This is the story of a girl, who had no energy for the whole world... but a lot to get done! Something about the turn of fall that just brings on the must dos and the dosey doos and the ... yeah can she manage to schedule her way through it all or will she paralyze with overwhelm and keep scrolling... just keep scrolling...
10/18
The calendar said Ballard Natural Gas 8-9 a.m.
Because they often send somebody who reeks of cologne, I opened all the windows before I left to drop off my old phone (my new phone finally arrived! Thank god! (Also I don't love it and I wish I had a fancier but equally small version of my old Pixel 4a... ah well)).
Went to the UPS store... actually it was prepaid through FedEx.
Whoops.
Went to the FedEx in the Walgreen's by our house. Nobody was at the counter so eventually the teller called me over and said she could handle it at the general checkout. But I hadn't taped it together, since UPS always handles that themselves. So I went and bought some tape. Spent an awkward and painful amount of time trying to tape the label on the top of the box, while another customer watched me struggle impatiently. The customer was restless, I was more flustered. The cashier relented and tried to help. The tape did not want to go on! Or come off the roll!
At any rate, I got home at about 8:50, assuming that BNG would either be in progress or just arriving. They werent, so I got to eat my breakfast unmolested in the kitchen.
Then I hand washed my dishes, because...
We seem to have a cursed dishwasher!!!
So I don't know what's wrong with our dishwasher. I think it's possessed. Or has dishwasher GERD or something. All I know is it seems to be vomiting dirty gross water back up into itself (and our clean dishes).
It's gotten "better." Actually quite a bit. Andrew did something that slowed down the disgustingness. But I'm not convinced it's that much "better"
I feel like this isn't fully healed somehow. But I did clean the filter (yet again!) and it had been more than a week since I last cleaned it, so I guess we'll see. Maybe we just have a really high maintenance dishwasher
this is after I cleaned it with a tooth brush and three cycles of those dishwashing tablets:
Most of my life I have had a preferred "bowl" (often it's one of those giant chili mugs, but currently it's an actual bowl because my lasts chili mug broke), a preferred mug/bottle/glass, and a little bit more of a loose preference for cutlery. So long as they are of suitable size and shape anyways. I use the same ones for every meal and am happy. Occasionally I use a plate, but usually just to cover up my bowl in the microwave. I have my ways.
I somewhat prefer just having enough that I wash between meals and re-use. But it's a little more onerous when it's three people. And it's more onerous still when you have dermatitis.
The thing that really brought me over to the dishwasher dark side back in 2017 or so was reading that it was in fact way more ecological to wash dishes with a dishwasher. How to disagree with mother nature?
But then again, I dunno. When the dishwasher is routinely spitting up on your dishes... well... we still run it, but I've taken to handwashing the cutlery and my individual bowl and cups. It's a strange compromise but it works. For now.
At any rare, breakfast eaten, dishes washed... BNG was still not here.
But... they could be there at any moment... So I refused to make any phone calls or do anything on my list that couldn't be interrupted. I am a person who will get this impending sense of "any minute now" once something is scheduled, and I cannot do further tasks until it is accomplished and likely really not until a day after it's accomplished.
After another half hour I decided to close the windows again, because it was getting down below 60 degrees.
But I still hovered like one of Tenesse Williams' footless birds.
I don't really like making phone calls. And I find it even more stressful to do so when they might be interrupted. The waiting. The hold. The explaning that I got a call and that my doctor said call them. The scheduling annoyance of being asked "what works for you" without any explanation of what is likely available to the doctor. The explaining about various allergens... it's a headache.
So I'll wait days if necessary until the absolute perfect conditions to do so. Which is silly because I could just get it over with and all. But here we are. I have a window for phone calls that must align with perfect mental and spiritual clarity.
I also skipped getting my blood draw because I was too hungry by the time I could have gone out for it and it's technically a fasting test. But really I just hate blood draws and I will draw (har har) this shiznet out for weeks.
I'll get to it eventually. Today is the day to survive Ballard Natural Gas! That's what was on the list. It apparently takes all day. And until they've actually arrived and finished up and the strong cologney odor has been vanquished with extra ventilation... That's all I will be able to adult about today.
By 9:40, I asked Andrew if the arrival window had really been 8 to 9 or maybe just a wider range. He said he actually had no idea. I said, "whichever" in a casual sing song, but what i really meant was "are you insane?? This is absolutely crucial information that I cannot fully live or function without... how do you not see this is life or death??" When he came down for coffee at about 10:30, he said "yeah it must have been one of those things like "before lunch"
My heart sinks even in the retelling.
Because in my head, if there's a window and they don't arrive within it... maybe they won't arrive at all. maybe there won't be people rummaging thorugh my space stinking it up, occasionally demanding that I act polite and interested and possibly discuss features of my appliances, which I have little interest or energy in doing. Though if they wanna take a stab at our dishwasher... all blessings to them
By 11:59, they still hadn't arrived, so much for the "by lunchtime" theory. At least, for me "lunchtime" is basically noon on the dot. I realize that it's probably more like a window between about 11:30 and 1:30 or so for most people. Possibly even less precise. My father-in-law, for instance, eats his "lunch" at about 5:30 p.m. But to me. This is what it is. This is how my brain likes to translate it. So ... a bit of relief crept in.... did I get to relax and assume they aren't coming yet?? This is what my brain asked itself anyways.
Eventually Andrew called and it turns out we weren't even on the schedule!
But too late. What's done is done. My task for the day was accomplished. Sort of.
I recalibrated my weekly mental goals as Andrew scheduled another and/or a first appointment and we went on with our days.
Blood test. Phone calls. Definitely could be done the next couple of days... or... maybe not!
10/19
Thursday morning I woke up with a swarm of bees in my aorta. Or something. Not in terms of pain, although I have plenty of lovely pangs that may either be gas, heartburn, or that slipped thorasic disc they found during my last chest CT... and pretty much is all of the above
More like my heart was attuned to Flight of the Bumblebee. I get this not infrequently, but the last time I woke up with a resting heart rate in the 80s to 90s, it developed from there to full blown covid. So I get nervous now. I could not convince it to calm down again for some while before I just went back to bed. Which seemed to help. Got Allan packed off to school, made it home, and established our halloween cats before the bees began flying again.
Maybe the cats scared me!
I also felt like passing out. This could easily have been - and I acknowledged this - the fact that I couldn't sleep the previous night. So I retreated to the a dark room and "watched" an old season of Top Chef - my comfort sicko show, as it turns out. I have no exact clue what happened in the episodes I "watched" but there was food beyond my wildest fancies and some of it was beyond amazing and some of it was... "disappointing". Somewhere in there, I cancelled my xolair appointent in a fit of good faith and not wanting to infect people. Accepting I would be at least a week late and hoping my urticaria wouldn't be too ornery for the exchange.
I felt better having done that but my heart rate was still pretty elastic and it was still just a little too close to the trajectory from prior COVID. So Andrew and I ate lunch outside and mostly avoided each other. I spent most of the day preparing the downstairs room (which was in a bit of disrepair) for some occupancy. A little while later, Andrew cancelled his evening plans and I took a covid test before picking Allan up. So far, so negative. My heart, as it is wont to do, decided to mellow the fuck out and be normal by afternoon, which was heartening but somewhat confusing.
I still wore a mask for the evening. Allan was amused, instead of worried, which is good. She told me that I had her cold (the cold she's denied having for a few days now). But she was quite happy to have a daddy Allan night for dinnertime. I asked if she'd like to me to stick around and she instructed me to go upstairs. Or he could. One of us needed to be upstairs (it's her new thing - one parent should always be upstairs so any noises from the upstairs are clearly attributable)
So I went upstairs and Allan texted me on her messenger app. Which is our thang. This is a big way to connect for Allan (and, well, us). She sends me away and then we text. She sends videos or gifs or something very specific. There are several particular scripts and games attached to each of her choices. There are calls and responses. It's quite an elaborate syntactic virtual dance. Very engaging. Very involved.
During this time, I also texted Andrew. I mentioned I was feeling better instead of worse (the degree to which things deteriorated the time I had covid was remarkably noteable) and he texted he had the sniffles too. We decided the odds were good that we either all had covid or all had a cold and it was probably from Allan since neither of us had actually really been anywhere in the last five days. I was told I was free to stop isolating/masking, considering this conclusion. But we both acknolwedged that I was not currently allowed downstairs, as Allan had made her will known about the appropriate state of parental distributions during dinnertime.
I asked Allan if I had permission to participate in the bedtime and bathroom rituals. She said her equivalent of hells no and sent me another video.
Later we did in fact skip "mommy time" (the first round where I read to her), but I was still summoned after her podcast. She managed to convince me to do some of the reading to her before I swapped night shifts with Andrew.
I really like the book she's reading. It's about a boy named Bat. Bat's casually autistic, which is to say he is an autistic character and very much not a very special episode. He flaps his arms, and doesn't like mushy foods, but the story isn't about him being autistic as much as he just is an autistic character, and the people in his life largely accept him just as Bat.
At any rate, I realized that I'd started a new bottle of hydroxyzine the night before (anti-histamine that makes you drowsy) and wondered if my weird morning had been a reaction to a new filler added to the pills. Swapped bottles, since I have a backlog and I will say whatever the case, no weird hangover the next morning...
... But tired... Allan had a bad dream about a spider in her shoe at about 2:30 a.m. and of course getting back to sleep after that is not exactly manageable for any but the best of sleepers. Andrew was a champ and did the second round (after I tried to sneak out and Allan noticed ten minutes later). I made sure to come and get him before his alarms started going off.
Anyways, fun adventures never cease. Needless to say, I did not make any appointments and in fact added to my list of appointments to make....
10/20:
Having been alarmed to the possibility of COVID coming back into our lives, Andrew located a vaccine event happening on Saturday. Excitement! Anxiety!!!
I've never had a bad reaction to the covid vax (yet), but I have had some hiviness after a few shots and vaccines have a way of hetting up an already histrionic immune system.
The joy of MCAS is the sheer spontaneity of reactions. You can take a medicine, eat a food, or be in a location just fine for years and then BAM suddenly not ok, very much not so. So, vaccines in particular make me nervous. Allan also sometimes is totally cool about getting shots and sometimes it's nuclear threat level panic. I had the usual fretting about this and whether the environment itself would be sterilized in some allergen heavy way... Oh for fun! The pop up wasn't until the afternoon so I had plenty of time to simmer, while Allan lounged about her day and mostly kept to herself.
I knew that Andrew was out biking and we'd go some time after he "got back". I somewhat predicted by the heavily "supplies while they last" language that going late to this event would likely be an endeavor in futility. Mostly I just wanted to get it over with. It seemed for a brief period of time like Andrew's plans would set him up to be back well in time to hit the pop up when it opened at two. I knew that we had never actually planned this, and that it was highly unlikely things would run so smoothly, but my brain grabbed on to this as a goal. It almost seemed feasible even.
It was not. Plans were modified a few times in little ways. He still got back just a bit after two, but then there was putting the bike away, taking a shower, having lunch (which I kept forgetting to make for him after insting I could). We ended up getting out of the house a bit after 3. Not bad, mind you. Just kind of an hour of unavoidable stewing on my part.
We got there to find a line heading up some stairs into the mysterious unknown. The line did not move. The whole time we were there, it did not move.
There was a sign at the door saying they were out of adult COVID vaccines but had first come first serve pediatric vaccines, maybe. Eventually standing in line got old and Andrew went up to check the situation. Apparently the line just kept going up a few more flights of stairs, and intot the horizon. People in front of us were still choosing to leave... eventually we also left.
We tried to make appointments a variety of places to no avail. We dropped in first thing at Rite Aid on Sunday morning to be told that while "drop ins are welcome" they can't have COVID shots (just some tea and friendly pat on the back I guess?). Double anxiety days mixed with an exceptionally high energy Allan has left the weekend feeling especially ... exuberant?? Eventful?? Exhausting!
Quite the weekend energy going into the coming week
Some weeks are just not the weeks to get things done is all, but maybe the next week?
***
Epilogue:
I actually eventually scheduled my medical appointments some time the next week. And eventually, Ballard Natural Gas actually did come. It wasn't bad. It was the nice guy without perfume and he was pleasant enough to talk to in passing. I got my blood drawn by a miracle worker.
In a fit of productivity I finally hit vaxx gold with Costco, but not until... some time after... well we sorted it out and appointments were made on Friday for Allan and Andrew, and some time later for me since my rescheduled xolair shot was already on Friday and they can't be taken in the same day.
After learning to self-administer my xolair shot (still need to battle with the pharmacy but hopefully next shot I can do from the comfort of my house instead of driving to Bellevue, waiting in a cramped packed room of snotty maskless people, and driving home), I was a lil tired, but nonetheless determined to make this Costco thing work.
We all packed into the car and headed out to Costco... on a Friday afternoon.
Bright. Stuffy. And roiling with noises. I instantly felt this tightness in my sternum but kept breathing. We had an appointment. Even walk ins were getting in and out in fifteen.
Of course they had my information but not Allan's. I had the confirmation emails but there we were. I had forgotten to sign Andrew up for a flu shot too. Things happened. They told us to wait while they reprocessed something. We waiting in a couple of chairs in a busy aisle. They took about 30 minutes. I had my hat and my sunglasses on, so it was less visible that I was crying but the agitated pacing probably wasn't anyone's cup of thrill.
Nonetheless, it happened!!!
Boy did it. Hopefully Allan's subsequent febrile couch surfing is because this was her very first Moderna shot and not one of those too-late viruses already brewing before her shots!
Nonetheless. A lot got done and I'm ... done.
Let's ignore the fact that the coming week is possibly even busier with another slew of appointments to make and appointments to keep
Today is the day for watching endless cat videos on youtube and checking the child's temperature every few hours. Honestly, it's sounds like about the best thing ever!
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