Not to be the parking police, but...

Okay, I'll admit it. This infuriated me. This is not how you park in handicapped parking, even if you do have a placard. Also, they have an 'Honour nurses' licence plate, but apparently have no regard for anyone with a disability who might need the blue-lined space to get out with a wheelchair ramp. I did report it to Chinoe Kroger, but I think the guy getting the carts just was like, yeah, it's horrible, but didn't say anything to anyone or maybe page anyone to freaking move their vehicle.

I find it very sad that in all of 2022 I wrote exactly seven posts

I won't give you the standard 'I want to make 2023 better in terms of this blog'. You know the spiel. What I'm going to do instead is write. I am 55 years old. Mature, middle-aged even, but not really old. But I felt old this week due to finally making the decision to buy a cane. I have very bad knees (I have since high school, actually) and need a knee replacement but have about 50 more pounds to lose before they'll do it (I've lost 50 already since November 2021). But more importantly, my balance is really off. I've fallen three times in the past year, two on ice, so maybe they don't count, and once off a Lextran bus servicing the University of Kentucky. But a lot of the time I'll be standing on a completely solid, even surface, and if I turn my head at all or move a bit, or just stand completely still, I will start to fall over. Put me on an elevator and it's worse. So...I ordered a quad cane from Amazon using my flexible spending account. It's not aluminium, it's steel, all of two pounds, which several reviewers complained was too heavy (it took me a couple of days to get used to it, but I get that an older or less strong--and while I'm pathetic in terms of strength, I'm better than some). It can handle someone who's 500 lbs, which I'm not, of course, but I did need one above the standard ones that bear up to 200 or 250 lbs, as I'm about 30 lbs over. So I wanted to make sure it was sturdy enough.

Behold!



I've used it for a couple of days now. The first thing I did the night it came was to watch YouTube videos on adjusting, walking, and dealing with stairs while using a cane. The next day, I went to work with it and definitely made sure I took it to our physical therapy department to make sure all was well. I'd changed the height that morning, and gotten it right (it was a little too short). The cane should come up to your wrist. On a quad cane, there are four legs on the end, not one, and usually (as in mine) the inner ones are aligned narrower than the outer ones, so that shows the orientation that should be used, and if it has a curved section, it should face curving to the front, not towards you. You use it by the opposite leg from your weak one. My left knee is worse, for example, so I use it on my right, but bring it forward when I step forward with the left for greater stability. Lastly, you go upstairs with the good foot and downstairs with the bad one, and the PT secretary actually helped me remember this by saying, 'I always think of heaven and hell', so the good ones go up, the bad ones go down, and that mnemonic has done more for me than anything else.

What I have discovered is that it slows me down somewhat (I can walk smoothly with it, or at least did after I did a little experimenting), but that's good because I need to slow down due to my loss of balance, as I usually fall when I'm rushed.
One thing I discovered years ago when I broke my ankle after being hit by a car while crossing a busy street in a crosswalk (and with the light!) is that adaptive device like walkers, canes, and wheelchairs are a boon because they help maintain or increase mobility.  I initially felt bad about being on a walker and in a wheelchair then, but it helped so much.
This seems to be much the same thing.

Anyway, I'm going to try to embrace this and remind myself that people of all ages use canes, crutches, walkers, etc
This is a step up from my hiking poles, I guess.

But it will help me a lot in the long run.  I still feel a bit decrepit though, and I hate that feeling, but this will help me by preventing dangerous falls, I'm sure.

It also means that the bus drivers tend to remember to kneel the bus (the bus incident involved me coming down from a greater height on the step off the bus because the driver had not lowered that side of the bus, which they call kneeling), as they recognise I'm having some difficulty.
This, along with getting ADA [i.e., handicapped] parking this summer, including a general placard and a university hangtag, has really helped, along with riding the Lextran buses at UK, which kneel and are easier to navigate than the UK-run buses [almost all of which have stairs at the entry; the Lextran buses only have stairs if you go all the way to the back of the bus].

Also, the Lextran bus route takes me right across the street from the medical centre I work in, rather than being dropped off at the UK hospital employee entrance by the emergency department and walking all around the ambulance bays and the hospital itself, which is difficult for me. So it's a win. I park in the Blue 'K' lot near the stadium, and it takes me about 5-7 minutes to get from there to work once the bus comes.
The Orange buses that UK runs at the healthcare lot run more often, but they took about 10 minutes to do their route to my stop and then I took 7-10 more minutes to walk around the hospital slowly and get to my workplace.

I just wish I'd figured this out three years before when I struggled with those staired buses for all that time.

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.

No game today

Brenda's still got the crud, so we're taking another week off.  It's been a pretty relaxing weekend. I've spent some time on Facebook and Twitter (I'm also never actually on Twitter, to be honest, and I tweet and retweet rarely, but I did today).  YKWIA's done a lot of reading, and I've done a little. I got a free e-book for subscribing an electronic newsletter, and it turned out to be Ellis Peters' A Morbid Taste for Bones, the first Brother Cadfael mystery.  It includes maps and a guide to Welsh pronunciation.

I've also requested some seed catalogues, one from Burpee's (a staple), but most from heirloom, sustainable, non-Monsanto sources (and that's harder to do these days).  Most of them are available in PDF form, so I just downloaded those rather than have them send me a paper one in the mail.

Now I'm doing one super-mega-large load of laundry, and was rewarded for doing so by $12 falling out of my trouser pockets as I was going through them.  I've been out twice this weekend on the roads after the snow, once to go to the grocery for soda, and then today to take YKWIA to meet with someone over lunch, and then to stop by the gaming store The Rusty Scabbard and to get a few things at the store that weren't there yesterday post-rush.  The produce section yesterday looked like Armageddon was on its way, all for about 1-2 inches of snow, but they were resupplied today.

Tomorrow I work, as we do not get off for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.  The University of Kentucky does, however, and so the parking shuttles aren't running, so we've been told that we can park in the adjoining parking garage, although they wouldn't guarantee we wouldn't be charged.  So that $12 might come in handy.  Seriously, though, I suspect the gates will be up tomorrow.

Now I'm listening to some music. I was listening to Blue October's Home album, but it's made it past that on Windows Media Player and so it's Bonnie Tyler's 'I Need a Hero' right now.  Have you ever seen the music video for that?  I will not post it here.  It is...terribly creepy and inappropriate, running right across the boundary of sick and wrong, to be honest.  It's set in a young men's school (as in teenagers) and she plays a teacher. Enough said.  How did we not see that back in the 80s?  I still love the song, though.

Okay, I'm going to sign off here for awhile. YKWIA is taking a nap, all is quiet, save for the music.  It's still about an hour-and-a-half till the animals need to be fed (although one is right by me, hoping to be).  The laundry is drying. I am considering lying down for a bit while that tumbles.

Ooh, we've made it to The Box Tops' 'The Letter'. :)

The cold continues...

It's supposed to be six degrees tonight (Fahrenheit) with a wind chill down to minus 15.  I went to the store on my way home tonight and it was so cold going out, as the wind had picked up.  We're not really getting the snow you see further South, just a few flakes here and there, and I'm thankful, as it's too cold for salt to do much good.  A lady on the UK shuttle was talking about a friend in Myrtle Beach freaking because they'd had a lot of bad weather.  When I lived there in 1972, we had an ice storm followed by seven inches of snow.  We wound up piling into a neighbour's recreational vehicle and driving to Garden City so that we could plug up at a K-Mart parking lot--all nine of us.  It was miserable.  So yes, it does happen, but rarely.

Today started a bit shaky.  I didn't get paid till about 9 am (it's usually there at midnight) due to the New Year's holiday, so I didn't get breakfast at the University of Kentucky Dining but rather ate some homemade bread that I'd brought for lunch.  But it all worked out.  It was a slower day, especially about mid-day, and we got a lot done on queues.  I showed one of our co-workers who helps out in her department how to do check out.  All in all, it was a pretty decent day.  I didn't get a shower this morning, mainly because I couldn't contemplate it as cold as it was, I wanted to save time, and also because my friend went to the bathroom and I didn't realise he was finished for ten minutes.  He said he told me, but I didn't hear.  Anyway, by that time I was past the window for the shower, but really, the idea of getting wet and then going out in this didn't appeal to me.  So my hair wasn't as nice, but really, I have thin, baby fine hair, so it pretty much never really does much of anything.  This afternoon they sent an e-mail out saying that we were going to rebuild the employee directory on the intranet, where employee photos are listed by department and name, so you get to know your co-workers.  We had it at the old place, and apparently, they took it down when they moved.  I was trying to show one of the new co-workers in our department who the care managers were, for example, and the doctors, and it wasn't up anymore.  Anyway, they sent out the e-mail stating that they were bringing it back and instead of having pictures from our badges (which are usually bad), they invited people to send in a favourite self-portrait, take one in our work area (for which they are giving a prize for best 'selfie'), or the public relations department will take one if we'd like.  So I looked through some pictures and didn't really like any of them, and decided to take a picture in my work area, even though I didn't feel like my best.  It came out pretty well, actually.  Here it is:

YKWIA says I always do this thing in portraits where I put my head out like a turtle.  He's right.  But this isn't too bad.  I could use some makeup, and the hair isn't as bouncy as usual, but they always say hair is easier to style when dirty.  Of course, I just combed it.  But anyway, that's what I sent in for my 'selfie'.

I did better with my blood sugar.  They've been running normal, but I haven't eaten much lately and yesterday it was hard to gauge how much insulin to take. I wound up testing my blood sugar AFTER lunch, and it was 56 or 58.  I downed quite a few glucose tablets, as that was all I had with me, and brought it back up.  But I was pretty shaky.  Today I dialled the insulin down, taking 55 units of Lantus this morning, I think, rather than the normal 70-80.  That definitely helped.  If I can come down on the two insulins, I think that would be a wonderful thing.

We ate some wonderful soup with egg and homemade bread along with a lentil salad for dinner, then shared an apple that Brenda left on Sunday for us to try--it's the Opal variety.  It was very good.  I found some 'lunchbox'-sized McIntoshes at Kroger and got some.  That is my favourite variety, and I hadn't seen any at Kroger in probably a good three or four years.

The cat and the dogs have been fed; I didn't leave the dogs out but a few minutes.  The night is not fit for man nor beast.  The cat's in his post-prandial cuddling phase.  He likes to curl up with us afterwards.  YKWIA is reading, and of course, he wants in his lap.  I think I'll go listen to some music in bed, and so he'll probably come in and climb up on me.

Tomorrow I have two doctors' appointments, with my psychiatrist at 8 am, which is pretty early, about the time I usually get to the University, but it's further away.  I have to take a shower before I go, either tonight or tomorrow morning. I think I'll try to do the latter and wake up earlier. My ophthalmologist and field of vision test are at 2 pm.  On the bright side, because I'm coming and going for appointments, my boss put in for me to have one of the five spaces in the back parking lot.  Yay.  They're doing a lottery for any spaces that aren't used on a daily basis, which is fun, too.  But tomorrow, I get one for its intended purpose.

So, I think I'm going to sign off here.  Have a good night.

Well, that was an adventure

I got up early again today (well, 6:45, which is not all that early in the grand scheme of thing, but better than the 8:30 or 9 I was doing). I got up, got ready, had breakfast, took my meds, called the parking office, realised I had books due at the library yesterday (so I got the list of them and put them in a bag to take back before they opened, so they wouldn't be overdue). I then drove to the library, put the books in the book drop, then drove to UK. The drive was pretty light, and I got there at 8:30 or so. Most of the parking was already taken, it looked like, so it's good I'll be going in at 8 in the morning rather than later. The lady at the office had said there was metered parking near a construction zone, but made it seem like it was in the parking garage on Press Street itself, just like they are, and so I went through the garage, didn't see any, and was about to leave and see what I could find when I saw the meters, outside, by the construction fence. Without thinking, I shifted into reverse (I'd encountered no one so far) and promptly ran into the front of the car behind me. I got out, then got back in and move the car slightly forward so we could inspect, but there was thankfully no damage. I apologised, we said goodbye, and I pulled into a meter space and put a quarter in.

Getting the actual hang tag was pretty easy. I paid for the full 12 weeks, and a little more, through August 31st, because I wasn't exactly sure when this will end. So now I have a hang tag, and can park Monday morning when I go in. I also picked up some information on parking, a map, and a Valvoline $15 coupon off an oil change, which I need. Some of my co-workers park in that garage, others in the Orange Lot off Cooper, where there is a shuttle. Either is a fairly short walk, maybe 10-15 minutes for most people, which means 20-25 minutes for me.

Having escaped the office, I proceeded carefully down the street, past the medical centre and the Orange lot, through the roundabouts on Alumni, and over to Kroger on Chinoe, got a couple of things, and made it back before it started raining--and had the forethought to take one of the umbrellas in the car (there are four) with me. It is now raining really hard, but it's coming in onto the window boxes, so I'm fine with that--it was time to water them again. Still, I don't think I'll be going to the pool any time soon.

My plan on Monday is to get up at 6 am, be parked by 7:30, and then work my way to the medical centre and report for duty by 8. I need a short orientation and then I need to fill out the paperwork they're preparing. I don't need a TB skin test--I'm good till the autumn, and they have that record. I need to find out what exactly is the dress code for the department, as it varies. (Clinic was never supposed to have open-toed shoes, for example). It's not direct patient care, but it might have that. Also, most of the people in the department wear scrubs or T-shirts and scrubs, but I doubt they'll have me buy scrubs for the short period I'll be there. I think my normal office casual things should be okay, it's just a question as to whether I can wear sandals, really. And I need to make sure they're still doing the jeans on Fridays. :)

Wow, we're actually getting a little thunder. I can barely see through my screens, they're so wet. Nice. I've been so intent on typing and the rain, I forgot my TV was still 'connecting' to Pandora, and I had some sort of morning show running in the background. Got that fixed, anyway. Okay, I guess I should continue to be productive, although I don't have anything I have to do at the moment, so I may just take a break and watch the rain. :)

What a day!

• Did laundry very early in the morning.
• Went to my meeting at the career centre/unemployment office, handed in my paperwork, went through a seminar on job searching and résumé-building, and asked some questions I needed to know more about.
• Went to Lowe's and got a 2-foot stepladder that is rated for my weight, some swag hooks to hang plants from, and some knobs to try on the floor lamp, since the one that came with it fell, hit something, and disappeared somewhere under the bed or in the aether, for all I know.
• Came home and tried a knob, but unfortunately it doesn't fit.
• Forgot my rehab equipment and had to drive back to get it--but I just got out of the parking lot, and if I'd left the spirometer and the other thingy, I do live practically across the road.
• Had a kick-ass session with pulmonary rehabilitation; I pushed myself, and oddly enough, did much better than normal (maybe it's the steroids).
• Got something at McDonald's and watched nearby geese with their goslings.
• Got a temporary job offer finalised that I accepted (and I think will work out for both me and the employer).
• Sent my e-mail address to the folks I sent the computer back to. They sent a $15 credit to Amazon to me for my trouble. :)
• Called UK parking to get some clarification on their tags.
• Picked A up from work, took him to the doctor, went home (I'm across the road), found a job to apply for, started working on it, and then picked him up from there.
• Took my friends to the credit union, the grocery, to pay a bill, and home.
• Helped my friends pay a bill online (I do the techy part, but they pay the money).
• Texted with a former co-worker.
• Applied to a job which was posted today at a local university.

So here's the deal. My former workplace is really busy, someone is on maternity leave, and they need someone to help, so they changed the offer to full-time for about twelve weeks, via contract work, for a much better pay rate than I was previously offered. I was willing to take on the duties given that offer. They will work with my appointments and any interviews I need to go on. I start Monday, working a normal schedule, starting at 8 am. The parking is at the University of Kentucky, and they thought the single-use scratch-off tags might work, but I called UK Transportation Services and explained that I would be a contracted employee working full-time on a temporary basis, and she said that they do offer regular tags at a monthly, rather than yearly, deduction, which would be almost half the price of those scratch-offs, and I'd just have to go ahead and come down and set up an account with them. I need to call tomorrow to find out 1) can I get one before I get my badge, so I'm ready to go on Monday, and 2) where on earth do I park if I need a tag, as I don't see a visitor section to the garage that the main office is in, and the actual visitor garage is a good deal away, so it would behoove me to check. As far as the unemployment goes, I would simply stop filing for benefits after this week and then re-activate the claim after the temporary position ended. I have a full year to actually claim benefits, but I'm limited to 26 weeks of actual benefit payments, so they'd resume (assuming I haven't found another job by then), and that will get me almost to the end of the year in better shape than I would have been.

In the meantime, I'll continue to look for jobs. I've applied to eight so far, since being on unemployment (two this week alone, and I've only been required to apply for six so far). All but one was library-related, and both of this week's are. One is a public librarian in Owen County (an hour's drive away), one is at Transy, here in Lexington.

So what else to do today? Our inspections were put off till tomorrow, and the house is about the same as it was the other day, but not too bad. I might move a few things around, but no major rearrangement. Mainly I want people to be able to walk through without causing issues--so I need to move the hand truck with the cursed cinder block (my toe did partly turn black) away from the middle of the living room. There are also a few things that can go in the walk-in closet. And there are those plants to hang, but I don't know if I should do that just now, or wait till tomorrow when there's a lot of light in the window. That may very well depend on whether I can find a 1/8" drill bit for my drill. I think they're in the closet with the drill, but I'm not sure. The plan is to hang three plants in the living room window (and there's already been a hook in the middle before) and one in the bedroom. The stepladder should allow me to do it, as I think I have eight-foot ceilings (except the hallway, which is shorter), and I'm 5'4" tall, so that gets me close, anyway, although I have those short Tyrannosaurus arms, so close may not work. If that's the case, A may need to help me later.

Tomorrow there's the parking office, an appointment with a friend, and otherwise I think I'll just hang around here and work on the apartment some. Maybe I'll try to go to the pool early in the day so that I can enjoy it with some peace and quiet before all the kids come out, and start exercising in the fitness room as well, now that I know I can kick butt with my breathing techniques on the equipment. Okay, I think I'll go look for that drill bit.

I have

Turned off the alarms on my phone for tomorrow; I have the day to myself and plan to sleep in. Beyond that,  I want to get the house straightened up,  as I may have people over Thursday.

Today we had the game.  I started the notes last night but got sleepy with an hour left in the recording,  and finished it this morning,  but it took two hours to finish because there was a lot of description towards the end that I couldn't skip.

My ankle has been giving me problems all day,  so A did a lot to help me with the housework. The game was interesting,  with a lot of investigation,  with murder,  witchcraft,  and heresy afoot. After the game,  I made YKWIA some food and watched an episode of 'Lost Girl'  with him.  Now I'm home,  after finding a parking spot finally,  the worst I've ever encountered in terms of finding a space since I moved here eleven years ago, and dragging in my laundry,  the laptop,  food,  and my tote bag that I'm using as a purse.

So now it's off to bed.  Good night!

It's amazing to me

how difficult it is for me to do anything remotely related to conflict, even if I'm making a complaint to someone in authority rather than confronting an (unknown) person directly. We've had a car parked blocking our stairs for three days now. It was there on Thursday when I was home all day and hasn't moved since then. Now another car is (legitimately) parked in front of it and there is no room for laundry carts, trash bags, etc. between the two cars. I had been meaning to call the office today anyway (I think notes are just passive-aggressive, and can lead to parking wars), but watching people slide between the two cars finally got me to call, and when it was busy, I finally got up, got a shower, and walked over there. I talked to the leasing agent, someone I've spoken with before, gave her the colour, make of the car, and the licence plate number, my apartment building, and I showed her a picture of the car blocking the stairs. But my voice shook as I said it. It annoyed me, yes, that they did it, but I wasn't actually angry. No, my voice was shaking because I was essentially tattling on someone, and there was fear underneath that. Pathetic, I know. It's just something I have to work on, though. Emotionally I try to appease those in authority and make sure I don't piss off any one else, and there are just times when that doesn't fly. I would make an excellent, loyal dog. But I'm a person, with my own opinions, and I need to start having some confidence in myself. Anyway, the agent said she'd take note of it and if it were still there Monday they'd tag it for removal. In the meantime, I may have to get creative to get my laundry to my friends' house tomorrow. Right now you can walk around the side and back of the car, because there isn't one behind it, at least. But I doubt that will be the cast tomorrow morning.

I had a very slow morning. I just couldn't get up, and I want to go back to bed now. I didn't get to bed till 1 am last night, and I only got about 6-7 hours the night before, I think, since I had to get up early on Friday, but this is a little odd for me. I don't feel sick, just a little run down. I feel like I've been going and going and now my batteries have run down, even though I've had rest over the week and even had a day off. I need to work on the house and the game notes--and I have time, as A isn't supposed to call until he gets back from getting his hair cut so we can go to the grocery around 3 pm or so. But I'm just not feeling it.