Worry Checklist

 This is going back a couple of weeks because "time's lost all meaning" keeps climbing to new heights. But a couple of weeks ago, a few not-catastrophic but not-awesome things happened in quick succession:

I had a biopsy done on the mass in my breast. The doctor and nurse could not have been lovelier, everything was explained really well and the care was compassionate in the extreme. But I reacted badly to the tape over the gauze, so in addition to massive bruising and a small healing incision I had a couple of really painful lesions on my boob and the whole thing looked like it had been mauled.

My dad has been having a weird pain under his rib cage for going on two months now. He's had x-rays, ultrasounds, bloodwork and one really stupid physiotherapy appointment over the phone (who the fuck thought that was a good idea). The pain was worse again so I took him to my physiotherapist and talked to his doctor about getting him some pain relief, because "I don't want to prescribe anything when I don't know for sure what's causing the pain" is fine for a few days to a week, but at some point it doesn't matter what's causing the pain, you have to prescribe something to address the pain.

Lucy jumped down off of a couch, which she does dozens of times a day, and hurt her knee, which she's done once before, and got very weird and sad and didn't want to eat or be walked.

Matt had to go to Germany for work and we were idiots and weren't careful enough about isolating him when he got home, and he started coughing.

So for the space of a couple of days, I was:

Worried about my boob

Worried about my dad

Worried about my dog

Worried about my husband

And then we had some tornado-force winds blast through town in the middle of the long week-end and some people were powerless for a week or more. The last time this happened we were the last to have power back up, and this time we didn't lose power at all, so I felt extremely grateful, even though my husband gave me Covid while my boob was still healing.

I haven't heard back about the biopsy, likely because the power outage delayed everything. Trying to assume that no news is good news. The doctor doing the biopsy said that when they pulled the samples out the mass got smaller, which means it's probably just a cyst. 

The doctor prescribed a prescription-strength anti-inflammatory for my dad which helped, but because of his kidney function he can't take them long term, which sucks because they really helped. He seems to be getting very slowly better, it's just sort of scary and frustrating that we still don't really know what's going on or how to make sure it keeps moving in the right direction.

Lucy was weird and sad for about a week and we were careful with her and Eve only took her for very short walks, and she seems to be back to normal. Small dogs often do have knee problems, and she had already lost some weight, so there's not a whole lot we can do.

We didn't get as sick with Covid as some have. As long as I didn't do too much I didn't feel that bad, except for a brutal hacking cough, which is something I used to get at least once yearly before I got my CPAP anyway, due to chronically inflamed airways. 

So then I couldn't do anything about anything I was worried about for a few days, and a bunch of people didn't have power, and some major streets are still closed ten days later, and it all felt very surreal and I couldn't go to work so now I have no idea what day it is and I feel more out of step with the world than ever and I don't know if I'll ever feel normal again, but I didn't have to have Covid without lights or air conditioning so... grateful for that.

Before all that, the next thing I was going to blog about was meeting my sister and brother-in-law and niece in Elmira for Seniors Day. 

It wasn't a picture-perfect week-end. The university has lost its ball diamond over a dispute with the city and Angus was really upset about the conditions of the one they were playing at. We screwed up the hotel booking so my sister and her people showed up at our hotel room door at eleven p.m. when they arrived for a drink and we weren't there, while we were opening our hotel room door on an empty hallway. But we recovered and had a great day Saturday starting at Cracker Barrel, which my niece absolutely loves. I did get nervous waiting for them that they were walking into some other Cracker Barrel. I texted my niece but she didn't get it until we were all already sitting down:

Angus had a rough go pitching and they lost the first game. He shook it off and the team won the second game, and the Seniors Day ceremony was nice - they gave him an engraved bat and a travel jersey, a framed photo and a really nice card from the coach. 

Between games, Jody and Charlotte and I hit Target for hotel room booze.

Every time we go to Target I reserve the right to buy some junk food that we can't get in Canada. It's often - OFTEN - not very good, but that's really not the point. This time I bought a barrel of Ruffles with LeBron James on it and Lime and Jalapeno and Flamin' Hot Cheddar chips. Matt calls it my "ridiculous buckets of chips" and I am very happy with it.

Then we piled into the van to go over to the college for the team dinner. We brought some pictures from the Little League World Series and had a nice time with Angus, although we finished early because he had to be up at six for the bus to Albany for the next day's games.

Matt and I had gone back and forth on whether to go watch the last games of the season, but it would have been a nine-hour driving day minimum and we were already pretty tired from moving Eve home on Wednesday. We made our obligatory lunch stop at Hairy Tony's in Cortland and then followed the stats for the first game while driving home. They lost pretty badly, and then the stats went dead. We knew they had to win one game and Keuka College had to lose one of their games in order for Elmira to be in the playoffs, so we figured our chances were low. Turns out that in the second game they were down 13-1 and CAME BACK TO WIN, so Angus got his big last-game-pitching victory AND they were in the playoffs

AND Matt went to watch the playoff games and they got their FIRST EVER POST-SEASON WIN and beat St. John Fisher for the first time ever, the team that creamed them four times at Easter

AND Angus got the Sportsman of the Year 

AND the Elmira Booster Club Player of the Year Award at the Athletic Banquet.

So Matt got to see his last Elmira game after all (in which, let's be clear, they got absolutely creamed again, but after the one win it was okay). 

Whew. Writing all that made me feel a little better. Maybe I will have to blog myself normal again. You guys in? 

Real Talk

 I am a hot mess. I had a great conversation today with friends in an ongoing Facebook chat (ongoing for ... I don't know how to check how many years now - Hannah? Nicole? Any idea?) about how two of us were hanging back from the conversation because we were struggling and didn't feel like burdening the others with our complaints, even though we know rationally that whenever we do, everyone is compassionate and supportive, and we feel better. One of depression's major Insult to Injury Features is that it both takes you out at the knees and whispers in your ear that your pain is unearned and unimportant and no one will believe you or care. 

But first, the good stuff:

Watch this space!

Ready?

THERE'S AN EVE IN IT!

We stowed a couple of things (microwave, bedside table drawers, bin of dishes) in Matt's brother's garage not too far away because she wasn't going to have access to her house until May. We had pretty easily fit everything in the Rav going down, with a few things in one of those rooftap bags Matt had bought for the purpose. Everything was going fine this time, except it was very cold and windy.

We had almost everything ready to go, and then remembered we had to unzip the bed-bug-proof mattress cover and take the mattress topper off the bed. I can't find a picture of it, but it's a black foam thing that looks desperately uncomfortable - like an upsided-down egg carton with little spikes - but according to Eve (and her friend Erin who loved Eve's bed) it was the best thing ever. Eve got it off the bed and rolled into a pretty manageable bundle while I carried one load down, and then I came back and we brought it out to the Rav. Unfortunately, Matt wasn't quite ready to put it in anywhere, and an unanticipated effect of it sitting out in the cold is that it started to unfurl and became cement-like in its properties, so when we finally tried to stuff it in somewhere it was very, very difficult. We were basically helpless with laughter while not being able to feel our hands. 

More and more people kept showing up to say good-bye as we were finishing up, and I was having huge flashbacks to the bittersweet end-of-year times more years ago than I can actually believe. Eve and Erin and Isabelle mentioned that they'd meant to have a sleepover in one room and never managed it, so I told them about when a friend and I hauled our mattresses out onto the balcony one night in spring for an outdoor sleepover. Then we realized that my residence didn't even HAVE balconies anymore, which is a travesty of justice as far as I'm concerned.

We went over to the Department Head's office, the one who is my old professor and had asked us to come say hi before we left. She had made a special point of coming over to talk to Eve at the Arts and Science formal, which gave Eve huge street cred in the program because this professor is basically a celebrity among the students. Now she's asked if she can stay with us for her brother's wedding in the summer, which is hilarious because now Eve can tell everyone she had an actual sleepover with Dr. Wilson.

So yes, my daughter is home. I was thinking about one of Eve's friends who has mean unsupportive parents, who got into a really good program at a university a few hours away. In the fall I asked Eve how the friend was doing and she said "she's surprised that she's away from her parents and still has depression." Turns out my daughter is home and the weather has been lovely for a few days and ... I still have depression. I also have a kitchen full of tiny ants. Is this a thing? I've had ants, but never tiny ones. It must be a thing, because when I searched "ant traps" on amazon, one of the suggestions was "ant traps for tiny ants". As Eve said, I feel like ant traps should be effective on every size of ant.

I also have the photographic evidence Steph of All For the Love of You asked for a few months back when I mentioned wearing Doc Martens for my wedding. We had been asked to find some old baseball pictures of Angus for Seniors Day at the last minute, and Matt had found some but I was worried bringing them unframed would be risky so I went down to the storage closet to pull a few 8x10 frames out of the towering unsteady pile of frames and suddenly, there it was:

I can't remember the context in which I mentioned it, so just in case I didn't tell this part of the story, at one point during the dance I stepped out the back door to get some air and there was a small crowd of people. At one point my sister said "Ali, can you flash your boots so this gentlemen can get a picture?" I hiked my skirts and posed obligingly, and after the picture was snapped, Matt's uncle grabbed my shoulder and said "oh thank God, I thought she said 'boobs'".