Of Moose And Men
The Best Laid Plans Of Both Often Go Astray

The week between Xmas and New Years can be an odd one. Cleaning up from Xmas, figuring out where new things need to go. Finishing off leftovers. Etc.

Two weeks on the new drugs, and also dropped a decongestant that I’ve been taking for forever (20 years?) because it can raise BP. Other than the withdrawal from the decongestant (felt like a bad head cold, especially on day three), things have settled in. Of course there’s a weird paranoia that comes with having had a TIA – is any odd sensation, which would not have raised an eyebrow prior to three weeks ago, related? They’re not, of course, but that doesn’t stop one from idly questioning each and every one. I’m more likely now to move out of a position that will give me pins-and-needles now than I was previously, if only to prove it’s not my brain misfiring (as opposed to just cutting off nerves/blood supply). Whee! Bodies are such fun.

Picked up new glasses this afternoon, which was a whole other adventure in being more active than I have been. The new Echo frames are fantastic. The other regular frames I picked out back in August seem to be cursed. Second set of lenses, second set of “this isn’t right”/headache inducing oddness. I have to go back next week for a pair of readers (prescription adjusted for close work – yay aging eyes), so I’m trying out the regular ones off and on, but I swear that VSP either did nothing with the lenses, or they just can’t get the prescription right. Especially since the Echo frames are, as stated above, fantastic – no issues seeing out of the new lenses there. *shrug* Hopefully they’ll be able to test the lenses and see what’s going on there.

The in-laws came down for Xmas and we had fun playing card/board games and what not with them. And of course the usual Xmas stuff of gifts and stockings and what not. Fare was relatively simple, no big bird or beast, but the melting potatoes were a hit again.

We have another couple coming over for New Years eve, and I need to plan out dinner. They’re mostly vegetarian, which is easy enough, but I did a risotto already for them pre-Xmas so I need to plan something else this time.

Knee is improving in fits and starts. I’m on my third brace now. I originally had a neoprene one from urgent care and a big complicated one from the orthopedist. Ortho cleared me last month to go back to the neoprene one, which was doing okay but started to tear and get stretched out, so just yesterday I got a replacement brace (recommended by the ortho’s office) which I’m trying to get used to, in terms of the fit and how it goes on. I’m also trying to spend less time in the brace, period, because I started getting some skin irritation under it. Slept for the first time with no brace on last night and it did well, but this morning I was truly sore from that and PT yesterday, so took the rare (for me) step of taking some ibuprofen.

Saw my sister-in-law and niece off this morning, after they popped down for the holiday weekend.

Made some homemade pumpkin spice coffee additive last night (1.5 cups sugar, 1.5 cups water, bring to boil over medium heat, whisk in 4 teaspoons pumpkin spice blend and 1/4 cup pumpkin puree, lower heat to simmer for 20 more minutes. Strain through a fine mesh sieve (and cheesecloth, if you have it, to further reduce the solids) and add 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract. Stores in the fridge for up to a week). Also made toddy coffee concentrate, so had homemade iced pumpkin spice lattes this morning (1/2 cup concentrate, 3/4 cup milk, 2 Tablespoons PSL mix). Was tasty. I’m normally a black coffee drinker, so anything beyond that is exotic for me, but this was a nice treat. And the SIL was impressed, which is what really counts.

PT this afternoon. I have some pitting edema going on, meaning there’s still a lot of extra fluid in the knee, so if that’s still there at the end of next week I get to ask the orthopedist about that. Flexion was about the same as last week, which may be related to the extra fluid at this point.

Short week last week (and weird because of the almost-government-shut-down), short week this week. My new attorney shadow gets here in two weeks; it’s someone I recruited from my old agency, so I know I’ll work well with him. Looking forward to training him on the new agency, and a new area of law, as well as passing off some of the stuff that I’m not as well versed in but that he has much more experience with.

Oooh, we played Uno Flip last night and really enjoyed it. The husband and I own it, but hadn’t played it, and it was quite a fun variation on the regular uno. Both sides of the cards are playable, a light side and a dark side, and every now and again people can make the deck flip from one to the other, which also flips all the cards in your hand. Kept things lively.

Got some more of the Halloween stuff put up, including the green-purple-orange light strings we bought last year but didn’t get up (maybe we bought them at the end of the season on sale? I don’t remember why they didn’t get put up). Our neighbor does a much better job with it than we do, but we outshine them at Xmas. 😉

Spent a chunk of yesterday finally getting all four tires replaced on the Mini. The local place was a lot friendlier than BJ’s, and apparently NTB is now Mavis, though the signage (and online) hasn’t caught up yet. Popped by the local carwash on the way back from picking up the car, so the beast looks (and drives) much nicer now.

Continuing to slowly build my running back up on the treadmill.

Up far too early this morning after Benjamin (male cat) decided to puke, twice, in the hallway outside our bedroom. Found it without stepping in it (yay?) and got it all cleaned up. Very grateful that I thought to stash some paper towels under the sink in the bathroom off that hallway so I didn’t have to go downstairs for some.

A good chunk of my office flooded last week. There’s a ledge outside the windows of about 2/3 of the offices (including mine) where water got backed up and came in though the walls. Nothing personal of anyone’s was damaged, and very few official documents were dampened since most of that is electronic now so there was only like one box on the floor in the suite (unlike a flood in my old office that was a nightmare of drying out old paper). While facilities swung into action while the flood was still ongoing thanks to one of our employees alerting them, it apparently still smells according to the few people who’ve braved the place, and they’re going to have to do all sorts of remediation. So who knows if I’ll be going back in immediately after labor day or not? That’s tentatively the plan since the local Metro stations reopen after that weekend, but not if they’re still dealing with walls and carpet and what not.

I was cleaning up some stuff in our entry hallway, putting away bits from having a smart lock installed last week, replacing a battery in a running accessory, and in doing so I had to go into the drawers in our little hall table, which I apparently need to do more often. Found the battery I needed, put the lock bits away, but also found some netting for a bike basket that I’d been looking for (should’ve been with the bike accessories, but why would I be consistent?), and then dug up one of the first, homemade masks we made out of a T-shirt at the beginning of the pandemic. It makes sense that it was in the entry hallway table, since you’d need them to outside, but what a throwback.

Not the shopping day I’d planned for, but hey. Started out early, with a 9am appointment at BJs to replace the front tires, because one of them has a giant bulge and a slow air leak. Get there ten minutes early, doors are closed. They finally bother to open at 9:25 (after calling the main desk twice to see where they were), get to the counter, they don’t have the tires I preordered and prepaid for. Then it was into the main club for a refund, because at that point I was done with them. Appointment made for another place Wednesday morning, and I’ll call Tuesday night to doublecheck that they have the tires.

So then it was on to get some food and planned haircuts. While eat we decided the husband needed some more shirts, so we picked the closer of the malls and headed there for wandering and shopping. I picked up grooming supplies, and he got a bunch of shirts. Ah, married life. Heh. Book shopping next, then a late lunch and gas for the car. The tire held up well, thankfully, and I didn’t have to reinflate it while we were out (I keep a pump in the car normally anyway).

Ran twice this week, very basic run/walk workouts on the treadmill, but the first such since covid last month. The fatigue is finally gone, thank heavens. Blood pressure is still higher than anyone would like, but some regular exercise should start to help with that, or at least keep it from getting worse. I’d really prefer not to go on drugs for that; I resent the allergy and reflux medications as is, so the thought of adding more just makes me grumpier. *phhhbbbbtttt*

Off to a brunch showing of Margaritaville at a local(ish) dinner theater tomorrow. Should be a hoot. I have a nice Hawaiian shirt with flamingoes on it for the occasion, and the husband has something similarly loud. We’re meeting friends for it, which will be nice as we’ll have a four-top table for the group, and no strangers to try and make awkward conversation with. Final show of this run, which is always fun to see.

I think half the fun of home ownership is the little things that have to be taken care of. For example, one of the GFCI receptacles in the kitchen died sometime yesterday. There are two in there, and one died about two years ago. They’re original to the house (2010), so it’s unsurprising that they’re wearing out now, but it’s always a surprise. Had to look up the electrician we used last time, and they’re now scheduled to come out middle of next week to replace it (as I told them, inconvenience, not emergency, so I was fine with whatever they had). In the meantime the toaster oven has been moved from one plug to another, and I’ll move the electric can opener if we need to open anything. The kitchen Echo has been relocated temporarily to the island, and I’m debating whether to move the coffee maker or just stick to french press for the next week or so. The funny thing is that I’d bought some beans on a lark yesterday before knowing the GFCI was dead, so I had fresh ones for this morning. Maybe the keurig sensed them and killed the GFCI out of spite. That or Amazon decided I wasn’t spending enough and hoped I’d use them to book an electrician.

Today was a catch up day for work, especially catching up to a couple of thorny things where I needed time to sit down and actually be able to read up on 1) what the problem was; and 2) potential solutions. The craziness of email and meetings do not lend themselves to lengthy consideration, so was nice to have time to actually sit and ruminate on a couple problems, as well as coming up with the solutions.

We installed some new accent lights on the Ikea bookshelves in our respective offices, and now I feel the need to reorganize said bookshelves, at least the ones in my office, to make them a bit less cluttered. Since that’s my usual video conferencing background I like to have it clean but fun (books, legos, pop vinyls, and other toys abound). I always get nice comments on how much fun it is to see all of the toys, but I think it needs a bit of curating at the moment. And more storage space for some of it.

The husband and I finally got appointments for this morning for the monkeypox vaccine here in PG County, a process that should have been done and over with months ago, but a lack of vaccines and a screwed up scheduling system meant long delays. But, fast forward to this morning and I drove us over to a local county health center for it. While we were there they offered to give us both the seasonal flu vaccine and the latest, updated Covid booster, so we figured why the heck not. Finished up, drove the husband to the Metro so he could go to work, then headed home.

A couple hours later and I’m slightly nauseous in the way that the flu shot often does, and perhaps a little body sore, but the poor husband is definitely feeling it worse, so he grabbed a cheap uber home. I made him some lunch and he’s crashing on the couch in front of some fluffy TV. No itching on the MPX shot site for me. I did go ahead and take the rest of the day off – I had originally taken just the morning, but with the three-fer-one deal we got I decided lawyering while vaccinated was a bad idea.

Life can be such an interesting experiment. After putting off seeing a specialist for ages, I finally got tired of a consistent belching that I had going on. Turns out the reflux that my mother and her father have/had was passed to me. Yay! Long story short the excess acid production was/is causing me to swallow too much air, so that’s what was/is causing the belching.

Had samples of a prescription drug, got it under control, then the samples ran out. Tried the over the counter (OTC) version, which didn’t give the same results (the samples I had were a newer form of the drug, and 4x as high a dose as the OTC stuff). So, saw the doc for a follow up today, got a prescription for the fancier stuff, and now we start the food experimentation portion of the treatment. I already know that coffee sets it off, so I gave that up a couple of weeks ago (the boy’s expression wasn’t quite one of horror when I told him I’d been off coffee for two days when I first started, but it was close – I had trained him well that coffee was the first thing I needed in the morning). Tea eased the withdrawal, but I’m mostly off that now, too. Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been caffeine free – did that once before from ’00-’01, but then we had that little airplane event in the fall and I went back to regular coffee drinking.

I already know that pizza is out, as is falafel, sodas, and beer. Spicy foods seem to be a no-no as well. But the experiment will continue as I figure out what does and doesn’t work. It’s a fun process, actually, and I get to eat a lot of different things as I figure this out.

In other catching up, the anniversary trip to the shore with the boy went well. Didn’t get burned at the shore, had a good time relaxing and reading, and just catching up with each other outside the norm. We walked all over the place, which upped the numbers for both of us on the step count on our vivofits. I think it’s been fun to have those together and to have something of a competition going with them. He wins outright on pure walking, but I tend to go over when you factor in my running. And we both beat his sister regularly (got her one for xmas), which is what really counts.

I’m training now for the marine corps marathon this fall. I got in last year, developed runner’s knee, and postponed the race to this year. While not quite where I’d have liked to be in terms of a base, the training is going well. Related to that, I’m going to take a break from the tri club. There’s been a bit of drama with regard to the newbie program I’ve help run for the last decade, and I’m just not willing to put up with it at this point. I’ve never been one that enjoyed training with a large group (I like the meditative aspects of training), and I’m not really drinking at all (see the reflux discussion above) so I don’t get out and see club folks very often, and I think the club has just moved on, as have I. I’ll maintain my membership, but I don’t see myself doing a lot with them in the immediate future.