Back to normal

Okay, from now on all posts are live and real-time.

Up

at 5:30 am just as my roommate went to bed. Neither of us has the best sleeping ability on a good day, both of us deal with insomnia. My problem, I think, is while I went to bed fairly early, i had quite a bit of pain and had trouble sleeping, so I finally broke down and took some medicine, which messes with my sleep cycle, melatonin or not. Besides, I'm used to getting up between 5:30-6:30 for work still.

So here I am, my light alarm clock just coming on. I should probably get on the bike. But no, that is not happening this early.

Before I went to bed, I made my first actual to-do list since my surgery. It goes something like this:

• do morning PT exercises
• brush teeth/clean up
• get dressed
• take morning meds
• do internet jigsaw puzzle #1 in morning [https://www.jigsawexplorer.com/]
• listen to music
• return a text from a friend in Cicero, Illinois
• ride ROMTech bike #1 (8:00 am)
• read from book about public libraries
• get my friend to take my hamper of dirty clothes out to the washer
• do my laundry
• blog, including back entries where I never mentioned doing this surgery [I am so behind; I haven''t posted since June. I have kept this blog since October of 2001.]
• ice!
• stay ahead of the pain
• remember to use the knee brace on the non-operant (right) knee since I keep forgetting
• ride ROMTech bike #2 (10:30 am)
• set up bill pay to pay rent/grocery fund
• ride ROMTech #3 (1:00 pm)
• do puzzle #2 for the afternoon
• eat lunch
• do midday PT exercises
• return a missed phone call from yesterday
• have friend bring me the clean clothes in a hamper
• fold the clean clothes [these include the linens for Sabbath dinner tomorrow]
• ride ROMTech # 4 (3:30pm)
• do puzzle #3 for the evening
• ride ROMTech # 5 (6:00 pm)
• eat dinner
• watch episodes 1 and 2 of season 2 of 'Desperate Housewives'
• take evening meds
• do nightly PT exercises

It's not what I would call thrilling, but it'll keep me occupied. 🙂 I'm going to try something new tomorrow and cut the time in between the ROMTech sessions from three hours to 1.5 in an effort to get them knocked out in a reasonable time. We'll see. That may be too much at once. But I don't have any appointments tomorrow. If you're wondering why I am doing laundry rather than my roommate, there is a perfectly non-logical story involving oaths to long-dead relatives about that going back over two decades that I won't get into but suffice to say that I am perfectly capable of putting clothes in and out of a washer and dryer, especially if I open the other utility room door (I don't normally bother, I just open the dryer and pull things out by kind of leaning over, but there is a bolt that goes into the floor where the door in front does actually swing fully open so you have full access). I just can't carry at the moment. Actually, my clothes are in a rolling cart, but still....I'll ask him to do it, just to be safe.

Okay, it's 6:30 am. I'm not sure if I'm sleepy or no.t. Maybe I should start my day with a little music. Have a lovely morning.

Wow...I've missed two whole months of posting...

 Sorry about that. I've been a bit busy. I've:

• Taken a new position at work
• Have been trying to work on my health, particularly my shoulder and dizziness
• Have a new diagnosis
• Started with a new behavioural therapist
• Wrapped up with three health providers (two are retiring)
• Have had an MRI and determined the cause of the freaking amount of pain I've been in
• Have been really tired and in pain, so I've been crashing a lot

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PART ONE:

The Health Emergencies

So, in February, I had not one, but two, emergency room visits. The first was a haemorrhagic urinary tract infection, where basically my back hurt all day, I was in some pain, and then suddenly I couldn't pee despite really needing to do so and feeling like I was going to burst, and then suddenly I was peeing blood instead. This was alarming, so I called my primary care provider, who thought I might be passing a kidney stone, so called a friend to take me to the ER [I'd had some reason I couldn't drive, I think, either a medicine or car trouble], where I found out after many hours and imaging (CT scans) that I did not have a kidney stone, but rather a raging E. coli bladder infection--something I hadn't had for years, and which I'd never had this particularly type of before. Apparently blood seeps from the lining of the bladder. But they wouldn't let me go until I could produce a urine sample, which was something like five hours, and then it was such a scant amount, barely the minimum they needed to run the test. I got put on two fairly major antibiotics. I had an excuse but went to work the next day feeling like crap because I couldn't afford and occurrence. We'd had bad weather in January and I'd had one where I'd got stuck on the glazed icy street after a snowstorm and the tow truck couldn't get down my street. My boss had told me to stay home before I could suggest trying to take the bus in, so I did. But I got an occurrence. So there was that. I couldn't afford to take one. But between my coinsurance for my medication and that visit, I met my out of pocket for my health insurance, so that was something, at least.

Then, about the time I got over that, I went to get kitty litter while doing my chores before the Sunday Cthulhu game, I picked a 25-lb. box of Fresh Step off the shelf  and tried to get it into the cart. I felt and heard a large pop in my biceps, and at that point knew I'd ruptured it. I'd been through this before, when I'd fallen in November 2023 and hurt my left shoulder, which required a biceps tenodesis and rotator cuff repairs for both tears of the biceps tendon and several in the rotator cuff. I got home, and when Brenda arrived for the game, I asked her to take me to the ER again.  We were there for quite some day. They did x-rays but no MRI. They said if I'd torn my biceps tendon there would be a bruise.  This was all on my dominant right hand. My hand was numb, and white. They thought that might be a reaction to the trauma, but my arm wasn't broken (I didn't expect it to be). Then they sent me home and told me to take ibuprofen. Again, I had an excuse for two days, but went to work anyway.

The next day I had a very nasty bruise right over my biceps.  Ding, ding, ding!

I made an appointment with my orthopaedist who did the rotator cuff/tenodesis last year. He said I most likely tore the long head of my biceps tendon up near the shoulder itself this time, and that it was probably on its way already, and it had been hurting when I reached for them in the checkout bay. He said that it was attached in two places, so they'd normally clip the long head anyway and see how it healed, so it sort of did what it would do, but that in 40-5% of people, they also injure the rotator cuff, so he'd suggest waiting a month to see how it would do. At first it did seem to be getting better, than it went downhill from there. By the time I went back at the beginning of April, it was clear that I was most likely in that 40-50%. So he ordered an MRI. The MRI showed a completely torn biceps tendon at the long head, with degenerative issues in the rotator cuff and at least three tears in the tendons of the rotator cuff. So. Yeah. He knows his stuff.

But I saw him the other day. He thought even with all that physical therapy would be better than surgery and strengthening would help more, but I have already been through shoulder PT and have pullies, bands, and weights, so he recommended a home exercise programme. So I'm going to focus on that. He also told me to cut back on the ibuprofen. I have been taking the absolute max, and I know it. It's just been hurting so much, all of it--shoulder, knees, etc., that it's been hard to function otherwise. So I'm down to the standard 400 mg. about three times a day. I was taking twice that, for awhile. And that's not good for my kidneys, especially as a diabetic.  So I did take his advice, because, well, I do know better, and he went to med school for four years plus all those residency and fellowship years. :)

Anyway, I've been trying to focus on my health for the last five months. I've also had a lot of dizziness. It started last autumn, well, really before that, I've gone through physical therapy before, but it hasn't resolved it, and it's coming in spells lasting from an hour to a couple of weeks. I'm thinking it may be a problem with my inner ear.  I always seem to have what my PCP likes to call 'Eustachian tube dysfunction', because they're stuffy a lot. So I have an audiogram and visit with an otolaryngologist (ENT) scheduled on May 30th. Oddly enough, just after I made the appointment, the last spell stopped. Of course. But that's good, right? Hopefully, he'll be able to give me some answers.

This is going to be a long post. I'm already tired. Maybe it's best to break them up.

More to come...

I just spent

A good bit of time redesigning this blog. I took an existing theme (credit at the bottom of the page) and changed the colours and fonts. They are some of my least favourite colours (you'd think I'd have kept the purple), but they work well with the book background and a good librarian blog should have books. :)

Let me know what you think.

My behavioural coach, plus a milestone

recommended this book, which is not actually a diet book, but rather a cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) approach to helping people with their relationships with food. I'm five chapters in and I'm finding it very helpful. It makes sense. It's all about changing your thoughts and justifications into healthier ones. The Beck Diet Solution: Train Your Brain to Think Like a Thin Person by Judith S Beck, PhD, whose father was the one who first developed CBT. If you want the Kindle edition and you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited, it is included for free.  By the way...this is my 12,000th post.  Yipee!  It took a little over 21 years, but it's a great milestone. I'm enjoying writing again.

Four more posts

I have already exceeded the number of total posts for each year for 2021 and 2022 this year.  It's amazing that during the pandaemic I didn't write more, really.  But...in four more posts, I will reach 12,000 total for the blog.  That's an average of 47 posts per month, or 564 a year. Not bad...

Wow

I just purged at least thirty links off my sidebar, especially the sections of librarian and Kentucky blogs.  So many pages gone...either not written on for years, not online anymore, or put behind a privacy screen for invited readers only.  Most just don't exist anymore.  I guess those voices are still going on somewhere, I hope. Maybe blogging is just passé. I don't know.  Like mine, a lot had sort of dwindled down as their owners/authors went on to other things.  Well, I've been writing my thoughts for 21 years now.  I do not want to let it just die away.  So here's to pumping new life into it.  Feel free to keep your links to this blog active. I'm going to do everything I can to rekindle its spirit.

So I did some revamping today

as I'm sure you can tell, as the background image and fonts are completely different. I was trying to fix an issue where the sidebar text was loading at the bottom of the page rather than in a column to the right, and finally solved it after two hours by dragging some gadgets around the layout. I also went back into several posts and removed some code that was causing abnormal displays. I originally designed this blog myself, then several years upgraded to the design I had this morning. This one is by the same person, just a cometic difference with the background. Blogger's come a long way in twenty-two years. Anyway, since I'm trying to rekindle this blog, I thought it was time for a change. I'm also so glad I fixed the issue, although there is still a lag in loading the right-handed sidebar (there are now two, one on the left, one on the right). It was driving me mad.

Sigh

It's been a long while. I've posted almost 12,000 times on this blog for over 20 years, but I haven't felt like writing for some time. That makes me sad. I've gotten caught up with life and I'd been relying mostly on my phone for Internet interaction, and it was just harder to do that, for one.  I have a laptop though now AND I just got a folding table big enough to write, read, do crafts, etc., on, rather than having a computer on a stool and being uncomfortable in my chair because I had to put a leg on either side.

I do post a lot on Facebook, and that's for people I'm friends with, and almost all of them are people I know personally, with the exception of a few librarians.  I guess I feel safer there in some ways than over-sharing to the great world beyond.  I know, that hasn't stopped me in the past. But I'm 55 now and a little wiser than when I started.

So let's see...I think I last wrote in February.  We got a puppy then and she was so tiny at 8 weeks that she could go between the slats of the picket fence.  Now she's nine months old, and she's nearly 50 lbs.  She finally has a big girl bark, is very tall and long and lanky, and generally is getting very big.  My roommate thinks she's part Lab (that part is obvious, as she has webbed toes and Labrador waterproofing) and part Doberman, much like the dog he had when I first met him over 30 years ago.  I'm leaning towards part Great Dane with her build, but he is probably right.  She's a joy, very enthusiastic, loving, and a good companion to the other dog, who is a Lab/Pit cross and now much smaller than her.

Healthwise I'm dealing with ageing.  I've lost 50 lbs. since early November and 28 of that was from late December on.  (I was put on a different diuretic in November and I swear 20 lbs. came off because I am a sponge.)  I'm on medicine now called Ozempic for my diabetes, but it helps with weight loss and I'm doing pretty well on it, despite early side effects.  I just went up to the maintenance dose.

I do need to lose weight because I have chondromalacia, which is a loss of cartilage in the joint.  My knees are to the point of being bone-on-bone and I need a bilateral knee replacement, but I need to lose another 40 or so pounds.  They'd like my BMI to be under 40, but 45 is a hard stop and I'm 48 now.  So I need to work harder because I'm in a lot of pain and it's very difficult to walk very far.  I do have an ADA placard for out in the community.  I had one at the university but they only gave me a temporary one as they couldn't read my GP's handwriting. I had him redo it and resubmitted it, but they denied my request.  I have a couple of weeks to submit records, which I've requested, and perhaps I can get one on appeal.  You can't just park in a spot on campus without their specific hangtag, you see...my state-issued placard doesn't do a thing.  And they're pretty tough.  One of my former co-workers used a prosthetic leg and they made him send over records, and he finally got it. I've had it all summer, though, and it's been a godsend.  Without it I'm going to have to walk probably a quarter of a mile from my car to the bus stop and back, and that is very difficult and painful.

I'm also most likely going to have my gall bladder out soon. I go to a surgery consult the first week of September.  They'd found gallstones on an MRI of my liver but I was asymptomatic until I had fried fish and was in extreme distress for a week.  I'm a little leery of this. Even with the weight loss, I weigh about 280 lbs., so lots of visceral fat and higher mortality chances with any abdominal surgery.  Hopefully, it will be laparoscopic, as I don't want to miss much work.

Next week will mark the five-year anniversary since I moved in with my roommate.  All in all it's gone very well, surprisingly well, actually. Neither of us were particularly sure about the move and living together.

At work, headquarters took over my surgery and outpatient visit authorisations, leaving me without a position, but my boss (who's only been here a few months) really went to bat for me, and they did a lateral move into a position I've had before that is technically a few rungs down, but because of the way they did it, I didn't lose my pay, although I'm on the high end of the scale for this one.  I'm back in checkout.  One day before I moved I had a panic attack, because when I did it before, I was alone for the better part of a year, did the phone and e-mails, and generally had trouble keeping up.  Now there are two people at checkout (although my work buddy, who is very bubbly, is moving to registration, so they're trying to hire someone for the checkout position that's open), and one person who's job is to schedule phone and e-mail requests, letting me focus on the patients and families for the most part.  So it's actually been nice.  Not as much pressure and I get to interact with families and see the improvements in patients' lives. I do, being an introvert, get drained by too much interaction, but I also find it satisfying in this case.  So everything's going much better than it could have.

I've been working every day on a series of exercises to help keep my mind sharp.  There's Wordle and Latin Wordle, plus I'm studying languages on Duolingo.  I'm trying to brush up on my rusty Spanish, German, and Latin, plus I'm taking Irish and Welsh.  I was going to try to learn Modern Hebrew (I've studied Biblical Hebrew), but that wasn't going well, as the characters were very small, and it just wasn't clicking. I'm going to take my Biblical Hebrew and do some work on that instead and then go back to the modern after I get a grip on the ancient language.  But I'm getting through the ones I've studied before pretty quickly and understand more than I thought.  My grammar is actually still pretty good, it's just the vocabulary that I'm having to pick up again.  German is extremely easy, even though I haven't had it since 1985.  Latin is my most-studied language (5 semesters, including Mediaeval as well as the normal Classical, plus a little Humanist), so it's going well, although there are a lot of angry parrots in this one. (To be fair, Hebrew had a dove that liked warm wine--you can see why I was having trouble).  I've already used a little Spanish to check a person out at work without having to use the video interpreter, and I asked one of the in-person interpreters what the word for 'stickers' is and put it on my bulletin board because the kids love those.

Okay, I guess I'll sign off for now. I'm on vacation. No plans, not going anywhere, but I took the week off between now and Labor Day.  I'm hoping to get some rest and work on some new hobbies and actually do some reading.

And for some reason my neighbours are setting off fireworks for no discernable reason.

Taking a quick break

from work to test out my hotspot on my phone for creating an Internet connexion for my Kindle Fire.  I take it to work because the battery lasts for a very long time, even when playing music, and I play music offline while I'm doing paperwork.  But sometimes I want to blog. Years ago, I signed a paper to the effect that I would not blog using the company's  equipment or networks.  The main network can't reach things like Blogger anyway, as they are blocked along with social media sites, unless you get a special dispensation.  There is a public network for patients, families, and visitors, but again, I promised not to use it for blogging.

With my last phone, the hotspot never worked, but this is working fine.  Yay! It means I am more likely to write, as my Fire has a connected keyboard that works very well and has a 10.1" screen, so it's much easier than using my phone.  My roommate uses my laptop, which is connected to all sorts of things like TV and keyboard for use like a desktop.  So I have to rely on other devices.

Anyway, hi, and it is now time to have a quick bite before returning to my tasks.

One reason

That I had trouble last year writing is that my roommate's desktop died and so I've been letting him borrow my laptop. Right now we've got it plugged up to a monitor, mouse, keyboard, etc., so it's for all intents and purposes acting like a desktop, and I just change the configuration if he has a Zoom meeting or something that needs the camera. 

That leaves me operating with just my phone.  I do have a Bluetooth keyboard (it's rather small, but it works). So I'm using it as a mini-computer.  For awhile the Blogger app wasn't working so well, so it was really frustrating to try. 

Anyway, it's doing better now. Forgive any typos along the way, but my plan is to write more.  I didn't manage to do Monday or Tuesday this week, but I still have two more days I can write and meet my goal of three a week. I don't think that's unreasonable. And there's at least two today. :) 

I can't believe

that I've gone a whole month and a half without writing on this blog. It was not my attention to let it founder. It's not that things have been boring or anything. I've just been kind of wrapped up with work and life. And I've been on Facebook a lot when I should be writing here. Plus, my laptop is currently borrowed as the desktop my roommate was using bit the big one this summer, and most of my stuff online is done with a Galaxy S20 and a Bluetooth keyboard, but it's much easier to write on the laptop, even so.

While I've been gone I had a car accident that was very frightening, but I was fortunately okay.  There was a thunderstorm during the morning rush after a dry spell.  I went and got gas before work, which was why I was on a main thoroughfare that I don't go down usually in the morning, one that has no reflectors built into the lane guides.  It was raining so hard, and being close to the time change, it was very dark even though it was almost 8 am.  I was going down the road in the left lane as that's the direction I was going to turn in order to get to where I park at the University of Kentucky.  I couldn't see the lanes at all, and I don't think anyone else could either, and I didn't have anyone to follow, so I tried to go into the right lane, and just as I was about to, I realised I was skidding/hydroplaning right into a left turn lane and into a median, going up on it at about 20-25 miles per hour with both driver-side wheels, somehow managing not to flip (because I sure didn't have control of the car at that point, never managed to brake in time, and wound up bounced into the right lane, which was thankfully vacant, although I think a car had to brake hard to avoid me.  This was right past Armstrong Mill coming into town on Tates Creek Road.  I'd obviously popped at least one tyre, and I went down to Gainesway, less than a block away, and pulled over.  I tried to collect myself, called my boss to let her know I'd had an accident, left a message for my roommate, and called a AAA truck and the tyre shop I have my warranty with.  Then I had the car towed over there, and they gave me a ride to work after it was determined that I'd bent two rims and killed a tyre, the latter of which could be replaced under warranty.  One rim was bent somewhat, but the tyre was still holding air, but the other was bent beyond all hope.  I had to get a new rim to replace that one, and they'd had to order it for the next day.  So he took me to work, and I made it in within an hour of my usual time.  But I didn't really have the money to spare for that, although I got it fixed anyway.  It took a couple of days, and a couple of my co-workers took me to and from work because I'm not stepping foot on the city bus during a pandemic if I can help it, so I'm very thankful for them.  The car is still making a sound like there's a rubbing going on; I need to get it checked by my regular mechanic but that may need to wait till I have the money for it. I couldn't turn it into my insurance because it was under the deductible unless my mechanic finds more.  But it's driveable for now, although I recently got together with some co-workers at a farm where we could spread out and work on a pumpkin contest, and I got a ride rather than go out on the highway.  Plus, I still, because of the pandemic, haven't managed to get a spare tyre to replace the original doughnut that bit the dust back right before I got all the tyres replaced in February. 

Despite all that, I am very grateful I didn't get hurt or hurt anyone else.  It was very scary. My roommate said my message was almost incoherent; he had to play it several times.

That's the most important thing that's happened lately.  Plus we had Halloween at work and of course the election.  I hope you voted, if you're in the U.S., regardless of whom you might have voted for.  I've also been making time to read this month; I've read four of five days, and I started the Enola Holmes books by Nancy Springer (whose Books of Isle series was a favourite of mine some 30 years ago; I'm glad she's still writing).

That's it for now.  I will try to get in the habit of writing, even if it has to be on the phone.  I don't want to let this blog die away.  Now I'd better check on my bread dough.  Good night.

We are always living history, but now more so

The audiobook I'm listening to, The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, by John M. Barry, just spent a chapter on how Woodrow Wilson's contraction of the 1918-1919 pandemic influenza in Paris had terrible effects on the post-World War I talks with Britain and France. Where he'd been set to remove himself from the negotiations, he instead came back from the illness, probably too soon, and gave in to all of France's demands, the very ones that set up the rise of Adolph Hitler and WWII. Since that time we have made connexions between influenza and neurological and disposition changes.

The next chapter is discussing the resurgence of flu the next fall, and how it finally faded over the next few years. But millions had died, many children were orphaned. For many, the effects were lingering, some for a year or more. But through so much of the pandemic, it was downplayed due to the war effort. 'It was only influenza', ignoring the virulence of this strain.

It's also talking about the lack of writing about the pandemic at the time, and how that was like the mediaeval accounts that lack much of any study of the Black Plague. It reminds me that we are living through history. We need to take pictures of grocery stores with their lines. We need to write our stories. I started this blog in 2001 shortly after the attacks on September 11th. It's waxed and waned over the year, but this reminds me that this is an opportunity to put down what we do and how we feel.

So

Starting the second round of staying at home for a week. Things I'd like to do differently:

1. Work on my mental health. Work sent out something from our EAP about a service/app called Whil with all sorts of educational resources for mindfulness, anxiety calming, meditation, and stress release. I went ahead and signed up at work (as it required the work e-mail) and now I'm set. My goal is to spend an hour a day on these. They include video and audio programmes, and it's free with our EAP up to June.
2. Try to actually read. Again, an hour a day is my goal, whether it's an audiobook, e-book, or physical book.
3. Finish 'Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance' with my friend on Netflix.
4. Survive my bread cravings from Pesach/Passover since I can't get something and bring it home until Thursday after sunset.
5. Do almost no travelling out of the house, with some planning. Today I do have to go out to two pharmacies, one of which is Kroger, so I'll try to do a grocery run in and out at the same time.
6. Do some writing, whether it's on my blog or other things. Something to keep me from being on Facebook all day and feeling that I accomplished something.
7. Get my brakes fixed, as my mechanic is only open on weekdays and I'm off. Also, I'd be supporting a local small business.

That's a start, anyway. I'm off through Tuesday before I return to work this time.

I guess my new year's resolution is helping

I've already posted a number of posts, and not just stupid ones, in January equal to a third of what I did entirely last year. Go me! Another new year's resolution was to post three Facebook posts for every sad or negative one I do (I admit it, I'm drawn to the sad and macabre, and I tend to share that with others, who just find it horrifying). I'm doing well there, too. :)

I made an actual resolution

For every negative thing I share on Facebook I will share three positive stories. That way I won't get bogged down in the sad or horrible things on my newsfeed. As YKWIA told me the other day, people with anxiety issues tend to look for things that increase their anxiety and obsess on negative stories. I should do that here as well. :) 

Well I did miss

Writing yesterday, so I've already missed one day, but in my defence, I felt awful. I'll try to keep blogging regularly. 

I'd like to say

That I've been on a planned hiatus, but that wouldn't be true.  I've mostly been accessing the Internet via my phone lately,  and it is a bit of a pain to blog anything of any length with autocorrect,  etc.

So here's a bit of a resolution here, a bit past the middle of the year, to log into the laptop and actually write.

Of course,  I'm writing on the phone right now.  And it's almost 1 am,  so I should put it down and sleep,  as this is the first week of school at university and I'll need to arrive early to deal with parking at UK.

So for now,  good night.

After the fiasco last October

when I lost all my documents doing a Windows update, I was somewhat trepidatious about doing the May 2019 update.  But, one thing I changed in the intervening months was that I had put all my documents on an SD card in my laptop, with Dropbox as a backup (the latter had been the case for the documents I lost, and with the exception of a couple of weeks' worth, I saved most of the rest.  Backups are important, people.)  Anyway, I had heard that the update wouldn't install with a USB drive or SD drive because of an issue with remapping the drives, but that if you disconnected the USB or ejected the SD, it should work fine.  Since ejecting the card had been the plan all along, I did so, downloaded the update in about two minutes, and had the whole thing updated within five.  It was the easiest Windows update that I've ever done, and it seems to be working correctly.

I did it this morning because I'd woken up at five and was just awake, and couldn't go back to sleep.  So  I got up, took a shower, got ready, and did the update.  I left the house at about 6:20 am, stopped by Kroger for caffeine, and went into work, getting there about 7 am.  So I  have until 8:30 am to just chill and do what I'd like.  I've gotten my personal e-mail squared away.  I'll check social media and the news.  I'm on my hotspot on my phone rather than the hospital's WiFi because I promised a long time ago not to use the hospital's equipment to blog at all after someone had a conniption over something I'd written during a break at work.  So, it's my equipment, my connexion.

Okay, let's go see what's going on in the world.  I did see on my phone that Teresa May, the prime minister of Britain, has resigned.  I don't care for her policies, or for the idea of Brexit.  Not that it matters, I suppose, given that I'm not British and they don't care about my opinion.  But she certainly was very polarising.

I've tried to blog using the mobile application several times lately

but it refuses to publish with an image attached no matter what I do. Maybe it's a glitch that will be fixed in an upcoming update.

Anyway, sorry I haven't physically gone to the computer and blogged instead.  I've been fairly busy as of late.

I've spent some time setting up the new phone and tablet.  The phone I've geared towards listening--things like Pandora, audiobooks, podcasts, music on the SD card, etc.  The tablet I've geared towards reading, especially Kindle and Project Gutenberg.

We haven't played the game in a while as one of the players is away visiting family in another state.  So the first weekend of this month YKWIA and I went to the Lexington Chamber Orchestra concert at Tates Creek Presbyterian Church and had a very good time.  Otherwise, it's been all about doing stuff around the house on the weekend and getting some relaxation in.  I haven't read much else, just a bit of The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman, and while I had to turn in The Labyrinth of Spirits (which, as a new book, was due in 2 weeks rather than 28 days), I got it as an Audible audiobook.  Today as I was waiting at a doctor's appointment I went through the book up to where I left off.  I was on chapter 19 (21 really, as it has a prologue, etc.), which sounds great but the thing has over 700 pages and while the chapters are short, there are over 170 of them!  I'm not sure I can listen to it at work and still focus on my paperwork like I can with music, but I have a device that plugs into the car cigarette lighter that syncs up with Bluetooth to my phone that allows me to play music and answer calls even though I have an old car (18 years old!) that doesn't normally have that functionality.  I can also play the audiobook through the device.

Brenda stopped by the other day with a wonderful orchid for me.  She'd found it at Kroger for $2, in a plastic pot and finished blooming, but healthy and there are about three plants in there.  It's a type I haven't had before with a very prominent pseudobulb on the bottom with leaves coming from them.  I've seen them in the store--they have rusty, spidery, small flowers in just clusters of them, and I've really wanted them.  I'm not sure what type it is, perhaps a miniature Cattleya or Dendrobium.

Speaking of which, it's almost spring, and I read with interest that the Bluegrass Orchid Society was having their first meeting of the year tonight, with a talk on Dendrobium species and their care, but I had the doctor's appointment and then we had planned on going over to a friend's house for his birthday.  He is battling cancer, and had gone out with his brother and sister-in-law, and was just too tired to get together tonight, so we'll go see him tomorrow.  So by the time we got home, it was too late to change plans and go to the meeting.  I would have loved to have taken the new orchid, though, and get an identification, but oh, well.

I fed the animals and then YKWIA went to the computer and was watching some weird, twisted soap opera he discovered on YouTube, while I went to my room to lie down for just a bit, and the cats came with me, the one purring on my belly and the other at my feet.  I wound up falling asleep for two and a half hours.  I got up and did the dishes, plugged in the electronics to charge tonight, and then decided to write a bit.  But I can tell sleep is coming fast.  I didn't sleep the best last night, kept waking up in fact, and woke up at 4:30 am to pee and almost just got up for the day.  I toyed with the idea of going and getting another bookcase for my office since I had the appointment and therefore parking in back of the hospital, but that would have meant going to the storage unit in the dark wee hours of the night, and I thought that wouldn't be particularly prudent.  So I decided to go back to sleep, and it's good that I had the parking, as I woke up at 7:16 am, and had to be at work by 8:30 am.  I was about 15 minutes early, but if I'd had to ride the bus this morning that would not have happened.

Work has been very busy and I've done really well with productivity and while it can be frustrating, I'm plugging on.  The other day I was able to pull off a minor miracle to get a family's MRI scheduled next day, with the help of my co-worker who does the authorizations, and my boss let me come in at an ungodly hour of the morning so I could call first thing.  It was touch and go for a while (I got pulled out of a meeting because the family got there and the university had accidentally scheduled a sibling instead, so they were being told there was no appointment made).  I'm working on some difficult surgeries, and I have three denials I have to work on for a single case agreement tomorrow.  That's when you ask the insurance company to treat your out-of-network status as if it were in-network for that one case only.  I've had one other case I tried it on, and it worked, so it's worth a try, and it works better, in my opinion than an appeal.  But I don't have much experience in it.

I had applied to the Lexington Public Library in February for a library programming position, but I haven't heard anything, so I'm assuming I didn't get it.  LPL does usually send an e-mail, and I haven't received that yet, but it's been a month or so since the position closed so it's not looking good. :(

Tomorrow I'm at work until 3 pm again as I have a blood draw at 4 pm.  My family doctor always does a blood draw two weeks ahead of the main appointment.  Kudos to my boss, who let me off for a total of four appointments this month, although they're all after 3:30 pm at least.  It was five but I rescheduled my appointment with the ophthalmologist to April.  My endocrinologist is next Monday; it had already been rescheduled by them from January since she wasn't going to be in that day, and when I tried to reschedule, it was going to be August!  So that one had to stay.  I need to reschedule one I missed during my bout with the respiratory virus in January, and I have made an optometrist appointment for an exam on the first weekend of April.  Yay for weekend appointments.  I'm switching dentists and need to get the ball rolling on that, too.  But all my appointments were clustering in March and so I'll wait on that till maybe May, I think.  Then I can have the second cleaning of the year in November.  I did have the DMO plan for Aetna, which paid more fully for services but had a very limited range of providers (mainly Aspen Dental).  I switched back to the PPO, which costs a little more but has many dentists so I could go to one I've been to before and liked, one that YKWIA goes to.  The reason?  Aspen called me up one day insisting I pay a bill I didn't know about before they turned me over to collections. When I asked how much I owed, it was $1.  Yes, you read that right, $1.  I paid it there over the phone, but it kind of ticked me off that they would do that, threaten to send me to collections over such a trivial amount when I'd never even been billed.  Anyway, I like Dr Kleier, although she doesn't have the later hours they did.  So I'll have to wait to go there.

Okay, I guess I should head to bed.  6 am comes early, and with the time change, it's a struggle.  Good night!