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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.
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Good stuff, because I ought to remember the good stuff:

- The higher-sided litterbox appears to be just what I needed. It came in a box a third again as large as it was, though, and the box took up an amazing amount of real estate even when folded up, because it wouldn't stay folded up gracefully. It is now sulking in the recycling bin.

- My Kickstarter Purrmaid arrived on the same day as the high-sided litterbox. I have no idea how they got a two-foot stuffed animal into a one-foot plastic bag without doing either one permanent damage, but they did. The contrast between that and the litterbox packaging amused me, rather.

- The sun is out today and is strong enough to feel like spring, even though the temperature is somewhere in the mid-30s. And it's not dark at 5:00 these days.

- Quirk has discovered that sleeping on my bed during the day is perfectly fine. I took a picture of her doing it that should be captioned "Never trust a smiling cat."

- Lily has been eating most of two cans of Royal Canin a day for a couple of weeks or so now, and her spine doesn't stick out so much. She ain't done yet. Thank goodness. She does make a bit of a mess when she eats, but she can't help that. It's a combination of lack of teeth, and the fact that the soy sauce dish she eats from is a tad bit too small for an entire can.

- The new coffee grinder has made a tremendous difference in the end product. I made rocket fuel the first time I used the new grinder because when the coffee is ground evenly, you get a lot more of the good stuff out of it. I suppose I could grind less coffee, but it's slightly easier to add more water.
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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.
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Small things:

- 85 and dry beats hell out of 95 and humid.
- My hair is dry all the way through for the first time in about three days.
- I slept in my bed last night instead of on top of it.
- I have enough cold coffee for at least tomorrow and Friday.
- It took Lily 13 years to figure out sleeping in empty boxes, but she's done it.
- The bathroom sink continues to drain adequately.
- I finally own the Complete Calvin & Hobbes and am enjoying it.
- Potato, spinach, chickpea, and paneer curry incoming, possibly tonight if I get motivated to cook.
- Two more weeks until not-online-for-work week.
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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.
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Today is going to have to be a "get the hell out of here for a while after work" day, because I haven't been out since Saturday and I'm annoyed with everything except my internet connection. But I have two Zoom meetings today and three tomorrow, so I have to bless my internet connection.

What I'm annoyed with is the following: my slightly stuffy sinuses, which I dwell on because of course that means I have the plague (despite not coughing and still being able to sing); the laundry, which won't get itself out of the basement; the fact that I have to go ship my old laptop off for recycling in the next two weeks; the gauntlet you have to run in the grocery stores, assuming you don't have to run one just to get in; the 3:30 - 5:00 "be productive while removing cat from keyboard every five minutes" period; the fact that I have to be productive in the first place even though a lot of it is pretending to be productive; the fact that one student out of 140 is being a massive pain in the ass about lack of transparency, when we tell all the students everything we know at least once a week; the fact that I can't go to Noank until about June because Dad is the very definition of an at-risk category; and the fact that we might be going through all this again in the fall.

I made Sally Lunn bread on Sunday and it came out pretty well despite extremely elderly yeast. It tried its best, though, and it did actually work well enough to make bread instead of doorstops. It just took quite a while (although it was also a cool and damp day, which is not the best bread-rising weather in the world). Someday when things are back to semi-normal again, I ought to buy some younger yeast, but there isn't any to be bought right now. GRR.

I also signed up for a nitrox class via Zoom on Wednesday (my third Zoom meeting of the day). I might as well give the shop some money even if I can't go diving, and even if I never dive with nitrox, at least I'll have taken the class and learned the theory. And having taken this class I'll be officially halfway to Advanced Open Water certification.

Unfortunately, the online part of the class involved quite a lot of information about oxygen toxicity, and caused me to sit there staring at the wall for a bit. You won't get oxygen toxicity unless you do at least two or three stupid things, but if you do and you get it badly enough, you get convulsions, and lose your regulator, and can't get one back in, and die by drowning way down underwater. However, having said that, I don't intend to go that deep on nitrox, or use 40% or 36% nitrox at all unless there's no alternative (there will ALWAYS be regular air), and I don't ignore what my computer tells me. But I did the online stuff between 9:00 and 10:00 Sunday night, and had to play mindless computer games for quite a while before I could go to bed without dwelling on oxygen toxicity.

Last night I stayed up too late embroidering, but that's because the end of this page is in sight and I really want to get it over with. At least there will be one thing in my life that makes progress.
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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.
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Ahhh, vacation. And good thing, too, because otherwise I would have been severely displeased at waiting half an hour for a bus this evening. Apparently it's going to be one of those evenings, because just now I looked out the window and the sun was out, but it was absolutely pouring rain at the same time. I have it on good authority that it wasn't raining in Cambridge.

Never mind. For the sake of remembering to write things down:

- Whale watching (Tuesday?)
- Floors
- Sharpen knives
- ECD re: midweek dives (next week?)
- Thursday farmer's market

I'm sure there's a lot of etc. that comes after that, but right now it doesn't matter.
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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.
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Progress (edited Sunday):

- Changed the sheets
- Cleaned out the freezer (at least a third of which is ice packs of various sorts, and another third of which was ancient and/or badly freezer-burned food that went in the trash)
- Hauled the bucket of no-longer-radioactive kitty litter out of the shed
- Brushed the living daylights out of both cats
- Paid all the bills
- Did three loads of laundry
- Gave the bathroom sink a dose of Drano
- Sorted out the office, mostly
- Went grocery shopping
- Swapped the small cat carrier's door around so it hinges on the right, because the big one does


Still to do (edited Sunday):

- Clean the bathroom
- Mop the floors
- Vacuum the living room rug
- Sort out the office, where everything lives that doesn't have a home elsewhere
- Go grocery shopping for human food

- Buy kitty litter
- Cook pork chops
- Vacuum the office rug
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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.
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Today probably came out even, in the end.

Not Quite Good Stuff:

- Microsoft. I updated from Office 2008 and it only took a password reset and two security codes sent to my phone before they'd let me spend money on their products. And Lily would not quit stomping over the keyboard, which annoyed me more than it might usually because Microsoft was annoying me too.

- Brookline Booksmith doesn't take hardcovers for resale, even though I bought them there in the first place.

- My left ankle is giving me Issues again. It gets better when it gets walked on for ten minutes, but those ten minutes suck.

- Lily needs a "kidney diet" and I'll fight to the death to keep her off Hill's prescription whatever, because their crunchies have corn in them and it would be just my luck if Snip liked them. If I can find an equivalent phosphorus/protein ratio somewhere else, somewhere else it is. I still think the vet who put together the 67-page wet food spreadsheet on catinfo.com is an anti-crunchies zealot, but hopefully the information is accurate enough.

- My phone somehow went from 30% battery to 1% in ten minutes, having gone from 85% to 30% in four hours.

- My new passport pictures are of an exhausted fat woman. I know that's what I look like, but it isn't quite what I feel like.


However, Good Stuff:

- Brookline Booksmith gave me $26.40 worth of store credit for most of a tote bag of paperbacks, which I promptly went upstairs and spent on two new paperbacks (The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah, which my mother recommended to me ages ago, and The Red-Haired Woman by Orhan Pamuk, which my Turkish coworker recommended to me yesterday). And I had a mere four hardcovers left over, and the Coolidge Corner library took them.

- Lily's got early kidney disease rather than Do Something About This Yesterday kidney disease, and the one lab number that was high might have been somewhat artificially high because she hadn't drunk a lot of water before the blood got drawn.

- I managed to send the send passport renewal form complete with picture, renewal fee, and old passport off in the mail today. Supposedly it will get to Philadelphia on Tuesday and I might have a new passport by the Friday after next (I think it took a week last time, but I'm assuming a backlog from the government being closed). I could have waited for another couple of months, but I have the time now, so I might as well get it now.

- I got the laundry done today. Now I don't have to think about it for another week.

- I bought myself a subscription to the NY Times crossword.
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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.
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On the inaugural Friday Off, I:

- Hung around at home with Snip in my lap until 10:00
- Took a couple hundred tongue depressors to the post office, put most of them in a box, and mailed them to Noank
- Went to CafeNation and had an enormous BLT and egg and bagel sandwich for brunch
- Went to REI and bought two waterproof bags to transport neoprene accessories (one wet bag and one storage bag)
- Went to Target just because if I didn't, the kitchen bookshelf I wanted would have been there (it wasn't, but I did figure out that I don't want a bookshelf; what I want is a coffee table)
- Went to Economy Hardware to see if they had plumber's candles (they don't)
- Went to Trader Joe's and did the grocery shopping, including blueberries that look incredible and taste like not much
- Did a teeny load of laundry
- Ordered a coffee table (arrives next Friday)

So far I am very much liking the brunch idea, because it gets me out of the house and isn't the usual things I have to leave the house for when I'm not at work. And it's easier to get things done when most of the rest of the world is at work, but this is less about getting weekend things done early than it is about getting things done that I never quite get around to.

Shredding last year's bills is one of the things I haven't gotten around to yet. Excelsior!
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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.
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Christmas was just about exactly what I needed, and consisted mostly (in no particular order) of:

- Shrimp cocktail
- Silly shirts
- Cocktail sauce with more horseradish than strictly necessary
- Clam dip
- A most excellent hat
- Rooting around in the ornaments box for pompoms and pinecones
- Prime rib
- Waffles
- Three and a half pounds of uncooked bacon
- The Play of Herod
- The Play of Daniel
- The Messiah
- Sharpe's Rifles
- Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction
- New gloves
- Three experimental beers and an experimental cider (no winners)
- BLTs
- And many and various other things I forgot

Got back on Thursday and discovered one instance of cat barf, courtesy of Snip, who just can't resist eating too much too fast when she gets several days of food all at once. Lily actually ate crunchies because that was what there was, and hadn't lost any weight.

When I left on the 23rd, there were three items on my list of things to get done before January 2. There are now five things, but four of them are done, and I wrote two of them down today just for the pleasure of crossing them off. The fifth thing is to take everything out of all of the kitchen cabinets, sort through the ensuing mess, and figure out what I actually want to keep. The tube pan stays; everything else, I don't know. I don't even know what all is in the lower cabinets. Muffin tins and ice cube trays, I think.

It won't be a disaster if it doesn't happen now, but it's got to happen before the end of March, because I should use at least one of my Fridays off to declutter the place some. The kitchen cabinets, the bedroom closet, and the office in general all need some help.

Now that the mad rush is over, I went to Brookline Booksmith today and didn't think I was going to get trampled to death, and actually found the second used book I've been keeping an eye out for since last year. I found the first one right after Thanksgiving. And that's why I go to the bookstore almost every weekend. You never know.

I started the Vietnam book, but my brain wants candy, so I'm reading other things until January.
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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?
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Just so I have it written down:

Aug 26 Pool 2&3
Sep 6 Class 2
Sep 9 Pool 4&5
Sep 16 Pool 6&7
Sep 23 Pool Review if needed
Oct 6/7 OW Dives

That's how I could, theoretically, get certified by the middle of October.
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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.
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In the "never a dull moment" category, the combined DMD/MD program has tied itself in a knot because the medical school now wants the prospective student to do two years of medical school before starting dental school at all, instead of doing one year and switching to dental school, which is what the dental students do, and it works beautifully. Which means the second year of medical school in the DMD/MD program is going to lose at least a month because the dental curriculum must start in September, but the medical school second year doesn't end until October. Hissy fit from the medical school incoming in 3...2...1...

Anyway, the summer chorus is now over, which means I can stop practically living in Cambridge. I knew it was taking up a lot of my time, but it hit home when I realized last Thursday that I hadn't even looked at my cracked toe for a week. I suppose that's good because it means the toe didn't hurt, but I usually keep better track of things that are (or should be) healing. Which it is. But I also am not keeping track of anything else lately, and the following things need attention:

- The cats DESPERATELY need to be brushed. I keep finding yarfed-up hairballs (thankfully not by stepping on them).
- The toilet has developed a weak flush that needs seeing to, by a plumber, because I can't get the water shutoff knob to move and I refuse to be responsible for breaking it off.
- The hot water faucet in the shower leaks down the shower wall, and I hope it doesn't also leak down the inside of the wall.
- I need a new bag to contain loose-knit sweaters in the washing machine. The current bag has a hole big enough that a whole sweater escaped through it.
- I need a pepper mill that has more aim, because I am so tired of getting pepper all over the counters (I've been eating a lot of caprese salad with a fair amount of pepper on it).
- I've night-shifted myself getting home from rehearsals at 10:30 and going to sleep at 12:15. I need more sleep.
- The whole place needs a good going over. But I need company for that. Not help, just somebody to talk to while I do it (except the vacuuming; I can just about hear myself think over the vacuum cleaner).

Getting back to the chorus, the Monadnock concert yesterday was fun except for the standing up through all of Carmina Burana. We had risers, but no chairs. I couldn't feel my feet by the end. But the tenor soloist got into chewing on the scenery too; the roasted swan was somewhat surprised when the men's chorus came in the first time. And the baritone soloist continued to chew on the scenery, to wit: "Ego (longish pause while he stalks up to the front of the room glaring at everybody), Ego (slightly shorter pause, giggles from audience), Ego sum abbas..." I got voluntold to sing Alto 2 for this concert. Thankfully it was mostly in thirds with the Alto 1 part, so that wasn't as bad as it could have been. And now I have more music I need to find storage for.
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