What a Beauty

I ask you, how gorgeous is this yarn?

I splurged on it, and as it was a preorder, I had to be patient (not my strongest suit). But it came!

Beast Mode, indeed: 1200 yards is a lot! And with those colors I want to use every bit of it. Alison, I'm thinking of making your Nina's Ann Arbor Shawl; I should be able to use it all in that, it looks like.

Speaking of rainbows, I took a photo of the sock after I finished the toe:

The second sock is started and past the cuff, so it's ready for the trip.

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Unrelated question: Did anyone who reads my blog recently write on their own blog about making a recipe from the So Easy So Good cookbook?

I had to wait for it a few weeks from the library, and now I can't remember where I read about it!

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Don't miss my rant from yesterday about prescription drug prices. I turned off the auto-refills through Optum, so I can take the prescriptions to Publix going forward. I'm still dumbfounded that mail order costs so much more than Publix.

Does US Healthcare Suck That Much, or Is Publix That Awesome?

As I mentioned, my doctor adjusted my hormone dosage, so I picked up the new one at the Publix Pharmacy today. And since I get my regular prescriptions through Optum home delivery, I looked to see what the price difference was.

Holy cats, people. PUBLIX was cheaper. SO MUCH cheaper! I mean, $10.78 for a 30-day supply, or $87.50 for 90 days? WHAT? 😲

I absolutely thought that home delivery was cheaper. Did it used to be? You get the convenience of 90-day supplies and delivery to your door, but wasn't it also supposed to be cheaper? Am I crazy to think so?

After seeing that, I went into my health insurance website where it lets you check prices, and checked half a dozen other prescriptions. Not only were they all cheaper through Publix, but the difference was obscene. Multiplying the Publix prices by three months, the total was $42.34, and the Optum total was $255.69. 😠

What. The. Fuck.

Yay to Publix, I guess, but boo to Optum. I mean, a few bucks difference I can see, but 87% cheaper? No. That's outside reasonable by a wide margin. So wide you can't see the other side from here.

Ow, and Then OWWWWW

Summary

As I mentioned last week, my doctor wanted me to have an ultrasound to make sure that there wasn't something bad behind my getting my period recently. The result is that she thinks it was probably a hormonal imbalance, and we're adjusting my meds. She did a biopsy to make sure there were no precancerous cells; hopefully that will be clear and we move on and my ridiculous post-menopausal, this-ain't-supposed-to-happen body will settle down.

In more detail

Since I appreciate when people give details on this sort of thing, so I know what I might expect should I need to go through it, I decided to write it up more than that: not every detail, but some. No need to read it if you don't want that detail!

The ultrasound was ... very unpleasant. I had one before and uncomfortable is not a strong enough word for it. Even "pressure" is not a strong enough word for it! But it's in a good cause, and if it was intrusive enough for me to be glad I hadn't had a big lunch, well, again, I want to know if something's wrong.

After another stint in the waiting room, the nurse took me back to go over things, and told me that the doctor would do a pelvic exam (ugh) and might need to take a tissue biopsy. When the doctor came in, she told me that I have a "baby fibroid" that doesn't need to be treated, and as my endometrial lining was a little on the thick side, she did want to biopsy that to check in case there were any precancerous cells. Fair enough! 

She said that we could try doing the biopsy during the pelvic exam, and encouraged me to let her know if she needed to stop because it was too much. And it almost was too much! It went from uncomfortable to really hurting, but at least it didn't take very long. She was very kind about it, though that may sound odd under the circs, talking through it and encouraging me, telling me how well I was doing, and that she got a good sample. I should hear about the results in 7 to 10 days.

When it was done, she mentioned that I had just saved about $3000 (which is a hell of a thing, isn't it? health insurance in this country is serious messed up), and I said that I might be pleased about that in an hour, but right then it wasn't a lot of comfort. She said to stay lying down as long as I needed to, and offered Motrin and water, to which I said yes please, and she said she would have someone bring some in.

I stayed there for a few more minutes after she left, then sat up and stayed there for a bit. The promised Motrin was brought in, along with a cup of water (with ice cubes, even), and I asked for and was given a pad to use, so I didn't spend the whole drive home worrying I was bleeding through my clothes (it's close to an hour away, so I would have been thinking it). I slowly got up and dressed, and left the office.

I've noticed before in this building that the elevator is a little jerky in its movements, so I made sure to hold onto the rail, and I'm glad I did, because my legs were a bit wobbly and I would have staggered sideways otherwise. I got out to the car, where I had to hold onto the wheel with both hands to get myself in, so I decided not to be in a hurry, and pulled my book back out and read for probably 15 minutes, until I felt somewhat better.

The drive went fine, and I decided I had the energy to stop for therapeutic ice cream, which I did--still feeling a bit under my usual energy, but not unable to proceed.

When I went to the bathroom after I got home, there was quite a bit of blood, but it gradually tapered off until it was pretty much done by bedtime. Today I felt ... okay. Not great. But not bleeding, not super crampy, and honestly if my back hurts, who knows why? It may or may not be related: the older I get, the more things hurt, you know?

At least I have ice cream.

Found It!

As my long weekend wound down, I was pretty sure I was going to have to report back that I wasn't able to find the yarn I was looking for, and thus wouldn't be able to bring the socks I wanted to on my trip. Frustrating, though not the end of the world. But I decided to look one more time.

This yarn, Urth Uneek Sock, comes as a kit, meaning it's wound into two matching balls and comes in a box. Like this:

So that's what I've been looking for, the box with one ball of yarn in it. But today, looking again, I found ... the box.

Hmmm. Armed with this new info, I went back to the place I first thought it should be, the shelf with my other rainbow-colored fingering-weight yarn (yes, I have a whole shelf of that, hush). And this time, instead of feeling around in the back and corners for a box, I started pulling it all out. I didn't get half of it out when, viola:

Hello, my beauty!

So now I have two weeks before the trip, plenty of time to finish the toe of sock one and start sock two, ready to go. Whew!

It's an interesting lesson to me to trust my instincts. There's a Dick Francis book where the main character is looking for something in his father's study, and muses on how he follows his father in the principle of putting things in the first place you would look for them. It doesn't matter if your system doesn't make sense to others as long as it makes sense to you. 

This system is not without its flaws, clearly: I once went to pick up a library book and my card was not where it belonged, leaving me with the unsettling feeling that that meant it could be anywhere else on the planet...but I found it in the end. And I found my yarn. Yay.

The Real Plans

The first day off the long weekend has been very peaceful for me, full of lots of reading and wonderfully low-key. I keep thinking it's Saturday, but no, only Friday. Ahhh. Now I'm spending a little time thinking about my upcoming trip.

For me, a big part of any travel planning involves knitting projects, so of course that's what I'm thinking about for Key West. In general, I want to have more than one project with me, and it's often a shawl and a sock, both being things I make frequently. 

For the shawl, I've been working on Nixe, which I apparently haven't written about other than when I started it in May. Oops? It's a very thoroughly written pattern, which absolutely works for me, though it does mean it's potentially awkward as carry-around knitting: lots of pages. But each row is pretty simple once started, and I think I'll be okay pulling the pattern out and putting it away, for instance in the car, even though I'm used to spreading it out.

It starts out with the cream-colored yarn, simple knitting with yarnovers.

And then the colored yarn is brought in and the magic of slipped stitches does this:

I even like it held up to the light.

So, yes, I'm enjoying it too much to put aside. It comes with.

As for the sock project, well. For one reason and another, I actually have multiple socks-in-progress, so I pulled one out to see when I had left it. It turns out that sock one is almost done:

And I have time to finish it and start sock two before the trip. But. BUT.

Where is the other ball of yarn...?

Um, it must be here somewhere.

So. We'll see if I can find it this weekend. If not, I'll pick another option.

Sigh. Disorganization strikes again. I have to admit that it's kind of driving me crazy trying to figure out where it got to.

Time Off

As I mentioned recently, I've been very much looking forward to some time off, after the various stresses of recent months. A long weekend is always welcome, though I did modify my planned 4-day weekend to become a 3.5-day one, and will be working Monday afternoon so I can take Tuesday afternoon off to go for the ultrasound my doctor wants me to have (just to make sure getting my effing period is not a symptom of Something More Happening). And hey, three and a half days is a lot better than two! I turned my alarm off this morning, facing four days without it, which always feels good.

There there's Key West. Before April started going wrong for Mom (first the back; then the fall), I had been thinking about going up to New England to visit my friends, as I like to do each year, but of course that plan got shelved. I'd still like to get there in 2025, but it's only very recently that I've felt comfortable with the idea of leaving her: like, she just started driving again a week ago, so this is new-new. 

As an intermediate step, I've decided to join some friends (not sure how many people are coming, but around 10) on a short trip to Key West in a few weeks, which feels more manageable at this stage than a trip requiring an airplane. I've been to Key West before, but always taking the ferry, so I'm looking forward to driving this time. 

The plan is that some of us* are leaving on Monday the 21st and making a slow, drive-and-shop trip down to Marathon, then spending the night before going on to KW on Tuesday. We're only staying until Friday, but that should be enough time to really relax, and I need it! The place we're staying has a little private beach, and my plan is to spend a lot of my time zoning out there, joined by as many people as want to do that. 
*Some others are going to skip that and arrive on Tuesday.

One of the things I like about this trip is that it isn't plan-heavy. The idea is that people can do what they want, together or separately, during the day, and then gather for dinner in the evenings. I may well join people doing things during the day, but honestly, a few days of lazing around the beach or pool sounds marvelous. And perhaps I will take another picture that replaces my current Favorite Picture I Have Taken in Key West:

It's good to have goals, right?

Deciding by Not Deciding

In addition to showing the canvas print of Maggie here, talking about which way to hang it, I also put it on Facebook, and different people liked it all different ways. So sometimes, you just roll with it ("The only winning move is not to play": name that movie*), and decide by not deciding.

In other words, I chose a space where it fits both ways, so we can switch it up whenever we want.

So there's that!

*Any other WarGames fans here? Where are my fellow children of the 80s?

An Update on This and That

Work was an absolute bear this week, starting at 8 on Monday morning and going all week, and do you know what did not help me cope with that?

Getting my fucking period, after 2-3 years (depending on what you count), and after over a year on hormone therapy, WTAF, body. 

Hormones suck and bodies are the worst.

Waking up this morning with cramps and debilitating backache was not fun (seriously, I could hardly stand up and walk). However, to look on the bright side:

• first of all, I slept until 10, thank you eye mask, I haven't slept that late in forever
• second, I didn't have a single thing on the schedule, nothing that HAD to be done today
• finally, codeine helped take the back pain down to manageable

One thing that helped me cope this week was having some time off to look forward to. Two things, actually:

• We get next Friday off, for 4th of July, and I took the following Monday as a vacation day, so 4-day weekend
• Later in July, I'm going to Key West for a few days with friends, and my intentions are to rest and relax as much as possible. I am so looking forward to the down time. More on that to come.

Another happy thing that happened today is that the canvas photo print I ordered of Maggie arrived. And as the photo I picked doesn't have an obvious up or down, I have to decide which way to hang it:

I mean, you could argue for any of them, right?

Anyway, that's enough for me: time to go back to slouch on the couch. What a day.

_____ a Day

I started a daily journaling practice back in 2020: I got a 5-year book and every day, I would write a few sentences about what happened that day. I enjoyed how it made me think about the day, and after the first year, it was fun to see what I had being doing a year ago that day, then two years, and so on.

The journal would have been finished this October (I started it on a random day when it came), but back in February, when Maggie was having health problems, thinking about the day became something I didn't want to do, and I gave it up. No regrets there, it happened and I'm not kicking myself. Life is messy, and often doesn't fit into plans.

I read a book recently in which one of the main characters is telling the other about how, in therapy when he was a kid, the therapist had him start writing a daily journal, but only a simple one: every day, he wrote about one good thing that happened that day. Sometimes it was a big thing and some days, he had to scrape to come up with anything, but he found it to be a good practice.

This idea bounced around in my head for a bit, and this weekend, I picked up a blank book and started it. 

I was amused to see this option in the blank books, which honestly is a lesson I could stand to be reminded of:

But I like the one I got. It feels good in my hand, and the elastic to hold the pen is handy too. My rules (that are more like guidelines, or intentions):

• I am going to try hard to come up with at least one every day.
• I won't kick myself if I miss or skip a day.
• I will allow myself to add bonus good things.
• I will allow for negative-bad-things; not getting a flat tire counts as a good thing.

Do you do anything gratitude-y like this? Do you find it helps you on bad days?

Pomegranate Seeds

Thanks to this blog, I can say that it was around 15 years ago when I started eating frozen pomegranate seeds, which I found at Trader Joe's, though I don't seem to have written about the (inevitable with TJs) tragedy of when they stopped carrying them. Earlier this year, though, when I started making smoothies, I was checking on the frozen fruit options at Walmart and look what they had!

So I got a bag, and found that they were just as delicious and refreshing as I remembered them being. 

The next time I looked, Walmart was out of them. And then again. Oh nooooo.

When they were back, I bought three bags, because yeah, one wasn't cutting it for long. And as the third bag was dipped into this week, I looked at Walmart again today, and this happened.

It may have been all they had, but certainly it was all I could reach: they're on the top shelf. But that will hold me for a bit.

(When I started drafting this post on Friday, I titled it "Pomegranate Seeds, the Literal and the Metaphorical"--but the joke's on me tonight, as I don't remember what metaphor I was thinking of. Perhaps it will come to me.)

A Thought on Competency

Mom is doing better, in a manner far slower and less linear than she would like, but better. She doesn't need the walker in the house anymore, and just the cane when we go out. And we've gone out not just to doctor's appointments and the like, but out to dinner a few times, which is a very good sign!

As she gets better, there is less that I have to be the one to do around the house, the way it was when she was still so wobbly. And sometimes I have to remind myself of that, something I do know but can lose sight of, that she should do the things she can do. Even if she may do something that makes me a little jumpy, given her recent history. 

It makes me think of a situation in a book I read, where one character is asking another why he "let" a third character (an 80-something woman living on her own) do something that was potentially dangerous.

From: Wayward, by Mary Calmes

So that's the thing: as long as she is competent, she gets to decide things. It's a good reminder for me.

Please Continue to Hold

Blogging recently is just one item on my list of things that I need to do and fully intend to do but yet somehow just haven't done (see also: cut my fingernails so I can get my contact lenses out easily). 

And I will get there, sometime, I'm sure. But in the meantime, please enjoy this, which a friend brought to my attention when he saw it and thought of me:

Out of My Sports Comfort Zone

A surprising number of people over the years have thought that because I'm a hockey fan, I'm a sports fan, and that really isn't true. My dad watched football and basketball as well as hockey, but I imprinted on the Bruins like a baby duck, ignoring all else.

However, a friend of mine invited some people to come to a soccer game, and I decided to go along for the fun of the outing. The local team, FC Naples, is in a minor pro league, and is new to the area.

I drove up with one of the group, and we noticed a lot of smoke not that far from the arena. We weren't sure if it was a controlled burn or not, but we did see helicopters go by periodically with water bags, so it looked like they were trying to put it out. Happily for us, the smoke never got close enough to be a problem.

The weather was hot and humid, but there were some clouds as well as smoke cover, so at least the sunlight wasn't always too much.

Apparently my guess that this meant "fortune favors the bold" was correct! Fun phrase to put over a climbing wall.

We walked around the pitch before the game; it was lovely, but also very very hot, and very very buggy. Damned no-see-ums, get out of my eyelashes!

I was very glad that not only were we not at ground level, but our tickets actually included both inside and outside seating. That air conditioning was such a blessing!

The rest of the pictures I took were of warm-ups.

The game itself was fun. I did find some of the ways soccer is different from hockey to be confusing, but that's not a surprise, is it? (Seriously, though, their offsides is weird.)

We got to talk to a young man who watched part of the game in that area, who it turns out was the team's number-two goalie. He got a red card in the last game and had to sit this one out! He was very nice, and explained some things to us. 

Later on, a couple of young girls, maybe 11 or 12, were also explaining things to us: they both play soccer themselves, so they were a font of knowledge.

And our team won! Which of course made things even more fun. I'm not signing up for season tickets, but it was a very entertaining evening.

A Moment of Belonging

I had to go to a doctor's appointment this morning, and while it was nothing serious and it went fine, I still decided to treat myself on the way home and stopped in at a local bakery (they make a really good caramel latte). 

While I was in line, a woman I know through the Newcomers club came over to say hi, and ask about how Mom is doing, which was really nice. 

Then when she went back to her table, the woman in line behind me said, don't I know you from Newcomers, and I kind of recognized her too, and it turns out that we're going to the same event on Sunday. 

More to come about that, but I just wanted to remember this little moment of belonging here, and how nice it felt.

A Lazy Knitter's Way Out

I wanted to wind yarn to start a new project (because no, none of the projects I have going were crying out to be picked up again now), but I was too lazy to pull the swift and ball-winder out from under all the assorted crap piled in the corner.

So I took a look around and made it work another way.

The arms of the chair were the perfect size. And before you knew it, there was a tidy ball of yarn ready to go.

And after an evening hanging out with knitting friends, I had this.

Much more to come! In time.

Enjoying a Good Deed

Sometimes I'm lucky enough to get to do something that is technically a "good deed" but also benefits me, and today was one of those days, as I joined the regular beach clean-up on my local beach. They do it monthly, I think, but 8 AM on a Saturday is a time I would often prefer to be sleeping in. This time, though, I'd arranged to meet up with some friends, so it was time to set the alarm and go.

The weather was warm and humid, and the walk over was pretty, as it often is.

It's a beautiful beach.

We walked around for probably an hour, doing some talking in between picking up cigarette butts (ewww*) and bottle tops. We aren't supposed to be picking up anything natural, just man-made, but I did pick up a bunch of orange peels and a lemon wedge, figuring that they may be natural, but having them on the sand biodegrading for months isn't. 
*We discussed how doing this made us think both that people are pretty cool, because look at the crowd of people doing this, and also people suck, because look at the crap they drop in the sand.

I picked up one thing to bring home:

It may have been early for me to be up and out on a day off, but it was a pretty nice start to the day.