Hemlock B Bootsalotta

Got my orthotics today. My foot still hurts. This is taking too long to sort itself out and I wish to register a complaint.

***

Lord Brock has figured out what time steroid dosing happens and has started reminding me about it because he knows he'll get treats immediately after. He still hates getting medicated, but he hates it so much less than the gabapentin (I think it tasted worse) that he will almost barely tolerate it and then happily snarffle up the treats once the dosing part is done with.

***

Roof repairs unlocked. Dude also does the kind of work needed for the stairs so he's going to give me a quote for that as well. AND he thinks he can work with his plumber to drop the sump pump into the floor properly so it takes up less space and won't leave an open water feature in the room. He send me some links with examples of what he wants to do, and honestly it would be a huge improvement.

***

Project raccoon did NOT go as originally planned. Original contractor had said that the stairs would just flip up so I could clean underneath them. No, not so much.

The problem is that the wooden stairs are basically a triangle set in a sunken concrete hole. The back/top of the stairs is supported by a piece of wood in the shape of a T. To get under them you have to pull the whole thing towards the interior door to make room behind the triangle to flip it up on it's back. Only the T isn't solid enough, when I tried it the bottom of the wood stayed in the same spot while the top cracked and splintered. I was able to climb to the top and kind of kick the T forward but not far enough to make room to flip it. So I could stand there and hold the stairs up, because they're not heavy, but I couldn't get under it at the same time.

Yesterday and today daughter came over to work on the yard, and this afternoon the ex-housemate & their wife dropped by to pick up some government forms that had been delivered to the house. So the four of us picked up the stairs bodily and moved them out of the staircase. The ex-housemate has anosmia, so they volunteered to shovel up the very very decayed raccoon. Garbage day isn't for another two weeks so we just dumped him out by the railroad tracks and covered him with dirt. And then shovelled up the accumulated mud and vermin that had collected under the stairs and dropped it in the same spot.

It was so gross, y'all. So gross. But it's out of my basement doorway now and it's in a spot where it will be unlikely to bother anybody except the occasional passing coyote.

The daughter and I spent the next three hours digging the drainage pit. I found the sand layer I was hoping for, and then underneath that (about four feet down) is a layer of a broken shist which I think will work even better. We have probably about 80% of the trench dug out - one more day should be enough to finish if off. Then I'll line it with cinderblocks and start filling it in with rocks. The trench is probably four times as big as I'll need to be in any normal year, but since 100-year storms are coming every 10 years now (and probably every 2 by the time I ever leave this house) it seems like a good investment of labour.

Entertainment was provided by a juvenile robin that realized all that turned earth was a worm goldmine and got increasingly braver about getting close enough to us to grab them as the day progressed.

Then we ate our own weight in pizza.

Needless to say, every part of me hurts after two days of digging, so I'm taking tomorrow off doing any more building/fixing things. Chores only. And I might check with the local massage clinic to see if they have a free spot because I know I'm going to feel like somebody worked me over with my own shovel.

CAT!

Lord Brock is now on prednisone. (I remember the name because it's the same steroid my sister was treated with when doctors first diagnosed her auto-immune disorder.) Two days later he was eating his weight in chicken and four days later he is following me around the house and yelling at me like nothing happened. Complete turn-around. Fingers crossed this is the magic bullet.

HOUSE!

Inching along. Work on getting the walls and doors fixed was delayed by days of rain, but dude promised he'd be here first thing tomorrow morning. Haven't heard from roof guy, probably for the same reasons. I have started calling around for quotes to get the stairs built from the kitchen.

ME!

I have shit feet. They hurt pretty much all the time, but lately they've been extra special painful. So off I hobbled to a podiatrist, who immediately told me I have plantar fasciitis. This is a Latin phrase that roughly translates to "shit feet".

I can't even blame age for this one.

He gave me stretches, a prescription that has to be compounded, and an order to stay off my feet. So far I have managed one of those three things. Eventually I will manage to find a compounding pharmacy in this city that is open more than two hours a week, but not walking is going to be harder.

Hopefully my insurance will pay for orthotics. But I draw a hard line at Birkenstocks.

It's a warm today and I am itchy and sweaty. I have spent two days in the shed, pulling out boxes and cleaning up spider webs and mouse poop. SO MUCH MOUSE POOP. And one dead mouse.

I'm taking a break right now. when I go back outside I'll stack the things that I know are staying out there onto the shelves and finish taking the rest of it into the house. Then I'll finish going through the boxes. This is the last place in the house to be cleaned out and I've already found the paining supplies box, so I'll make a list of whatever I'm missing and tomorrow I'll hit the hardware store. I'll also be able to make the final get-things-out-of-the-house push so maybe that will make some room to empty the storage unit. We'll see.

While I'm working I'm also taking pictures of all the stuff the contractor didn't finish. I keep noticing new things, like spotting a new light switch leading me to a light fixture that was never installed. I should also take screenshots of the text messages where I repeatedly asked for receipts I never got.

Everything is taking too long. I keep offering to give money to people for help and they keep not showing up. Which in itself is frustrating. Like if you're not available, fine! But tell me so I can make other plans!

Lord Brock is doing well except for shouting at me whenever I come back from outside because how dare I not be in the room when he decides he wants to sit on me.

I should probably book a massage on the last day of the week. I already feel like somebody beat me up and it's only Tuesday.

Right. Back to the salt mines.

Today's checklist:

Plumber came today to check out the sump pump that the contractor installed. His reaction was a very polite version of "what the actual fuck?" so that confirms my suspicion that the whole thing is extremely jury-rigged. I also showed him where it empties into the backyard and he agreed that it's undermining my neighbour's fence, so he's going to have to redo the entire thing. Now I wait for his quote. I think the city will chuck me a small amount of money for the work if I get a proper receipt for it.

Filing the Old Man's taxes is the last piece of paperwork I have to do before I can close his estate account. I went through the paperwork and discovered that I never received the forms for his pension. Today I called them and they had sent it to his old retirement residence. Which is annoying because I know they have my address, they sent me the notice of overpayment the month he died. And the residence would have sent anything addressed to him return to sender - which is also annoying, because the post office won't let me request a mail forwarding from that address. So if they're sending stuff back from a company that I don't already know about there is literally no way for me to find out.

Boxed up the housemate's things. Dug through more of the basement and found some of my painting supplies, although not the main box. Organized another small box to leave the house. Put in a service request to have somebody inspect my roof. Updated the house grant info so the energy auditor can file her assessment.

It's flipping back and forth between sunny and cold sleet and the pressure fluctuations are giving me a headache. I took some drugs and I'm about to head out to the gf's so hopefully some fresh air will sort my bucket out.

I used to have a policy that no matter what else happened I would find time in the day to spend 20 minutes on the stationary bike. I would do additional stuff if I could, but that 20 minutes was the non-negotiable minimum. And I did pretty good! I kept that up for 4 solid years and then with the executor work and re-mortgage stress it went down to a couple of times a week and from there to... nothing.

So now I'm trying to make it a daily practice again.

So that's what I did yesterday after work. And tax receipts are starting to show up in the mail, so an evening of pushing paper around. Then about 100 words on the fic while listening to Maerchen1313's CanCon stream.

Day 5 Tally:
china_shop miss_squiddy

Day 4 Tally:
sylvanwitch badly_knitted trobadora china_shop shadaras nafs brithistorian cornerofmadness luzula ysilme carenejeans miss_squiddy the_siobhan

( previous days )

I keep telling myself I will post here and then not doing it. Then I look at the time stamp on my last entry and a month has gone by.

One of the things that definitely fell off the bus around the time of the funeral was my Spanish practice. I'm disinclined to go back to Duolingo since they brought in AI - I've seen lots of commentary from Spanish speakers that it's introduced a lot of errors into the program. But Duolingo did make it really easy to build a habit around practising, so I now I just have to figure out how to build a new one.

I'm also trying to build up the habit of doing Write Every Day again. And I started doing drawing exercises through DrawABox. And I'm trying to build a habit of going to the gym regularly again. That's really not a long list and none of the things on it are particularly difficult but I suck at changing multiple things at the same time so that does kind of explain why I keep running into a wall.

(Also new meds and learning to feed myself and big work stuff and the cat is also on new meds and ok, maybe it's more than four things.)

***

In very good news, contractor's tests all came back negative. No bone cancer. So he's back to work on Tuesday. I am very happy he's healthy, because I genuinely like the guy. It also means I can now yell at him without feeling guilty. He texted me that he spent all day yesterday driving to stores to pick up supplies.

One of the things that has been waiting for the end of the construction work is to get my fucking toilet fixed. I paid off the last of my credit cards this month and said great! Time to rack that baby up again! And called a plumber. He decreed the ancient throne to be unsalvageable so I have a new one winging it's way towards me. Some day very soon I will be able to crap in my own house without having to haul buckets of water from the shower to do so. What a country.

***

Saw my dad on Thursday. He wasn't doing great. It's alarming how fast his cognitive function is declining. Summer before last he would lose the occasional word. Now he only manages a few words before he starts struggling.

I sent an email to all family members and said, look I don't take risks around infection so we can do one of two things, either we do it at my house and everybody masks religiously for two weeks prior, OR we try and find a heated patio. I really didn't think the masking would fly, but much to my shock everybody agreed right away. The nephews said they mask anyway because they're both at new jobs and don't want to take time off. Everybody also said they are happy to do the family get-together in January, which means some gap after work events and NYE parties. So that's what we're going to do. This also gives me some extra time to get the kitchen sorted out - right now it's still full of boxes of crap. I don't want to unpack until the back window gets torn out because that's going to be filthy. But if I have a couple of extra weeks I have time to 1) harass the contractor to finish it 2) clean up after 3) put in shelves and 4) unbox everything.

Wish me luck.

***

I have been absolutely fascinated by everything that's happening around the CEO shooting in Manhattan. Not so much the shooting itself but the social media around it. Conservative commentators are getting pushback from their audiences when they frame it as "lefty's celebrating". People in New York actively telling each other not to cooperate with the police.

This article is a good example, there are people who spend their spare time solving crimes who have have done a lot to close cold cases and they're all saying nah to this one.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/internet-sleuths-say-wont-help-find-unitedhealthcare-ceo-suspect-rcna183228

It's been like a real-life Leverage episode and it's fascinating.

It has also led to a lot of Americans talking about their personal experiences with private healthcare. It's always been a horror show, but I feel like it's gotten worse in the last 10 years as the capitalism pressure-cooker gets hotter. Companies can't just make profit, they can't even just make more profit every year, they have to make a higher percentage increase in profit every year - until they hit the wall of course, because that shit's just not sustainable in the long term.

I am really hoping that Ontarians are reading these stories. Because our province is pushing for private healthcare and that's going to be very very bad news if the public just lets them get away with it.

So that happened.

I'm seeing theories of cheating which honestly wouldn't surprise me even a tiny little bit. I'm also seeing calls for progressives not to stumble down the conspiracy theory path, which is also fair. But you know, there's no harm in asking for a recount, right? If the numbers were that close?

Maybe a do-over?

I have other thoughts, but they are not for a public forum. All I can say here is, take care of yourselves.

***

I'm still plugging away over here. I have reached the small fiddly part of organizing that is so hard because I am still waiting on things to be finished. In the meantime I've resigned myself to putting things back in boxes while I wait for the house to be done.

Contractor hasn't been here for a month in spite of frequent promises of "next week". Turns out his cancer is back and his doctors keep dragging him in for tests. I can't complain about him putting his health first, but I am complaining about him not telling me what's going on. I can't plan around his schedule if he won't fucking tell me what it is.

Cheap fast or good. Pick two.

On the plus side, took a chance that the contractor wouldn't be here last week and got the furnace guy to come in. Just in time for the temperature to drop 15 degrees. Now I need to find the manual so I can reset the thermostat since the housemate was always cold and I tend to run hot.

***

Cat was supposed to go in for some dental work. Instead I got a call from the vet saying, I'm concerned about his heart murmur...

Wait, his what now?

So now I have to take him into a cardiologist for an assessment. I legit did not know they have cardiologists for cats. But here we are.

***

I finally got my big-boy pants on and joined the gym around the corner. So far I really like like it. Huge queer contingent. Very body positive. Lots of variation in skill & fitness levels. I am sore as hell, entirely in the good way.

Really the only down side is that the building is old and the ventilation is shit. I wear a mask every class but so far I'm the only one.

I'm also thinking I need to find time to hit up a massage therapist because hoo boy, are my muscles complaining about being out of practice. And one of the clinics near me just sent out email saying that they now have a practitioner who specifically does scar work, so I might set up an appointment just for that.

Still plugging away.

I am at the grumpy stage because I am TIRED of healing and BORED of waiting to get back to normal and I WOULD LIKE TO BE ABLE TO LIFT THINGS AGAIN NOW.

So right on schedule.

The Old Man went into the hospital last Sunday. I couldn't tell you how, but for some reason I had a strong inkling it was for the last time. He passed away on Friday night.

I'm not sure yet how I feel about it. I may not be sure for quite some time. His last meal was with me, sitting on a patio in the sun and drinking a beer. I have a picture of him, grinning across the table at me from under a patio umbrella.

The Long Term Care facilities in this town give you 24 hours to clean out their room. That feels harsh but I get why, there are over 800 people on a waiting list for that room and they all need it badly. So two weeks after renting a truck to move his things into the new place I rented the exact same truck to pack everything back out. My nephew came to help, in spite of being disastrously hung over. The ex-housemate also shocked me by driving up to help - they showed up at my house on time in the morning and then packed boxes, hauled furniture, re-arranged the storage unit, and poured coffee into me when I needed it.

In retrospect, they were always much better at dealing with emergencies than the daily grind.

My storage unit is now full and so is my ground floor. My task today is to find the will and get the paperwork started. Tomorrow I have an appointment with the funeral home. I need to sort through the clothes to find something to bury him in, and I figure while I'm at it I can fill up a box to go to a shelter and a bag to go into the trash. There are photos to go through and laundry to do and parking tickets to pay.

So it goes.

Yesterday went well. Housemate packed up all their stuff in the main floor and took a huge chunk out of the stuff stored upstairs. Most of my contribution was negotiations around, "If I can take X, I'll let you have Y & Z". River's new poop stash was located and cleaned up. There are Even More piles of boxes everywhere, but now the boxes are sorted into my stuff in the kitchen, theirs in the front room.

Still to do: cold room under the porch, backyard shed, storage unit. All much smaller so that should be fast. I have every expectation I will be putting odds and ends into boxes for them the entire time I am cleaning and re-organizing.

***

About two weeks ago I started gently poking at my lawyer. Everything on track? Not that I'm expecting you all aren't entirely competent, but you see I have trust issues. We good? Yes? Yes?

So I cannot say I was shocked that I got up this morning to a message from my lawyers office about they haven't heard from the bank about my re-fi. Reached out to the bank and they said they're waiting on a title change. Lawyers says we can't do that, old mortgage isn't paid out yet. Me: Look, can you people TALK TO EACH OTHER, because I have no idea what's required or in what order, that's supposed to be your jobs. Figure it out and then tell me what you need from me.

We have six more days.

Then I had to go to my doctor to get my scrips renewed and she's like, your blood pressure is higher and this is cause for concern. Ha, ha, let me tell you a story doc. So she signed off on the meds and when she gave me the requisition for all my bloodwork said to get the tests done in a couple of months instead of right away. I expect I'll be fine by then. Today my blood is probably toxic to pets and small children.

When I got home the contractor was in my basement dealing with the flood. Did I mention my basement flooded? We've had thunderstorms last couple of nights with the heat and my basement flooded. So we talked and he apparently has been consulting with a guy who specializes in wells for rural properties and so we discussed what he's going to do next. It sounded good from a layman's perspective so have at, go crazy.

And then I wandered from room to room and looked at all the piles of boxes and all the stuff that still has to be sorted out and my brain went nope not today and I just wandered right back on out again.

So I guess I'll pick it back up tomorrow.

( to-do list cut to save your dashboard )