elainegrey

So, Chapter 3 isn't over. We reset the days since last trip to emergency room/emergency vet last night with Christine. I am very glad we got her there and that the intervenous anti-nausea, antibiotics, and fluids has her looking much better. I swear she was looking a little yellow around the eyes last night and she looks much better now. The long painful wait in the emergency room was no fun, and i feel it was just in time when she got seen. Her blood pressure was falling.

Not going into all the details as they belong to Christine, but sharing what i feel is part of my details.

She has since had many tests, and news before 8 am that they would admit her. I was there mid morning through after lunch, advocating for her regular meds and reading/researching the test results when we got them. No doctor showed. Since she still tests positive for COVID she's under COVID precautions and will be for ten days -- but please let her be home well before that. Her sister is there now and i go back tonight with CPAP and other supplies.  [Yay, a doctor's consult, with me included by phone. They think just the infection but given how bad things were last night want to make sure she is well recovered with more fluids and more antibiotics.]

In Monday's therapy i discussed basically being kinda flat lined, kinda breaking into tears all the time.  -- -- This was before Christine really took a bad turn. Sunday evening she wasn't well and it was a bad night. Monday morning i drove her to  an appointment to see a nurse practitioner for the doctor she trusts, gotten antibiotics and were hoping that we were on a course to solve the immediate issues and a plan to address some other longer running issues - that i hadn't known about. -- -- I finally acknowledged i need to recover from All This.

Since 24 February -- four months ago -- we've been to the emergency room/vet  -- six times now.  I mean,  since Jan 20 it hasn't been easy. And between February 24 and April 18, 53 days, nothing dramatic inside our home happened (oh, but the US and administration's injustices, including the attacks on transpersons and the resounding political silence). Most of that time i was recovering from the platelet drop, and was just feeling better and stronger on April 12. So really the intense time has been from April 18 to now: five emergencies (two resulting in our loss of Luigi and Edward) in less than ten weeks. Plus B--'s death, convalescence for Carrie.

I have grown to believe that if you have an stressful work time of x weeks or months, it takes about 2x weeks to recover.

20 weeks from today is November 11. Maybe Chapter 4 begins then.

So we invited folks over: my niece, sister, and her husband came over Friday night for a little belated birthday celebration  and just visiting. The night was mild and we hung out and had pizza on the newly painted back deck.

Before they arrived Christine had done the usual house prep, and i scrubbed the front porch of pollen and trampled magnolia petals, mowed the circle and the little front patch, and significantly improved the cleanliness of the entrance hall. It was not a perfect job, but it was the job i could do with the time at hand. It's better. Yay!

Then we were expecting a friend from California to arrive for an overnight stay. I spent a good while arranging the masses of dried flowers, partly because a bunch were hanging over the guest bed by the fan. I now have three lovely bouquets -- just in time to be picking live flowers,  but whatever. They'll give me pleasure. We also did all sorts of other prep, so lots of tasks all caught up at once.

It was intense having company so much, yet a pleasure.

• Thinking about Mikołaj Grynberg's I'd like to say sorry, but there's no one to say sorry to (Poland and its Jewish citizens)
• Thinking about flash fiction in the form of questions
• Lots of feelings and judgements about housekeeping
• Lots of feelings and judgements about my staying in touch with people
• Noting Marlowe has brought in two voles today, an anole was in the house on Saturday, and Christine had to take a skink from Marlowe on Friday
• Wondering if the field cam will be more responsive after a day of sunshine.
• Wondering about the value of my wildlife cam observations, wanting to be scientific, but i am so behind. Yet another coyote, and gosh the deer just hang out in the meadow now that i did some mowing and new growth is coming in

household, observe

Tinned fish: we eat divine tuna fish from a specific boat that is like tuna steaks in a can. We order big cases of it and treasure it. (Can't remember the name off the top of my head: will provide recommendation.) But it's not a cheap thing. So i'm looking at sardines and kippers now. I've had several tins of Season sardines (skinned and boneless) and i can do that. They are sustainable and somewhere i read they were a milder fish, so easier to get used to.

King Oscar is on sale this week so i'm stepping up to that. All the reviews say they are the best. It's quite possible i'll turn right around.

Quaker notes: i asked about resolving the "interpersonal conflict" i had with one of the persons, and basically they just wanted to be heard. No mutuality, no spirituality. No chance of them learning or changing. So, they have  been heard. Because i've told others that the two persons who are most active are "hard to work with" i felt i needed to share with them evidence of that. But - oy -- i did not want to be vulnerable to them and i did not want more drama. So much time writing and deleting messages. In my final message i wrote

I'm sad.  In the short time since October both P-- and K-- have accused me (with others) of taking over and  grabbing power. I'm sad that's so quickly a conclusion.  I'm relieved that, in both cases, P-- and K-- have stepped back from that accusation, recognizing there was more to the picture than the initial interpretation. Both interactions were hard for me.

A friend suggest that it sounds like i want an apology. Yes, sure. But i don't think either party has the emotional maturity to do that work, and there isn't enough of a network to lean on for me to even attempt to carry most of the work on my own.

Mainly, i feel like i've been burned twice and learned my lesson. Stay away or insulate myself from injury.

One more meeting on Thursday and then i will not really think about this for months.

Err, there were other things, really -- birthday observations with family were pleasant. I've had lots and lots of yummy cake from the bakery where Mom trained (and thus that felt like a way of including her). Lunch out with my sister and her daughter, lunch out with dad. Lots and lots of reflection time. I've a little A6 notebook for my spring season, now through May Day, with queries and areas to think about goals. I've a page for "saying yes" and "saying no" to encourage me to be intentional.

I've made some improvements around the house, little things but yay. House cleaning is a sort of fraught  space for us. I might have pushed some buttons that might lead us to doing a bit more improvement. A friend may stay with us in late April, and i don't think we can have an idealized place for them to stay, but i think we might be able to deal with the dust bunnies and some of the clutter. household, observe

I continue in this cycle of feeling crinkly and dissatisfied and frustrated since mid-early June -- essentially from the point when "I'm recovering from surgery" ceased being an explanation for anything. There have been many excuses, and on the whole i lean towards accepting that i was carrying things in emotional and social dimensions that limited my spoons in the take care of self and yard dimensions.

The video game distraction, though, is real. Squee! I admit that, having watched Christine work out how to solve various issues in Jedi Survivor, i have faith in some of the hand-eye coordination passages instead of having the "maybe there's something else i should be doing/have done." I've managed to complete some bits that got her stuck because i know it's just a matter of timing and coordination. I also began by helping her, noticing visual cues and calling them to her attention, including "There's another one behind you."

And i've been reading. Sunday i read three novels -- the Iroshi trilogy by Cary Osborne -- that bother me a bit with something stuck in my metaphorical mental teeth. I like the justification for swords in space: weapons that are going to puncture habitat and ship walls are problematic. The alien cause of telepathy powers is interesting, although the aliens really aren't so very alien. Maybe what bothers me is the narrative omission: once the main character trusts the aliens in the first book, there's a gap between books where the hard work of recruiting others to trust the aliens occurs? And maybe the universe building feels just a little sketchy? Again, a gap between the first and second books takes a "nobody" to a politically significant persona. It doesn't compare favorably to Arkady Martine's A memory called empire.

I had an interaction with Dad today that left me feeling fragile: i was doing my best to accommodate his sense of urgency to get rid of some stuff (by coming over and taking a look). I don't think he really heard my repeat of "earliest possible time" in the spirit it was said. I'm glad we rescheduled, but i'm a little resentful at the pressure (particularly since he had other plans for the evening and was trying to squeeze me in. I called my sister to vent, she reciprocated with frustration over Dad's recalcitrance in handling his hearing issues. I don't know how we're going to get him to deal with his hearing. He doesn't withdraw, nor does he continue as he was with assumptions and not listening, so all that's good. But the way he interrogates about the words he doesn't hear (generally, he wasn't expecting to hear the word and he knows he didn't hear it right) puts the other person as the one with the issue. The other person used a strange or surprising word. Or pronounced it oddly. Or whatever. He's not taking the responsibility still. SIGH.

Christine's elephants have been around off and on. [Here "elephants" derive from "elephant in the room" and refer to issues that are Christine's and not mine to share in a broad way. I stretch the metaphor.] My toes were trampled on once, and then the elephants caused a significant change of her plans to do something nice for herself. She's worked hard on her own, but she's been unhappy with how the ways she's coped constrained her. I've pointed out that maybe there were other solutions someone could help her with for ... a while now. But when the elephants stood on my toes, it reached the point of me saying she should go get help. The way the elephants changed her plans underscored the severity of the issue. She's off for an intake appointment after lots of back and forth about all the paperwork and documents she was asked to fill out before meeting the person. The first person she reached out to wouldn't budge -- although this maybe clinic staff enforcing a practice without asking higher ups about requirements.

One person told her that she had to sign things so they could contact insurance, which - NOT TRUE. HIPAA expressly allows patient information to flow to insurers. https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/privacy/laws-regulations/index.html The second office seemed to be insisting and, after Christine let them know she'd be looking elsewhere, the admin checked with the clinic director who said only the consent to receive treatment was necessary. The director then entered into communication with Christine about the paperwork because they wanted to address any unclear terms. (Including screen grabs of their own documents?) The consent to receive treatment document ended with a sentence fragment.

Does no one but Christine and I read this stuff? Rhetorical. Sigh.

Christine is still having migraines, which is a continuation from before the new year. Most start in the wee hours of the morning, so we look at her CPAP, only a year and a half old, with suspicion.

Her other migraine she got after cutting back some brush. When she came in and proclaimed what she had done, i was trying to figure out what she had cut down and was somewhat ungracious when i imagined she had cut down all the wild blackberries. I quickly noted it wouldn't have killed them and would have made them more manageable. Working cutting things down is hard for her because she is very aware they are alive and she had framed it as rescuing a redbud tree, but instead she was rescuing a sweetgum.

Anyhow.

Last week was hard to get through, but i did. Part of the hard is mental wrestling i have been having since October, struggling to get everything done -- "everything" is hygiene plus medication plus skin voodoo (retinol! vitamin C! H-something acid but not HCl) plus stretch-balance-walk. I'd been blaming a combination of asthma and illness and seasonal affective disorder but really -- has it ever been THIS bad while i was treating it?

Ah, late last week it occurred to me, i had never held any expectation that i would do anything other than take my antidepressant and antihistamine regularly. I tried to do other things, but didn't note when i missed them and didn't have any intentionality and certainly wasn't trying to regularly exercise. And then i learned of ADHD, realized my mother and sibs and i were all in the same challenging space when it came to habits, realized i needed to start small, and started with flossing and brushing my teeth. Woo! Magic dental experience in June!!

But i've never tried this when also dealing with the shortening of days.

So maybe there was nothing particularly bad this year -- just normal seasonal affective disorder and i'd never had a background against which to measure its impact. The absolutely critical things get done: i go to work, the cats and Carrie are fed, i make some effort for the holidays.

Welp.

Realization helped with my mental framing, and it's always impressive how much energy it takes to both give yourself lots of negative messages and to receive them.

So, i've cut back on some of the expectations in the stretch-balance-walk space, been more gentle with myself, gotten over the respiratory infection!! and mostly gotten over the asthmatic cough.

I did look at some sleep measures, since i have all this data: my watch was reporting sleep efficiencies in the low 90s over the summer, but that's become the high 80s. Edward's changed his sleeping to be close - because he's cold? Maybe that's a small disruption as well. And I'm still having more respiratory events this week than in December, despite the cough being mostly gone. So hrm.

Yesterday i did the basic walk, plus the balance and stretches, and ended up with the 8k steps and the hour of standing during meetings (partly because the meeting ran over 30 min at the end of the day.) I am delighted at my physical tone: i've been digging clay -- lots and lots on Saturday, some yesterday in the dusk -- and no (new, distinct) aches! I've some balance to get back, but it's not terribly different from October. I am back to holding on to things while dressing, but i can imagine getting better balance in a few months.

Anyhow, i SHOULD (qv RFC 2119)be stopping here, but i'll note that i have travel coming up. I was near tears trying to make the decision, because somehow air travel across time zones just seems horrible and -- but i have to do the travel for business so why would i be so distressed about leaving earlier for myself? I don't really know why it seemed so hard to make the decision to leave a day plus a handful of hours earlier.

I'll be landing at SFO around 9:45 am the last Sunday in February. I think i will be able to have coffee with friends as soon as car is rented and i can get to Palo Alto. Other than that, plans still to be made. I'll take the Monday off. Tuesday and Wednesday will be super intense work to help W3C browser folks understand authentication and authorization practices. (Hrm, maybe some of Monday will be visual aid development - i don't know that i want to carry on the plane posters of sequence diagrams, but big posters of sequence diagrams on the walls might be helpful.) Then i take a redeye on Wednesday night to arrive home after 9am on March 2, my birthday. Woo.

Much going on. Mom's birthday was on Wednesday, and I went out with my sister, her son, and my Dad, returning with them to home and a condolence cheesecake that i had saved to share, as cheesecake was my mom's favorite (or what my dad thought of as my mom's favorite).

Thursday i found much work from Tuesday and Wednesday was lost. I was in a bit of a funk. Then the Queen died, triggering what i think was displaced grief. And then Christine was triggered and went a little porcupine. I made the mistake of trying to be an advisor and triggered her more.

Lately i've reflected on how judged she felt by my parents, ( ruminating ... )i am not her therapist. I know she works -- and progresses -- at being better with being in the world. I can focus on being my own therapist.

I didn't hit my 7k steps Wednesday or Thursday, inhibited by the muggy miserable weather, plus stuff. I didn't walk today because it was ALL MEETINGS. I did walk a bit after work and vaccine and visiting Dad with Christine and Carrie, but still didn't get to 7k.

I've gotten my flu shot and one of the new bivalent COVID vaccines, just in time for it to come to full strength before i go to the office in Ohio for a week.

We've also gone through another round of vehicle shopping and will be replacing our 24 year old Ranger truck with a 12 year old Jeep Grand Cherokee, picking up the vehicle later this morning.

--== ∞ ==--

Since Tuesday i have been obsessing over sauce recipes. I read through a copycat Heinz 57 from scratch recipe which called for tomato paste, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, and Dijon mustard. I then looked up how to make ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, and dijon mustard from scratch. There were MANY overlaps in ingredients. I had known about tamarind and anchovies in Worcestershire sauce (also in the Heinz 57 recipe). Ketchup apparently needs a touch of celery seed. The copycat Heinz 57 sauce recipe, ketchup, and Worcestershire sauce all called for mustard powder, so the addition of Dijon to the copycat recipe stood out.

I've imagined what ingredients we have locally that i could use. For spices, magnolia flowers have a ginger-cardamon note. The Carolina allspice has spice and citrus notes. The figs. Fennel instead of celery seed, maybe coriander. The cayenne pepper has miraculously stretched above the weeds and is setting fruit. I've got the walking onions. I imagine when the sumac is mature enough to set fruit and i can use its berries for the citrusy tart spice.

I figure a mushroom can contribute umami to a sauce, because sardines and anchovies are not staples in this household, and i can't imagine using them all up. I note after a little research that anchovy paste is a thing and conceivably lasts forever in its tube.

Friday I made a wonderful sauce that falls in the "steak sauce" family, but no tomato. Reminiscent of Worcestershire but thicker, like ketchup and mustard. Many very ripe figs, a dried mushroom, a wedge of preserved lime, fermented ginger, pickled red onion, cider vinegar, molasses, liquid smoke, mustard, red pepper flakes, and black pepper. I only measured the mustard, the rest was what seemed reasonable at the moment. I think the fig+preserved lime create tamarind-like notes. The preserved lime and fermented ginger had much salt. The pickled onions had clove and cinnamon maybe: i think i added spices to the brine. The trick of letting the mustard powder and water blend sit for a while to develop mustard heat before fixing the heat with vinegar really added a punch.

I think this could be a fun skill to develop.

Here's a weird document -- is it from an AI? https://eatdelights.com/anchovy-paste-shelf-life/ It claims that sweet anchovy paste is used in buttercream frosting?

As part of marking my new year, i am trying to record the mundane day to day aspects of my life. The larger arc doesn't change much. Big personal changes recently included our move to NC in mid 2016, Mom's stroke in late 2018, and my ceasing engagement with a (Quaker) Monthly Meeting in mid 2021.

--== ∞ ==--

I'm in my mid fifties, and have been married to Christine for over thirty years. She and i met in high school and married after college. I understood who she knew she was before we married: it took many years for her to be in a position where she was ready for expressing her true gender to everyone. She changed her name and gender markers in the early 2000s.

I attended college in North Carolina, graduate school in physics at the University of Pennsylvania. My long tenure as a graduate student was because i was also taking a life class in major depression. I eventually set a deadline for myself, got pneumonia that set me back and mde me miss my deadline. I took a job as a systems administrator for the Franklin Institute, and then, in 2000, and old friend recruited me for a job in San Francisco. In 2000, a non-profit had no chance of hiring technical staff in San Francisco as everyone chased the dot com boom. From our archive nonprofit, we watched the bust. Churn at that non-profit led me to a job at a non-profit that works for libraries, museums and archives. In 2006 that non-profit (the minnow) merged with a much larger but quite similar non-profit (the whale).

After some extremely stressful years, the management at The Whale became more stable for the technical teams. I moved from management to technical and systems architecture, and am very happy with my work in authentication and authorization systems.

In 2016 we left the Bay area -- the rising rents and the droughts -- and moved back to North Carolina. My family knew my mother's mind was declining: in late 2018 she had a massive stroke just days after receiving a diagnosis of Cerebral amyloid angiopathy, a condition in which proteins build up on the walls of the arteries in the brain. CAA increases the risk for stroke caused by bleeding and for dementia. My father became my mother's primary carer. While the prognosis was clear to me in the days after the stroke, it took several years for my father to understand that not only was my mother not going to "get over" the stroke, but that she was actually going to continue to decline. In mid 2021 he hired help, B--, a woman he met when she was tending bar at one of his pre-COVID hangouts.

My sister L-- lives nearby with her husband T--, and teen children W-- and E--. She quit her job in late 2019 for several reasons, one of which included spending more time caring for our Mom. My brother N-- lives in Singapore with his wife M--, and his teen boys Z-- and D-- and youngest daughter S---.

I was active in different Quaker monthly meetings over the past 20 years. The meeting i began attending in North Carolina I felt led to join as a stretch. It was not the large university or urban meeting, it came from a different branch of Friends. I felt comfortable and welcomed, but it took a long time for me to realize the meeting's understanding of Quakerism is rather different than mine. In mid 2021, i left the meeting informally, and currently am pursuing my spiritual leadings in a solitary way. I had engaged in Friends' community for the practice of community: i feel that bringing what i have learned to the community that is my family is where i should be at this time.

My engagement with photography and yarn craft has fallen by the side as i now passionately engaged in co-creating a sustainable, more ecologically balanced environment on our four acre lot. "Yard work" and "gardening" mean so many things to me, and they feed my energy.

Doodles from Thursday night


Rye: i used the discard from the sour starter on Saturday and Sunday to make a flatbread, inspired by the "tortilla" recipe (Icelandic Flatbrauð) in The Rye Baker. On Saturday i folded a butter-like spread into the dough and it was tender, but nothing special. This morning i think the starter is finally going, and the big feed of flour to the discard and then baking it later seemed to work in a wonderful way.

I'm a little mystified about the "maintenance" of the culture. Getting the culture going per the cook book one uses equal ratios of the previous culture, water, and rye flour. The maintenance recipe is one part flour, one part water, and 1/10th part previous culture. Is the idea that you have a culture sitting in the fridge and then you only need a little bit to get a nice bit going for whatever you plan to bake?

Corn: i tried popping some of last year's corn and - ppft. I suspect it is too dry, so i'll try moistening it. The barely popped kernels taunted me, so i have ground them up. It smells interesting -- a little smokey from the popping attempt. I will toss it in a discard waffle.

Dog: we started talking to a couple about adopting their 100 pound German Shepherd mix. I've gotten cold feet. I just remember how long i worried about Carrie and the cats, watching her savage a toy and visualizing a cat. Apparently, a dog my parents had when i was very young killed a neighbor's cat -- that could explain my deep worry -- and my brother had a cat who was killed by some savage Turkish shepherds (they menaced a bicyclist, too, and became a problem in the neighborhood). There's no evidence this dog would threaten our cats, but i just don't think i can deal with an additional worry. Christine has heard me and is disappointed, but supportive. I wish she could hide her disappointment more and celebrate taking care of my need to not do something scary and worrisome right now. At least she's managing her disappointment. I'm disappointed too, but it solidified to me that i don't need to take on one more situation where i need to worry.

Dad: It was after spending a couple hours with Dad and my sister where i realize my bandwidth is so limited. I think we have a way forward: Dad seems pretty clear about moving/selling the house, but doesn't want to rush. We identified a thing to do that will make things easier for caring for Mom -- ripping out old carpet that is hard to wheel the chair over -- and it's something that would have to be done for a sale. We've got him thinking about what to do when his cousin "retires" from taking care of his mother. My sister can feel that we aren't stalling and that something will be better.

Figs & spiders: i dehydrated some more figs after picking some with Christine watching my back. Two larger orb weavers have webs in the tree, and they give me the heebie jeebies. I am proud that i am coping with coexistence and haven't had to ask Christine to move them, but --- eeeeee.

Christine is swimming in dread and distress this morning with the supreme court appointment. I wish i could say that there will be no roll backs to recognition of her identity and our relationship. But i can't. I think the culture is shifting, but it's clear that there are folks holding on to an exclusive view of their place in the world as tightly as they can. I'm horrified to find my age cohort is at the lead of that effort.

One of the many aspects of the elephants that trample through our life often is that of trust: Christine trusts me, our pets, most furry and feathered creatures, but humans not so much. I think she's developed some trust in our vet. We had a nurse practitioner she trusted but she moved on. I think she trusts our grocery store to some extent. But that's maybe it.

It is hard to move in the world without trust. The level of hyper vigilance is exhausting.

When i think about it, my blasé movement through the world quickly changes and the risk accounting starts to build up -- but i can choose to not pay with hyper vigilance and trust because the alternative is debilitating.

--== ∞ ==--

The NYTimes pointed to the Republican administrative agenda for the next four years, correcting a claim that there was no agenda (and noting that the list wasn't really an agenda that had clear execution paths). One of the things was, in education, teach American exceptionalism. I think there were lots of people who used to be willing to mouth the platitudes of the US being the best in the world and then move on to facts. My perception is many of those folks now see the danger of playing nice with little lie, and are moving to tell the truth.

I checked in with my Dad about their finances: they were living off the monthly regular income from Dad's Navy pension and their social security so that's unchanged. The safety net of his IRA is a different story. Still, the current style of living remains unchanged, and that's one less thing to worry about.

My sister told me, as well, that i could stop feeling guilty about not visiting during the week. If i can visit with Mom and Dad on the weekend that helps her have time at home with her spouse. (He's going in to the office to deal with mail, etc, where he is apparently alone.)

I just read the NYT Interpreter newsletter, reporting on a conversation with Dipali Mukhopadhyay, a Columbia University political scientist who studies how societies cope during conflict. In brief, there is much living in the moment, and not making long term plans because of the uncertainty due to acceptance that so much is out of one’s control. It doesn’t sound like it’s a living with abandon with a fatalistic understanding, but more of a living as normally as possible without making commitments. -

I interpret this as still doing the actions one does assuming there is a future - saving what needs to be saved whether currency or seeds for spring or preserving produce - and it may be that many urban dwellers have far fewer actions for the future. What comes to mind for me is how i have put money in a retirement fund over many years while not expecting that the times of my retirement (due to climate change) are going to be like the times when i was making retirement funding commitments.

- anyhow - the comment made

Bah, cut paste fail

This makes me think of how Christine - who has PTSD - has a very hard time when asked about planning months out to see people or travel.

I don’t find that there’s that much impact to my usual longer term planning by the pandemic. I recognize that if Grandmama or her husband dies, there will be a even higher demand to support Mom staying home while Dad travels. Work travel is not necessary to worry about, which is a delight.

Because of the fore-mentioned challenges planning social events with Christine, the rare planning to “get together” with friends is not really changed. So much of the planning i do is general yard (which gets followed through) and various house and craft (less followed through). This is unchanged. For years - not since my mom’s stroke - i had a practice of annually thinking through what foreseeable uncertain events were in the future. Grandmama’s death has been on there for years, hurricanes since moving here, but mom’s stroke and the pandemic, not so much. I need to do that for this year (my planning years begin with my birthday in early March.)

Since moving, i have not particularly had any desire to plan travel. Initially it was the urgency to get the yard “under control” but now there is also so much delight in being in the yard. (And there is still yard work.) My sister and i had been thinking about a plan where i would travel to Florida with my dad in May. Yeah, no.