So we're getting ready for the funeral

I'm dressed and ready; YKWIA is shaving.  We have to be there in an hour.  It's cold outside, much cooler than yesterday (the high I think is supposed to be 39 degrees).  The crows have been taunting the dog; the starlings have been flying in a flock up and down in the yard.  It is very windy.

The kitten went into the bathroom during each of our showers.  He is careful not to get wet, but he likes to keep us company.  The cat is asleep on my bed, something he usually only gets to do on weekends after breakfast, as I keep my room closed so the kitten will not play with wires or orchid roots during the day.

Tomorrow I'll have to get up much earlier and go to work.  Today my backup is dealing with the stuff I normally do, and I'm grateful, as I need a break.

I just wish the break hadn't included Mrs Fore's passing.  She was such a lovely person.  I will miss her terribly.  I've only known her since April, but she was so good to us, and really rather adopted us both.

Okay, I have some final things to do before we go.  Hope you had a good Thanksgiving break (if you're in the US, anyway).  Otherwise, at least I hope you had a good weekend.

Did you know?

That if you sign on to an unfamiliar computer, say, at a library, Google will send you a notification (not a text, a notification) asking if it's you and then have you tap one of three numbers to correspond to what the computer says?  That was a little creepy.  Very useful, but still creepy.

I'm on the computer at the Beaumont library because it's not quite time for the public visitation for my friend, but I didn't want to go back home, but rather stay on this side of town.  The funeral home is right down the street.  I took YKWIA, who will be helping our friend with the family visitation, so he had to go earlier.  But I'm all dressed and ready, and there seemed to be no real reason to go back home until later.

So I'm where I feel most comfortable, a library, looking through books and music. I pared down my keys to the car fob, ignition key, and house key only to realise when I got here that I don't have my library card, the actual card being with my Kindle and the key ring card being on the rest of the ring at home.  But they let me use my licence to check out a few things, which was nice.  I can apparently sign in to a computer using my name, but when I went to the reservation kiosk it asked for my library card number, which I was able to glean from the Lexington Public Library application on my phone.

Anyway, the plan is to spend some time doing some things here rather than go home.  It's just a little over an hour till the public visitation begins, and the library closes at the same time, so it was fortuitous.

The last few days have been

very nice. I've read.  I've relaxed, taking a nap here and there.  I've listened to music, and I've done stuff around the house like raking leaves (again) to try to get ready for the vacuuming truck that comes by.  I got 2/3 of the yard done this afternoon, and I'll try to do the rest tomorrow.  I came inside to hydrate and got caught up in a 'Black Mirror' episode, and realised I was really tired and with the game called off tomorrow, it could wait till tomorrow, when the weather's supposed to be a little better anyway.  I have a two-foot pile of leaves in the road verge at the moment; it'll just grow a little bigger.  Most of the main leaves are already there.

Tomorrow I'll do my normal Sunday tasks: floors, bathroom, trash/recyclables, laundry, and cat litter boxes.  I did the dishes tonight so I think they're okay.  But the evening will visitation for the little lady who died, whom I cared a good deal about.  I'm going to take my friend over that afternoon to help with my other friend, who will be in a wheelchair so he can attend the family hour of visitation, and then I'll come at the regular time for the public.  I would take our friend, but my car is an old Ford Taurus that is so low to the ground that we have trouble getting in and out of it, much less someone with mobility issues.  I am not a big fan of visitation--I find it a bit morbid, to be honest.  But for her, I'll do it.  She was such a wonderful person, who lit up a whole room.  I was looking at Thanksgiving flowers the other day and found myself thinking about bringing some, and then remembered that she was gone.  That's the worst thing, I think, after someone dies--all the little things you want to share with them that evaporate in your mind as soon as you realise they have passed and you'll never share with them again.  It brings the pain up all over again.  That was certainly the case for me when my mom died.

So for now, though, I'm listening to Mumford & Sons, trying to decide whether I should 1) go to bed or 2) read some more.  The book (Kate Morton's The Distant Hours) is very well-written, the prose is lovely, and I'm about 50 pages in and I like how it's unfolding.  But I'm a little tired.  I'm in my pyjamas and I've brushed my teeth.  I'm ready for bed.

Today I got something I'd ordered as a lightning deal from Amazon, which I almost never do.  It's 128 GB SD card that is meant to go in a camera but can also go in laptops with the right reader, and I have one on mine.  I got it for $19.95, which was roughly half of the normal price, and it works, it's inserted into my computer, and I've backed up some files to it.  It's not great as a long-term storage option (they do break down over time, just like flash drives), but it was cheap and easy and while I have my documents backed up in other places (OneDrive, Dropbox), after what happened with the Windows update in October when I lost all my documents, I thought that it would make a good local option that wasn't at the mercy of cloud providers, and I can't afford a USB removable hard drive at the moment.  Also, if something happened to my laptop I could just switch out the card like I do with the microSD card in my phone (that has pictures and music on it).  So we'll see how it works out.   I took a few minutes earlier to back things up to the card and to the cloud.  I need to do that with the desktop, which YKWIA uses.  I also spent some time yesterday at the storage unit (looking for a couple of cutting boards, with no luck) and found my Civilization IV game, and so I pulled out the old DVD-ROM external drive I have here (it's from when computers didn't have them yet, and my computer is so 'advanced' it doesn't have one at all, so even though it's a little slow and clunky, it works--although not to play CDs lately, something in one of the Microsoft updates apparently broke that, too, so I guess the only CDs I'll buy in the near future are ones with AutoRip, where they do it for you, as otherwise, I can't get the CD music on my phone.  Anyway, it does work for CD-ROMs, and I was able to get the game onto this computer, so I'm happy, as it's one of the few games I ever play consistently.

Okay, I guess I'm just babbling about my life now.  It's going pretty well.  Work is still stressful but not as much as it had been.  I am very blessed right now.  I do feel a little guilty posting the pictures of Thanksgiving and the abundance of food for two people.  I live paycheque-to-paycheque, and I don't feel particularly affluent at all, but on the other hand, I have so much compared to some--a home to go to, food to eat, great companionship, and relatively good health, really.  I don't mean to flaunt it, but I think of the homeless, or the starving children in Yemen, or the refugees seeking asylum, etc., and I do feel guilty, although I really was just trying to express how grateful I am for life right now.  I don't have enough money to donate to any causes right now, it's been a struggle lately, and we had to pool our resources to make Thanksgiving happen, but maybe I could volunteer some time around Christmas.  Which reminds me, I guess I need to get some cards to send out.  We don't really celebrate Christmas, as I'm pagan (I celebrate the Winter Solstice, Yule) and YKWIA is Jewish.  But the holiday season is still a good time to think of others.  Chanukah, which of course is a minor holiday in the Jewish year, although most Christians, I think, just see it as Jewish Christmas, is coming up quickly--it starts December 2nd.  My plan is to get YKWIA some good house shoes, as his shoes have nearly died.  (I can say that here, as he doesn't read my blog, because as he puts it, he knows what goes on in my life).  But I'll have to wait till the next payday, which happens in the middle of Chanukah.

Okay, the cat wants to cuddle, the music has stopped.  Time to go to bed.  Good night.

I had a great Thanksgiving

It was a lot of work. I think we had about ten dishes overall: the Quorn 'turkey' (made from mycoprotien/fungous/mushrooms), rolls, gougers (this time with Bleu cheese), butternut squash with Gruyère cheese, curried pumpkin soup (also made with butternut squash, so much easier to peel than the kabocha was a few years ago), mashed potatoes (of course), green beans with shallots, Brussels sprouts with chestnuts, homemade cranberry and sauce with red wine, and pumpkin/caramel pie (the latter two were cooked/baked on Wednesday night). The pied took a while to come out and cool, so we were up late then, and got a late start on Thanksgiving, starting the preparation and cooking about 12:30 in the afternoon. We ate around 5:30 pm. I think it was the best Thanksgiving we've ever done. Afterwards, I cleaned up (that was a task), and he put everything into containers and into the fridge because he's good at spatial relations and can damn near bend space, if not time. Here are some photos:











We were both asleep by 8 pm, although I did wake up and woke him up at 11 so we both could take our medicine. We weren't up very long, though.

I slept well, and was able to sleep in till about 9 am or so as I'm off today. I'm actually off till Tuesday, as I have a funeral to go to, for the mother of a friend, the latter of whom had adopted me like a granddaughter. She'd just had her 94th birthday, and was a lovely woman with a huge personality that just lit up the room. I'll miss her a lot. The visitation is Sunday night so we won't be playing the game. I'm going to take my roommate early so he can help our friend (who has cancer) during the family visitation.

But today is a relaxation day. We'll take our friend some food. I'll stop by the storage unit and finally put my summer clothes in it [they were in my room for a good long while, and then the car]. I need to go by the library and take back The Rabbit-Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington, which I have out from interlibrary loan, now that I finished it this morning. I'm also going to take back some CDs, and Imagine Dragons one and one by OneRepublic. I plan on starting The Distant Hours by Kate Morton, which YKWIA had checked out and said was excellent, so I wanted to give it a try.

I guess that's all for now.  I plan on getting some rest before going back to work.  Days off are rare.

Love this

Source: Best Health Degrees

:( Sad today

It's rare that you meet someone who is an honestly good person who adopts you as part of the family even when you are not related by blood. Several months ago I was fortunate to have someone come into my life who did just that. She died today at the age of 94, peacefully in her sleep, and the world seems emptier without her. Requiescet in pace, Mrs Fore. I will miss you terribly. Following so close after my father's death, I can only hope that the old adage of death coming in threes is wrong in this case.

Requiescat in pace

I've written a little about the estrangement between my father and myself in this blog over the years.  The photo below is a photo of my family, one of only a couple of photos of my mom, dad, and me together. We really were three individual people with no real cohesiveness as a family, except at dinnertime, which we spent together. My mom had ceramics as a hobby, my dad had his radio room, and I read a lot, escaping into fantasy. My first six years of life my dad was mostly in southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. At 15, my parents divorced and my mom and I moved back to Danville and I withdrew further into myself. I tried to keep a relationship with my dad for a while, but there wasn't much of a foundation to build on and a lot of negativity to overcome. Finally, 25 years ago, when I was 26, we broke off contact with each other entirely and went our separate ways. I changed my name. The years passed. I got a better perspective of just how dysfunctional my family was, but also how it probably was from my parents' perspectives. With age comes wisdom. I used to be angry with my father and later realised that some of that anger should have been directed elsewhere. I haven't been angry in a while. We just never were going to be the family I wanted us to be. I accepted it. My mother's death last year brought some closure regarding that. We had talked out some of it. And the rest didn't so much matter anymore with her gone.

The other day I found out my dad was in hospice. He died last night, peacefully. I don't really know how I feel. I'm kind of la-la-la-ing in my head. I wish we could have had a better relationship. We couldn't. Just because you're related by blood doesn't automatically make people love you.

Anyway, for what is worth, I wish you peace, Daddy. I'm sorry we couldn't make it as a family. Rest in peace, Allan Joseph Broadbent, August 19, 1947-November 8, 2018.

It's hard to believe they're both gone.  They were my world when I was younger.  We moved from place to place due to him being a career airman, and with no siblings of my own, my main interaction, for good and bad, was with them.  They were just 19 when they married, and I was already on the way.  Neither of them was particularly ready for a child, an admittedly good child who mostly read but was overly-sensitive and kind of a cry-baby and too bright but socially awkward for her own good.  

What a glorious day

It's a beautiful sunny Saturday, with the sunlight streaming through my bedroom window, which is nice, as the plants (and we) have had to endure several days of gloomy, rainy weather.  Our area actually moved trick-or-treat from Halloween to Tuesday due to inclement weather.  So the kids were out on a sunny evening that had mild temperatures and then the next day it was pouring and would have been terrible for them.  And since then there's been wind and rain.  So it's nice to see the sun.  Plus the kitten is playing with the sunbeams in the hall.

I slept 12 hours last night, even with being up in the middle of the night for about an hour.  It was good to get some rest.

Halloween was an absolute success.  Many of us dressed up in the hospital.  I got a co-worker who gets up at an ungodly 4 am each day so she can work out and get ready to call me at 4:30 am so I would have plenty of time to do the makeup, etc.  I left home at 6:30 am and arrived at UK's lot at 6:55, and at work about 7:10 am, so I was a little early, but not much, and there was time to chat with others, play a bit on the laptop I brought, and take pictures.  Thankfully, I was not the only person on the shuttle to wear a costume; Mr Incredible was there as well, although the guy lamented that the pyjamas that he was wearing (they were cheaper than the costumes with the muscles) had no pockets, and therefore he was carrying his phone, keys, and badge in his hands and had no idea what he would do with them during the day.  :) Welcome to the world of women, who rarely have pockets and if so, they're never deep for anything of note.

I had street clothes, the lightest I could find, as I knew I'd be hot, underneath mine, although they were polyester so that probably defeated the attempt at staying cool.  And I had no pockets.  But once I clocked in, I put my badge on my pants waistband so I'd have my keys and badge with me without ruining the effect of the costume.  Granted, the whole point is to ID someone, but I was more concerned with the fact that our badges unlock various areas of the hospital and I didn't want to get trapped anywhere. :)

Here are some pictures from that day:

At home, after finishing the makeup

In the break room

Up in our department

Also in the break room

So I think it went really well, it delighted the kids, and we had great fun.  Today I'm going to pack it away and take it, along with the summer clothes that have been sitting in my room in a couple of tubs, to storage.

I have a lot to do today:

1. First, get caffeinated and ready for the day.
2. Go to the pharmacy for YKWIA when he gets up.
3. Get gas for the car.
4. Drop off the summer clothes and the Maleficent costume at the storage unit.
5. Do a couple of shelves (dusting) in my room. I do two shelves every Saturday to keep all the books in the house clean, on a rotating basis.
6. Launder the bedding.
7. Go on a grocery run.
8. Do the game notes.  Last week we barely survived an evil witch and yes, I called it, Cthulhoid faeries.
9. Do some cooking.  We're making pumpkin beignets, among other things.
10. Straighten up my room.
11. Read more of The Rabbit-Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington.
12. Make bread.
13. Water the plants.
14. Watching more of 'The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina' on Netflix; we've watched four episodes and it's really good.

What I do not plan to do is go anywhere near the University of Kentucky, the stadium--Kroger Field--or downtown.  There is a Kentucky-Georgia home football game that determines who goes to the Southeastern Conference tournament, and Kentucky is usually incredibly well, bad, at football, and a season where they've lost 1 out of 8 games is almost unheard of.  We are well known for our basketball programme, but football?  Anyway, the fans can be a little intense, which is why LEX 18 (the local NBC television station) posted this on their Facebook page:

I personally don't get the appeal of sports. I don't get that sort of fervour at all.  But hopefully, win or lose, it won't come down to that sort of thing.  Since the last major incident was a car being flipped on the street next to us at work, the police are using our gated lot as a staging area to keep order.

I'd like to think that I could write on days other than weekends

But it seems, for now, I'm too tired in the evening.  Here is a re-cap of the last few days:

Thursday, September 27th -- I utterly broke down at work because a mom was not happy that I hade made an appointment at an alternate location since I can't get an MRI at the university until a month after the child was supposed to have it.  Turns out the doctor told her they couldn't have it locally because the university's scanner is so much better.  She was very strident, not necessarily abusive, but it just set me off into a crying fit (it turns out I was also pre-menstrual, so maybe that can explain the sudden lability), and my neighbouring co-worker heard it, had me unlock the door, and talked me into taking a walk and stepping away from the office.  It was a really hard day.  I had over 20 off-sites to schedule (still do, as every time I manage to schedule one about 2-3 more appear in my box).

The university is down to two, maybe one MRI scanner (depending on certain conditions like age, if it's with contrast, etc.) due to some maintenance, and so the other day I managed to get a cervical, thoracic, and lumbar MRI scheduled there--a long scan, easily over 2 hours--but otherwise without any of the constraints I'm normally given (it was originally supposed to coordinate with a brace pickup, but the university was too booked, so they just said any time I could get), and the first available was in the middle of December.  Now in some cases, I do have an alternate place I can go to--the one I scheduled the kid in that caused his mom to go ballistic--and I was given the go ahead to go there for this one, as it's just too far out.  Most of these are supposed to be same day so they can see our doctors then, and they're usually in clinic about two days a week, given that they're in surgery or at the university on other days.  But if I go to the alternate place, I have to clarify a spine survey (a reduced scan) vs a full scan, and all these little details take time, especially since I try at the university first as that's preferred.  And they can't do sedation ones.

Meanwhile, the baby hips are causing me no end of stress.  When we ask for an ultrasound for hip dysplasia, it's usually for treatment, not for diagnosis, and it has to be without manipulation, often in a harness.  These kids are extremely delicate--they can't be moved out of position at all.  The university is the only place in town that does them without manipulation, and they're down three techs.  The requests for these are always the same day, as is our protocol, and usually a week or two weeks out.  I'm struggling to get dates before a month out, and I'm relying on cancellations to get anything scheduled.  There are lots of little things that go into all of this, forms to fill out, faxes or e-mails, calling the centres, calling the parents, rescheduling, usually, as it doesn't suit someone, and then mailing letters, maps, and updating a summary, and sending the form out to a group.  That's just my part.  Then I hand it over to someone else who pre-certifies it.  But this could easily be a more-than-full-time job alone.  And it's just half of what I do--the surgery pre-certs are the main thing, and I"m struggling to get those done ahead of time because of all the time I'm spending on the off-sites.  I tracked the last week of off-sites on a running total to see how many I had a day, how many I got done, etc., whether I ran into any problems.  The one where the mom triggered the crying fit took about three hours total. On a good day--if I only work on off-sites--I can do about seven, or one an hour.  But that's without doing the surgeries at all that day.  Usually, it's two, maybe three.  And they just keep coming.  Plus, they have to be prioritised as they come in, as some are more urgent than others, like ones that are post-surgery the next day, or the baby hips for a week out.  It's causing a lot of stress.

I've already had an episode where I went to the emergency room for hours with chest pains and headache, and they eventually decided I'd had a migraine that was causing numbness and pain down my left arm.  I told that to my neurologist yesterday and he gave me a dissolving medication for migraines.  But I'm sure the whole thing was stress-related.  I'm getting a lot of headaches, have had some gastroenteric issues, and I've been stress eating from the vending machines, so my hA1c jumped from 7.1% a few months ago to 9.0% since I started in June.  I'm going to have to start packing carrots and other healthy foods, as I'm not sure I can curb the urge to eat, but at least I can change what I eat, and my endocrinologist said that was fine.

Friday, September 28th--It was a better day.  Busy, of course.  I started tracking the off-sites at work.  I had 26 that morning and got it down to 19.

Last weekend--my friend, the kitten, and the cat were all sniffly and under the weather.  The dog and I were the only ones fine.  We didn't play the game as a result, but I got a lot of rest, at least.

Work throughout the week--I just sallied forth and did what I could.  Surgeries were mostly done the day before or day of.  I realised late Friday afternoon that I had not sent one, and sent it in.  It may be denied for no timely authorisations (most places don't due retro ones).  That's not acceptable, and I know it, and it most likely will be an issue.  It won't be passed to the family (we are an actual charity, not just a non-profit), but it will cost the hospital money if denied.  So there was stress there.  I didn't think I was doing well, but I didn't think I'd actually drop the ball entirely on one.  So we'll see if they approve it.  I have no illusions that they will.

Tuesday, October 2nd--So I updated my laptop to the Windows 10 October Feature Update.  More on that in a minute.

Wednesday, October 3rd--That evening, I went to do a book review that I hadn't managed to get in by the 1st, and lo, my documents were all gone due to the update.  No one was really reporting on it at the time, just a few things in the fora.  I spent the evening seeing if they had been moved to another area, and I rolled back the update to see if they would appear.  Nada.  Nothing on my desktop, music, or photos had been touched, just my local drive non-cloud documents.  But that included the game notes, my job hunt materials, and my book reviews.  I updated back and at least I have some of that on Dropbox.  The game notes were backed up a month ago, and there are just two sessions I lost, which is good, and those recordings were still on the desktop, thankfully, so I can reconstruct (over several hours).  Most of the important stuff was already backed up.  But I was not happy with Microsoft at all.  I was also up late that night backing up my desktop, where my friend has tens of thousands of documents and pictures that he's collected and created over years, and we unplugged it from the Internet entirely.

Thursday, October 4th--News stories started making the rounds on the tech sites of the data loss issue with the update.  I did find a good tool for trying to recover files, but it only recovered a few non-important files I'd deleted myself, although I did get a book review back.  But either the files I'd had were just absolutely deleted by Microsoft's update, or rolling back--which even now Microsoft is suggesting,--just deleted them beyond recovery.

I did find ways to make sure the desktop didn't get the update (fortunately that machine is Windows 10 Pro, not Home like the laptop, so it's easier.  We were able to plug the computer back in.  It's deferred all updates for a month, and any feature updates for a year.  So we're good for now, hopefully.  But again, despite my best efforts to go to bed early, I was awakened in the middle of the night for a minor crisis and didn't get back to bed till 4 am.

Yesterday--We are officially out of grocery money.  I'm broke in general, my last purchase being a pie for a send-off at work for a co-worker who is moving to a new department.  It's going to be a very lean week until I get paid.

Today--I got some good sleep last night, and woke up to sun streaming through the window, and the cat, who'd really been struggling with the crud, obviously doing much better.  I got up, got some water, took my medicine, and played with the kitten with a laser pointer, although I have to be careful because while he's up to playing, he's still got a little breathing issue from the crud he had.

Okay, that's it for now.  Sorry I haven't blogged.  Today is the library, pet food run, book review, and working on the notes, plus going over to our sick friend's for a visit and maybe a movie tonight.

So since I last posted

I moved the kitten-toxic plants to work:

From home:



The office from the door. The peace lily the hospital sent to my mom's funeral is to the right on the other side of a chair out of the camera's shot, and it is blooming. Note that I carefully made sure no patient info was showing or exposed. It was hard. Folders, magazines, flipped papers, and photo frames were invaluable.



Here are some close ups:







The plants are very stress-releasing, which is good. Depsite that I had a breakdown the other day at work. It wasn't a good day. A series of events triggered it, but I just sat down in my office and cried. A co-worker helped me feel better. The next day was better, I went from 26 offsites at the beginning of the day to 19, and at least made progress after everything came to a crashing halt the day before. But I was so glad to leave work for the weekend, to get some rest and try to recharge. I'm going to try to speak with my boss Monday about some of the challenges I'm running up against.

The kitten continues to delight. Saturday morning I got a laser pointer (a cat toy that can easily be put up so the dog doesn't eat it), and he has discovered the red dot. He is adorable. He's on the tail end of a little viral kennel thing. The other cat is just starting with it. Meanwhile, totally unrelated, I believe, YKWIA has been fighting some sort of sinus gunk for three days, and I woke up sneezing this morning. So the dog is the only one of us not sneezing at the moment.

One last thing...our department at work is going to do Halloween as Disney characters of various types. I chose Maleficient, and I got my costume in the mail right about 8 pm last night (the US Postal Service cut it pretty close, but delivered it on time.) Here it is, sans any green makeup I'll actually do for the face (I haven't figured out what to do with the hands yet, as they should also be green. Gloves? Makeup? I don't want to get the latter everywhere.