Coming up: The menacing menagerie take flight in a flurry of sick-day sorcery. Will the Jewels of (W)rightlandia be lost to a phlegmy gasp, hack and rasp. Or will they turn out to be in Adella's pocket all along? A deep spelunk inward as our heroine moves from eggs of wrath to lunar ova landings in unerotic locales. At the deepest point of shadow-self, she finds the next direction along the treasure map o'uberty. Will her ride along the fiercer, paler barracuda carry her through cumuli to her prickly FSH fantasia, or will the lurking calcium assassin off her long before? And dates daubed in oils: a far-flung friend celebrates the rites of aging with a special trek to urban art. Will Adella blast the birch in her bacchanalia of birthday hullaballooing? Will a blue-finned seaworld bring love and peace and a tint of anxiety to our hacking honey-doves?
Rustle up your smocks, stockpile the kleenex and power up your spreadsheets to plunge the mysteries below...
Aerial Porcines Versus Soaring Simians No Animals Were Harmed in the Making of this Half-Assed Sick-Day Header
So, that ballet I was mentioning. I assume it actually happened. I can't say it didn't. But I can't say it did either. Really, given the inevitable errata of human memory, I can't say much of anything objective about the past. I suppose one step further, the distortions in our perceptions would put the quietus on saying much objective about the present either. And the future doesn't exist. Unless it does. And it is also the past and/or the present and/or time is an illusion because all time stopped in 79 A.D. and why the heck are we so obsessed with it anyways?
But this aside, before the meander through the non-heuristics of existence, I was more aiming towards the comment that yesterday turned into a sick-day. Andrew was even waner and weaker than the day prior. So deep was his ailing that he voluntarily (and without coaching) took a pass on doing a run or a bicycle workout. Upon rising, in fact, he promptly voiced his disinclination to go out of the house in groggy gravelly timbre at all. Somewhat tanking our whole Seattle excursion plan, which requires leaving the house quite decidedly. After some initial cellular scurrying, I passed on my initial inclination to pass the tickets on. They sit inutile and expired on our bookshelf.
Yes, I could have gone stag, but I've been stoically (yeah, right) nursing my own sore throat and dotty head for the last few days. I figure I'd just as soon stem full symptomatic 'xplosion off at the pass. And, besides, Stand (or, in this case, lay prostrate) By Your Man and all that crap!
Given my tangos with various klutzy mishaps throughout the day, I suspect staying home was a wise call. I began the morning by throwing a fair fit over my absent keys. They were, of course, in my pocket. But I only discovered this after uprooting the house over the course of a half hour and several prat falls. I proceeded to spill a large bag of water all over the sink-area. The water of course b-lined for our paper-towels, which have osmosed into a uniform DAMP. I threw my phone at the ground, nearly dislodging the pretty peacock on the back of my case. I splashed a half cup of coffee all over our clean dishes. I upended my pudla past the pan and into the oven flame beneath it...
So, instead of tearing down to Seattle, Mr. (W)right and I tore it up on various cushy surfaces. In between wallows, I did go for a walk at the harbor and another tour of Fred Meyer's. Out of eggs (let's not read too much into that, please) and still feeling indecisive. Too many choices, not enough information. Might as well just go with DEATH EGGS and have done.
More importantly, I purchased a few of my Halloween movies that have intransigently resisted availability via streaming: Coraline and Corpse Bride. Andrew hadn't seen either, because he's been living in a bubble his entire life (we call it: his head). We've at least righted that score regarding Coraline now. It's very important I have access to my seasonal movies. Paranorman, at least, is available widely on streaming. Several more can be recorded on my mom's DVR. But Coraline and Corpse Bride have eluded my grasp for a few Halloweens. I'd call this day a victory based on that acquisition alone.
Since I'd anticipated being gone all day, dinner was set up at about 6 a.m. Most of the cooking and kitchenry whirlwinding had also been wrapped up the prior day. It made kind of an off-day for both of us. Which was nice. I do love being able to rummage around the kitchen and take care of the house. Maybe I'm still a kid at heart, but it often still feels like I'm playing house more than just maintaining my own house. That said, it's hard to sit still in the house nowadays. There's always something needing attention. Something that could be done. Andrew blocks it out with a certain masculine panache that I admire but am loathe and ill-equipped to emulate.
Yes, this confirms all sorts of gender stereotypes that will doubtless play an increasing role in our lives. My sister posted an article titled "Having One Parent Stay Home is a Luxury... For the Other Spouse." I can imagine. Though I am neither a parent, nor a stay-at-homer, there's an obvious progression from patterns I notice in our DINK life to the stay-at-home strain. When I have time off, I tend to instinctively (and maniacally) channel it towards domestic upkeep in some way or other, while Andrew tends to immediately channel free time into working out.
I work less and have more time, so I have already taken over the cooking and baking (helps I enjoy it more). I do the day to day cleaning since the cooking and baking makes most of the mess and once I've started I might as well continue. While we both do our individual laundry, I'm probably the one washing the towels and the sheets 99% of the time. Not that Andrew wouldn't eventually, but I'm honed to be aware of it long before he is. And I can't rest until things are handled in some way. When he has the same amount of time off, he really can (and it's an admirable skill, I repeat) devote all of his focus and energy to leisure, bike projects, computer games, staring at the internet...
Easy to see that projecting forward. From an economic perspective, partners confabulate to have one parent do the tasks that they would otherwise pay somebody to do - cleaning, cooking, childcare - in lieu of working to afford that level of care. There are intangible advantages to having the parent/spouse take those things on, but you can simmer it down to a job that isn't externally compensated or clearly delineated. And, as many stay-at-homes have remarked, there is no off-time. Not really. The working spouse has a spectrum of contexts to aid in the off-work-on-work hat-donning. Maybe smart phones and telecommuting have obfuscated this distinction, but there still is a separate home/work sphere.
When s/he gets "off work" then s/he comes "home" and expects some level of downtime. If the working spouse were single, then s/he would spend that downtime taking care of the domestic duties and self-care. Since there's another spouse, they have a lot of that covered already. Probably in a more elaborate and pleasant way than they would have had the energy or impetus to do. So, yeah, kind of a luxury.
Quite the tangent, but when I watch myself spending all weekend fussing about the house without coming down to roost, I think of my sister and that article. And I get it.
Having a day where I didn't really allow myself to do much fussing was enlightening. Oh I did some. Dinner still needed attention (I overfilled the slow cooker by a fair margin and had to strain about six cups of soup out before I could add the final ingredients) and there were several rounds of cleaning to go. It still took some bouts with restlessness in the meantime to roost down (ok, pace) with a book for a spell between naps and movies and offering to buy lozenges or other things for the ailing man-beast.
And back to work with me! -Ish. I actually have a fair amount of business out of the office. A WCP board meeting which should prove more interesting than anticipated. One of our board members injured himself with a chainsaw and has promptly withdrawn from group membership. A little more complicated because we had an event planned at his home in less than a month. And lest I get too embroiled there, I have another ultrasound this afternoon to see if I get to switch up from looby lady pills and patches to high doses of orange barracuda in my eternal quest to ride horses on beaches in breezy blanche palazzo pants.
Hoping your day is full of happy monkeys that hop more than fly.
Mega-Super-Ultra Sounds of Mainly Marvelous Madness And other tales of a frenetic first work-day
Another Monday, another mad rush to everywhere but the office. Well, I was in fact at the office yesterday, but with a number of interruptions as seems to be my Monday wont.
Not that I - in substantial ways - wanted to flee from a board meeting to Mt Baker Imaging in order to have a strikingly unerotic encounter with an ultrasound wand. Some people gaze into their navels. I personally prefer to look much deeper and employ the marvels of modern medical science to find my deeply inner self displayed in inscrutable maritime tv broadcast. How ultrasound techs find anything in that morass of gray palpitating material is beyond me, but it's oddly calming fodder for meditation during an uncomfortable spell of time.
For all I know, I could be looking at footage of the moon landing, but I suppose it's fascinating to see myself from the inside. Pretty sure I found my shadow-self, several manifestations of id, and what I'm told was some representation of lady-parts. No sphynx cats incubating up in there. At least not that anyone told me.
But good news is that whatever the endocrinologist was looking for was indeed there. That means I get to add a whole new hormone protocol to my practice: Prometrium! No, not Prometheus. I don't - thank god - have to watch that inscrutable whacked out flick in calculated drabs for the next twelve days to hopefully induce a cycle. Prometrium is the brand name for what I was once coining the orange barracuda. Except this is a little... different. I won't wax on about the delivery mechanism on this one except to say that it expands my repertoire of absorption mechanisms and, well, it's only for twelve days.
If I can actually get the scrip. My regular contact at SRM wasn't working yesterday, so the woman who called did say that she would call it in to my pharmacy. So far the pharmacy hasn't gotten any calls. I don't know if that's just a lapse in timing or if she called the wrong pharmacy. So, glad I called ahead to check. I even went to the most likely "other" pharmacy somebody might mistake mine for just to check. No dice. Ah well. One more day won't kill me.
Between the board meeting (fascinating Collaborative Law stuff but too damned amazing to share here without blowing minds into a fever pitch of liability), I did rush about a bit so I'd be ready in the afternoon for our return to pilates. Pilates is great. But like all routines, once you've broken faith with it for a spell, getting back (and abs and intercostals) into it is terrifying. My mom and I had to set a date and commit unquestioningly to make it up to that workout room. Nevermind that I'd forgotten my workout clothes. Nevermind that Andrew usually gets home earlier on Mondays, and I wanted to deal with the beans I'd left in the slow cooker, make yogurt, make lunches, make dinner, and buy eggs/milk before he did.
In frenzy of determination, I sped to the Freddy's between downtown and home. After my cunctation had quandried me into an eggless quagmire, I ended up buying basically the poshest eggs they had on sale. I think those hens had regular massages, spoke fluent French and Latin, and were raised on a series of all organic kale-chia-flax-goji smoothies to supplement their regular yoga routines. Andrew said he couldn't taste a difference, but the sheer ingestion of such products has puffed him up several magnitudes in smugness. Yes, yes they were the price of nearly three cartons of the cheapo kind. Not the ones I'd intended to buy, but... the rest were sold out and it was a harried, hurried time. Then I bought skim milk (not my thing, I'm a full fat gal in dietary habits if not always in figure) by accident. Not my most successful shopping venture all in all.
But gosh dagnadamnidarnit, I made it to pilates! And it was lovely to return. She held off on the few exercises that I really dread. And, due to an absence of the heavier weights, I took it a little easier. Which is probably good. I do have a tendency to injure myself somehow.
And, because fortune casts a sweet little Mona Lisa smirk at me from time to time, Andrew had motive and opportunity to stay later at work. Which was a blessed relief after I came home from my empty-handed pharmacy quest to an endless to-do list, a chaotic kitchen, and an addled brain. Things pulled together by the time he returned, but just barely. I think I had managed to finally sit do two crossword clues before his victorious homecoming.
So again I'm at a Tuesday that feels like it oughta be at least Wednesday. But I think I can handle the distemporitis at this point. If plans are what they were last week, I believe I'll be seeing Azita at the gym soon, which should reorient me back in time for the DRC shift. Yes, I really do sometimes spend time at the office (the secret being that I come in at 6 a.m. which gives me a little wiggle room to shake my scheduling-samba hips).
May your Tuesdays tickle your tra-la-la, and may we all make it to Wednesday with a minimum of fuss!
Promie Pro and the Excel_lent Spreadsheet Another Tuesday, another TGI Dromedary Day
Hello orange barracuda, my old frenemy. You, of the soporous soten snoozes and the diurnal dazes. We have returned from estrogen cocktail (as in the pill-patch combo, not as in Cosmo with a cherry garnish served in a spiffy glass on lady's night) land to the oaky progesterone chaser. I will continue to exercise discretion on exactly how progesterone chases the other meds I take, but it turns out that the "pills" I had been taking are the same ones I've been prescribed on this go-around. Just with drastically differing instructions. Can't say which one floors me more, but it's going to be an "interesting" twelve days in my next phase of Adella-as-a-lovely-little-lab-rat.
Needless to say, I slept pretty soundly last night. And reality is still a bit buoyant and squidgy to my brain this early foggy morning. I feel a bit like I'm moving through warm gel; this is not an entirely unpleasant situation, though somewhat dissonant with the clammy mist hovering about town.
Rather fortunate that I had my day of intense focus yesterday. There's plenty to do today as well, but yesterday was a flow-state and flow-chart kinda day. There's a case we don't pay much heed to (it got shelved by everyone, including the parties once a mediation was scheduled several months back) that is now due for mediation.
Both parties are cagey in their different ways. Our client is just a bit unclear at all times. In that stridently certain way that makes efforts to glean eensy nuggets of clarification a Gladiatorial task. The other party is kind of a "charmer" as well, and his irrational and untenable positions seem to be supported by his attorney (whose take on Washington State law is ... creative? subversive? post-post-modern?).
There's a long history before we got involved, of course as well. And several substantive issues that haven't even been addressed, given a high level of distraction over a minor issue. So, a day of spelunking for Adella led to a fairly sound (though as yet unsupported with documentation or solid numbers) mediation letter, and several proposed papers. I'm proud of my beautiful bouncy baby pleadings.
And in the afternoon, I made a pretty! Finally had time to hammer together the Excel case status sheet for foreclosure cases that I'd discussed with Luke several eons ago. Not sure what he'll do with it from here, but it is awfully attractive. I can't believe I haven't learned excel earlier. It is such an Adella piece of software. You can make columns different colors and text go all which ways. Oh and I guess it's pretty powerful for tracking and sorting and whatnot too. I was so proud of my little accomplishment that I took a picture to share before remembering that there were remnants of confidential client information on it. Darn. It was, though, I assure you, pretty.
In between, I tried my darndest to be sociable by leaving the office to meet Azita at the gym as previously (I thought) planned. She was, of course, a no-show. Hey, I tried. But glad I didn't wait around too long. Didn't hear back from her until 4 p.m. That would have been quite the camp out in the YMCA lobby. Nice place and all, but I have my limits.
Today it appears our client has provided nothing of use (several other things of course), so I can remain in my little daze for at least a while longer before a mad dash and a grand punt. By punt I mean "throwing the half-baked papers on somebody else's desk while screaming NOT IT!!!"
And for the rest of the vagaries of today I second that emotion: 1-2-3- NOT IT!!!!
Except for lunch. Lunch is totally it for me!
Happy dromedary day!
Calcium Death Lozenges and the Big Blue Fins of Maine
Yesterday was not a great day for swallowing. First, my mom attempted to retracted a minor gleam of drool and managed to inhale a hostile crouton crumb into her larynx. Her diaphragmatic paroxysm resounded from shore to shore, though no medics were required. Moral being: to drool is human; to choke on a breadcrumb, disgusting and likely to end you up with more production of spittle than the original salivatory offender. In the argot of today's kiz: it rulz to droolz.
To follow suit, last night I managed to supplement my supplementation routine with a good gaga gag of an attempt at swallowing a rather large calcium pill. It's my own fault. Instead of sagaciously swallowing one pill at a time, I got impatient and threw the handful in my mouth for one fell gulp. Should I say, attempted gulp?
Generally the pharmacopeia o'fun followed my intent and river rafted down with the glug-glug of water accompanying it. The calcium horse pill, however, tried to make a break for it. Doing a semi-somersault, it managed to lodge itself in my throat and hang on for dear life. Didn't want to come up and didn't want to go down. I'm sure it would have eventually disintegrated to a swallowable point had I been capable of patience, but given that every slight tremor of throat initiated a violent gag reflex, I wasn't quite able to wait it out.
Just shy or regurgitating my entire handful (plus dinner), I finally managed to down another two glasses of water and coax the cantankerous calcium to its proper destination. Amazing any of us are alive some days.
I hope that's not a key to how my day went yesterday. I think, other than my near gag experiences, I had a pleasant day. Bestie-Molly has a birthday next week. Marcus will be out of town, so I'd started to work up the nerve to ask her out for some celebratory hoorah with some texting.
I'm generally convinced that inviting people out - especially busy parents who never sleep and occasionally bemoan their guilt and distaste for constantly turning down their childless friends' unrealistically exuberant invitations - is an imposition. It takes a lot of strategy for me to reach the inviting period (thank god I'm not a high school boy in the 1950's trying to go steady).
After some intimations that I might be abducting her and forcing her to celebrate at Chuck-E-Cheese, I succeeded in getting an invite from her to try something called Uptown Art. It's an art class. It's a party. It's an art class. It's a party! It's an art class AND a party (or at least gathering space for hip youngish grown-ups spending a different kinda night on the town). You sign up for a three hour class in which everyone learns how to paint the same painting (with instructor help). And there are drinks. We both figured it was just interesting enough and just out of character enough to be a perfect birthday excursion.It's not clubbing all-nighters with friends who can't hold their liquor... thank god. But it's exciting. And staying out past 10:00 on a Wednesday? I feel so wild! Naturally I'll have to take a nap first.
And last night was date night! Craving sushi (by which I mean wasabi and avocado re-wrapped in some seaweed after I've skimmed off most of the rice), I would have easily defaulted to our stable staple, Lakeway Teriyaki. It's a no frills kind of semi-strip mall joint, but they make nice sushi at a good price. Since I actually do watch our bank statements, I can tell you that we go there a lot. And date night is theoretically supposed to be about doing something a little special, a little different, and maybe re-channeling some of that initial discomfort and uncertainty of pre-marital dating. As such, I went totally and absolutely wild by suggesting three other potential Japanese restaurants.
We settled on Blue Fin Sushi. Located between a dentist and a Pizza Hut Bistro by a McDonald's, it's strip-mallesque, for sure, but an ambient sort of strip mall. We'd previously been thwarted in attempts to dine there by a twenty minute wait. For whatever reason, this was not the circumstance last night. Last night, patronage was sparse and service was zealously attentive. The maki was meh, but Andrew got his beloved bento box, and I got avocado and seaweed. The server helpfully informed me that next time I might want to get the avocado nigiri if I wasn't totally into the rice.
And today is a tip of the toe to Thursday! More fun with spreadsheets peradventure! More mucking about with actual trial preparations (the horror)! And hopefully more sockage. There's a whole 'nother half of this month to haunt with ghoulish toes, after all.
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