots play tonight, and that means I have absolutely no excuses for not cleaning the place over the weekend. Therefore, a list:

- Stove
- Counters
- Bathroom
- Vacuum rugs
- Vacuum pantry
- Sweep, Swiffer and mop floors
- Make cretons

That'll do to be going on with.

I'm trying to Remember the Good Things today, because I've been grumpy rather a lot lately. So, 10 Good Things:

- Round 3 of cheering myself up via vase of peonies seems to be the best one yet.
- It rained on Monday and I've sneezed about four times since, as opposed to Sunday when I sneezed about three dozen times (my own fault for vacuuming the pine-pollen-coated living room).
- We're getting some really splendid "golden hour" light after dinner these days.
- I'm nearly done with the section of embroidery that's one row off, and after that it's plain sailing for the rest of page 15.
- Relatedly, it's been excellent embroidery weather most evenings lately.
- The Coolidge Corner farmers market started up again last week. I don't think I went once last summer, and that's just wrong.
- Tomorrow night and Friday night I can let the Hairy Beasts run up and down the stairs.
- Tomorrow night is the June dive club meeting, so the Hairy Beasts can run up and down the stairs on Friday night.
- The Dean up and decided we're closed on July 5, so I get a four-day weekend before my birthday week. That means I can, and probably should, get Up To Something.
- Uncle Shawn and Bill and the Almost Entirely Unplanned Adventure is a very adequately silly book.

Much better day today. Warmer, for one thing, and I donated 49 cans of Trader Joe's tuna and five cans of Tiki Cat that Snip thought were inedible to the MSPCA. Then I walked back to Brookline Village for coffee because I was thirsty, and then walked down to the dive shop and invested in a semi-dry snorkel (Atomic SV2, in case I ever want to reinvest), which also has the greatest mask clip system ever and means I can keep my mask in its case again, instead of riding around loose in my bag and knocking into things. It's got glass lenses, so it shouldn't ride around loose and knock into things. And my new bag will be ordered on Monday. And I get to go play with my new snorkel and my gloves on Sunday.

Anyway, then I walked from the dive shop to Trader Joe's and did the grocery shopping, and stuck my head in the bookstore. At that point the ex-blister on the ball of my right foot (acquired last night on the way home from the dive club meeting) was ready to stop being walked on, but I couldn't yet, so I walked up to Comm Ave and then walked to Whole Foods and THEN went home and got off my foot. By which I mean I put away the groceries and put the laundry in the wash before I sat down.

So, Great Things were accomplished today, and my kitchen table is now free of unwanted cat food, my mask is in its case in the non-wetsuit bag, the laundry is in the dryer, the cats have been fed, and I get to go invent something for dinner that's probably going to come out as a cross between stroganoff and paprikash and the beef-and-noodles stuff Mom used to make. It's been a good day.

Today is going to be a "go to three different grocery stores" day, if I can ever persuade myself that 20 degrees is warm enough to pry myself out of my chair and go outdoors. I need Lily's crunchies from Star Market, beef jerky and tea from Trader Joe's, and I want radiatore from Whole Foods.

So far, while staying indoors, I've attended to some of the indoors portion of the list. I finally shredded last year's papers and scrubbed the shower grout and tried to get the orange stain off the refrigerator door (I don't think it worked, but at least I tried). I have some mending to do, too, but I'm not sure I have the correct thread for it. Given the nature of the mending, it would probably be best to use unwaxed dental floss, but I don't have that either.

I got a jump on the list last night by doing my taxes and setting up electronic bill payment for the rest of the bills. I've been paying the cell phone bill electronically since they stopped mailing bills two years or so ago (and I was most unhappy about that), but the credit union hasn't screwed it up yet, so hopefully the rest of the bills will be OK too. Years ago I said I'd go to electronic payments when stamps got over 50 cents, and that happened on Jan 27, so here we are. When I said that, 50 cents per stamp was a lot of money, and I absolutely couldn't afford overdraft fees from either a morale or a financial standpoint. I still want nothing to do with them from a morale standpoint, so let's not start with them, shall we?

The taxes, besides being a thing I like to do as soon as possible, fell under "quick, get them in before the government shuts down again!"

All right, if I don't pry myself out of my chair, I probably won't, and I refuse to waste a Friday on things I could just as easily waste a Saturday on.

(Much later)

Pried myself out of my chair and went to BB&B for cookie sheets. Success. I now have three heavy duty cookie sheets.

Then I went to Walgreens and was told my prescription "wasn't covered" and I'd have to call the insurance company. Grr, but I have a three-month supply, so not massively urgent.

Then I went to Stop & Shop and they were out of precisely one kind of cat crunchies, and it was the one I wanted. Grr, but Lily won't starve before tomorrow, and at least they had silver polish.

Then I went to Trader Joe's and they were out of tea. Grr, but the sign was still up, so they'll probably have it tomorrow, and at least they had everything else that was on the list.

Then I came home and called Harvard Pilgrim. They have disavowed all knowledge of prescriptions and farmed them out to Express Scripts. So I got transferred to the Express Scripts phone tree from hell, and hung up on it twice before I got to an actual human being. She sounded like she was underwater, and I think what she told me was that I can't use Walgreens, I have to do mail-order through CVS, and my doctor's office has to approve that. So I think I told them to set that up.

Then I called Walgreens back to tell them to forget it, and they said "Express Scripts said WHAT?", and told me I could still use Walgreens and that I can come get the prescription I couldn't get earlier today and they've updated my account so I can keep using them.

So I emailed my doctor's office and told them that I had no idea what the current status of the prescription was, but if Express Scripts and/or CVS contacts them to change anything, please don't do it.

I am now massively confused, and still somewhat annoyed, so I think I'll go wash the new cookie sheets.

Today I have an absolutely massive case of Don't Wanna, for no particular reason (including biology; it's the wrong week for that). The sun is out and it's not snot-freezing weather, which are the two reasons I usually have the Don't Wanna in the winter, so I have no clue what that's about. I think it might be about Oral Health Day, because I have nine boxes of various Stuff that have to go across the quad, and I was told both 175 and 200 students, and I want to be done with it. At least I'm not also responsible for holding onto anybody's lost driver's license, as of half an hour ago.

BUT. Once I get through that, tomorrow night is the inaugural meeting of the East Coast Dive Club, and I'm looking forward to that. And Friday is the inaugural Friday Off Until April, and I have plans that might include breakfast out, but definitely include trying to buy a bookshelf for the kitchen. I've wanted a bookshelf under the back window for several years now, just so my cookbooks have a home and Lily has a perch to look out the window in the winter.

Other Friday projects between next week and April include getting my sewing machine some professional help (which is probably going to take all day to get to and from, because the closest place is in West Roxbury and the sewing machine weighs quite a lot), and taking my ring from Iceland to a jeweler to see if I can get it coated with something so I can wear it again. And probably, when and if the government ever starts running again, getting my passport renewed. I'd like to be able to use it again someday, when we don't have a president who insults every country I might like to go to.

Still Don't Wanna, but it don't matter, because I gotta anyway. At least it will be over by 4:00.

When we last left Our Heroine, she was waiting to hear from the dive shop. She is still waiting to hear from the dive shop. The Instant Gratification Monster is getting really annoyed, but it also has a $200 REI gift card, courtesy of credit card points and my failure to realize that REI doesn't sell things useful for diving, to quell it. Maybe I'll spend it on socks and gloves, since I need new touch screen gloves and it would be useful if they were windproof.

Lily's last pill day is tomorrow. I hope like hell that she doesn't lose more weight in the week between pills and iodine, because I don't think she can afford to. Maybe I have to go buy another chicken and keep feeding her chicken jello even without pills in it. (But I don't WANT to have to eat another chicken this week!) Just so I write it down in order, a List:

- No pills after tomorrow
- Tuna food, chicken food, dry food, treats for hospital
- Towel for hospital
- Put name on small carrier
- Downstairs: food dishes, water dish, litterbox, litterbox liners, litter, bookshelf towel

Yesterday I had Grand Plans for the afternoon, because we went to Franklin for late morning and lunchtime. Game called on account of a headache, though, and I still had the headache when I woke up this morning, so I never went to TJ's or the hardware store. Gotta do that sometime sooner than later, because I'm out of tea again and I need some various odds and ends.

OK, I have taken the Required Official Harvard Title IX and Sexual Harassment Training Module. I could have done it in 15 minutes if it didn't insist on talking at me, but it wouldn't let me just read a transcript, so it took 45 minutes, and I missed a lot of the talking anyway because I don't have a door, so I got six conversations going on around me and the printer going off. I passed the quiz at the end anyway. (I am just a wee bit annoyed at this whole thing, because HSDM also requires a Title IX module and a workplace civility module (and a confidential information module and a HIPAA training module) to be completed online every year, and I passed the pre-assessment quiz and then got all the same information again for 45 minutes. I'm all for a pre-assessment which, if you pass it, means you can skip the 45 minutes.)

The clocks changed yesterday and now it's 4:45 and dark and raining. Pfeh. If it has to be dark, can't it at least be not raining for once?

Things are a little more under control now, to wit:

- The cats got brushed, and I collected another cat's worth of hair from them. I haven't found any more hairballs since.

- By all appearances, and pending blood test results, Lily seems to be the poster child for radioiodine treatment. The blood test will show if there's anything about her kidney function that needs to be accounted for when they give her the iodine. She has a tumor on the right side and maybe a small one on the left, but being asymmetrical like that gives them an excellent chance of being the usual benign thyroid tumors cats just get because they're cats. And since we did the blood draw yesterday, Lily may be able to go in on Tuesday the 28th instead of Monday the 27th and only be gone Tuesday to Saturday.

- My toilet is supposed to be fixed as of 8:30 this morning. Lily probably hated that too, because she can't be convinced that anyone who comes in with equipment isn't the vet. But as long as the toilet works reliably again, hooray. I can live with the shower faucet being leaky for a while yet.

- Buying things has been postponed until it's a little less tropical out. I don't feel particularly inclined to hike up to Target in a humid blast furnace.

- I've managed to be in bed with the light off by 11:30 for the past two nights.

- I still need to clean the living daylights out of the place. Maybe if it's less tropical on Saturday, I can start that.