No Mas

Inspirational song: Crying (Roy Orbison)

I see where this all went wrong. Last time I made an extensive, hyper-detailed to-do list, I made it for six days' worth of activities. I made another one less than a week after that one concluded, but I was too ambitious. I wrote it for the last week of April, going through May 15. I put too much on it, and now looking at it makes me sick. Before, I was able to look at the insurmountable amount of crap I have to do, and I could prioritize and knock out almost all of it by the midnight Saturday deadline. This time, it hurts too much, and I'm even more stressed than when I'm just juggling all of these conflicting tasks in my head. I can't sort anything out, and I can't make enough progress. I'm barely marking anything off the list, even though I feel busy all of the time. I hate this.

I'm tired of going to bed over-tired. It is probably obvious how often lately I'm completely loopy while I'm trying to blog. I am afraid of going back and re-reading what I've written. I have been in a stupor for most of them for weeks. It might be a result of adjusting my medications over the last few months, or it might be how much I'm jamming into a day (whether successfully completing a single thing or not). Last night, my head was lolling about, and my eyes kept rolling back in my head. Whenever my chin hit my chest (repeatedly), I jerked back awake for a few seconds, for a few sentences. I need to reorganize my nighttime schedule and make things wrap up sooner. (For the record, I tried to start blogging earlier tonight, and my laptop refused to acknowledge input from the touchpad. I had to restart it and wait and wait. Good thing it's a touchscreen, so I could make it do what I was forcing it to do.)

I have been trying to pull back on how many things I agree to do since last summer. I failed immediately, when the Rotary club nabbed me for a new job. I've gotten rid of most of that job, all except the newsletters, but I still feel a stressful amount of obligation there. I have things that I want to do for myself, and I keep putting them off, because I still have so many projects, so many irons in the fire. I'm trying to filter out the big stuff, and knock out as many little things as I can along the way. I'm going to have to make much smaller lists, covering no more than a few days, so I can triage them better. I'm craving organization and peace. I don't need any more sources of anxiety.

Petals and Leaves

Inspirational song: All These Things That I've Done (The Killers)

It's late and things are finally mostly quiet around Smith Park West. There was a lot of rambunctious noise throughout the day, but now all I hear are the sounds of Harvey killing and eating something with wings that came in while the doors were open, Athena marching around the main floor singing the strains of an epic poem to describe her exploits of the day, and the occasional car driving way too fast on my street. I have completely unwound, and I'm in the process of just letting this day drain out through my skin, never to be remembered in the grand scheme of my life. We had time to be loud, to rile up the teenager just because it was easy, to shop, to entertain, and to relax. I'm still miles behind on my to-do list, and I just don't want to worry about it before bedtime.

Spring comes much later to the Front Range than it does most of the country. I've been watching people on TV standing in front of trees that blossomed and leafed out weeks ago, and they've already swapped out to their warm weather wardrobes. It has only been in the last week that I got serious about spring, and stopped watching the weather report for one last snowstorm. It's still possible there's one more to come, maybe even after Mother's Day, but I feel comfortable behaving as if they're done. It's time to put plants outside (but only in containers, just in case), to think about removing snow tires for regular ones, and to purchase my first pair of capri pants of the year. (I change sizes so often with my disease and the medications that treat it, it seems more relevant to purchase than to dig shorts out of a drawer and hope for comfort.)

My lilacs aren't quite far enough along to bloom yet, but the one just on the neighbor's side of the fence is really opening up. It smells great on that side of the house, even if it is a little reminiscent of an old lady's bath salts. The chokecherry has just unfurled a few random white blossoms, like watching the first kernels of popcorn open in the oiled based of an old-fashioned electric popper. The tart cherries up front haven't flowered yet, but they'll be along soon. The house smells weird, and I haven't figured out whether it's a legitimate kind of weird, or the combination of all of the different stages of trees flowering in sequence. The scent defies categorizing. I just wish I could remember whether this happened exactly this way last year. If only there were a way I could reach back, and see what I was thinking at the end of April last year, or the year before, or the year before that...

Opportunistic

Inspirational song: You Make Me So Very Happy (Blood, Sweat, & Tears)

Yes, as expected, I soaked in the new spa twice today. I crawled in it first thing this morning (which was actually more like 9 am, but that story is later), before I ran errands. I had let it heat all the way to 104, just to make sure it would work. The insulation must be great, because it took forever to cool back off to where I like the water. I went out and failed to buy what I had been biding my time to acquire, got a massage, then bought crickets for Bruno and pondered getting the next anole in the series (not yet). I fell asleep hard (again, that story is next) and stumbled through dinner at a local Mexican restaurant that hasn't figured out its gluten free bona fides. XS took her turn in it while I read through Twitter, and then I spent a solid hour trying out every seat. The water felt so good, being fresh and correctly balanced. I read a book for a while, then turned on the jets. I usually just soak, and leave the water nearly still. I have learned just how perfect the "foot blaster" is, and it and I will be best friends.

We shop at Costco for a lot of things. It comes in handy, feeding my impulse to make it rain food and supplies like dollar bills at a strip club whenever guests come a-calling. And when one has no self control about the numbers of cats who belong to our family, it makes it possible to feed all five of them good quality, grain-free food without having to sell my plasma to make ends meet. Unfortunately, most people who shop at Costco know that they don't always have the exact thing you need, when you need it. You learn to take advantage of an opportunity when you see it, because they may not have the same item next time you return. Lately, we've had a hard time arriving on days when they are fully stocked on Nature's Domain cat food and Iams dog food. I had to cave in and buy cat food online, and get a small bag of something that costs twice as much to get them through the week. The two big boxes of cat food arrived on Thursday afternoon. The boys have spent the two days since chewing holes in the corners of the cardboard, making holes big enough that a little white rat of a kitten can get inside. They did this all night last night. I wasn't allowed to sleep more than fifteen minutes at a time, without getting out of bed to shove one cat or another off of the cardboard tower. Don't ask me why I didn't open the boxes and empty the bags into our plastic cat food bin. I didn't have the energy or fortitude to do it at 3 am. Getting out of bed a dozen times over was bad enough. I wasn't going to wake up far enough to do pantry tasks. My tail has been dragging ever since, and I'm still annoyed with all of the cats. I could have spent two more hours in the hot tub if I hadn't needed them for napping this afternoon.

Speaking of things not available and jumping as soon as you see something, I failed to take into account that I am not the only resident of this town who likes orange climbing roses. Two or three weeks ago, I saw a "Lady of Shalott" at the big nursery in town. We were just killing time before a movie started, so I took a photo to remind myself, and then moved on. I went back today, when a David Austin Rose representative was on site, thinking it would be the right time to purchase. They had only gone on sale last weekend, and they sold all 20 out in the first day. I was too late. Now I have to call around, and see who might still have one on the Front Range. There might be one at the big nursery on the southwest side of Fort Colliins. Now I have a quest for a new rose. Two years ago, I was seeking a fragrant white, and eventually found one with Sugar Moon. It's tall and hardy in my back yard, sending out healthy looking shoots all over. I am going to get a Lady of Shalott. This will happen. Just watch me (through a cracked mirror...)

Soaker

Inspirational song: Anticipation (Carly Simon)

In the immortal words of Inigo Montoya, "I hate waiting." When last I checked, the water temperature had climbed from an initial 52 degrees (the first time we looked) to a lukewarm 89 degrees. Even on an unseasonably warm day like today, that is not optimal hot tub temperature. I had imagined that before bedtime on the first night, I'd be able to get into the new spa. I hate waiting.

I stressed out cleaning the final stage of the patio, scrubbing it with a deck brush and Simple Green, to get off at least a year's worth of mud, dog fur, and stray Murray pee. (I know I've done it more recently than that, but I don't want to take credit for better than a half-assed job.) I was just sure the delivery crew was going to show up right at 11, at the beginning of our window, and I needed to get ready. I kept at it, finding new tasks to do in the back yard. After a couple of hours of waiting, Murray got taken off to an experimental physical therapy appointment (that resulted in the same prediction: no change), and Elsa and I stayed, waiting for the delivery. Eventually I got angry, went inside, and played on my iPad while I waited longer. It wasn't until after 1 o'clock that they called to say they were 20 minutes out, and once they arrived, they called to say they were in the alley but they didn't know which house. I went outside, and quickly figured out that they were in the *wrong* alley.

They disconnected the old tub, and used a giant hard plastic skid to drag it across the yard and out the back. They pulled the new tub off of the truck, while I sat under the patio overhang, avoiding the sun. I looked up, and realized almost immediately that they had brought the wrong tub. I had picked out one that was 78" square, but when I came home and measured, I decided it would be better to get the one that was 70x84. The salesman had told me it would be a little bit cheaper, but when I went in to make the switch, he wasn't there and the other guy wrote the new contract for the exact same price. I was mad but didn't win the negotiation. I spent a week regretting my choice to change tubs. The original tub was the one that arrived, and I decided it was fate giving me another chance. I told them don't take it back. If they still had the original contract (they did), then I wanted to keep it. I feel better about doing that. It's a nicer tub, it's about 5 gallons bigger, and it has one more water feature (it says, but I'm not sure how they mean that) and it has two more jets. And it manages to fit in the space just fine, allowing enough room for the lifter, no problem.

I probably received instruction manuals when my dad gave me the first spa, but I don't remember now, two years later, where I put them. I've been reading the new manual with the experience of maintaining one for years, and I'm following along much better. I intend to follow directions more closely than we did with the older spa, and not just so I don't void my warranty. The start-up chemical process is more intense than I remembered from before, and it will probably cost me a tiny bit more to keep it going than I had been investing previously. It's okay, I'm saving money in other places, most significantly in electric use. It'll be worth it.

It has been almost half an hour since I put the first casting of chlorine in it. I can lower the lid soon, which will make the temperature come up faster. I'm waiting for it to hit 104, its max, just to know for sure it can get there. Then it'll come down to about 99 for the summer, maybe a little less. It's so hard to wait for the first dip.

Getting Ready

Inspirational song: Something's Coming (West Side Story)

Waiting until Mother's Day is out of the question. There is no way I'm going to wait that long to start with flowers. I'm pretty sure that Colorado rule is really only for when you put your tomatoes in the ground outside, anyway. Container pots on the front porch are a whole different story. I bought violas a week ago, and have been waiting until I had a gap in my schedule to plant them and put them on the front porch. So naturally, I had to sneak out today and get some multi-colored calibrachoa, a couple pots of dianthus, a forget-me-not (to go over Bump's grave), a perfectly good osteospermum from the clearance rack, and two pots of sweet basil to go with the two four-packs of violas. Most of it has been planted, except oddly, only half of the violas have been used so far. I put the forget-me-nots and one dianthus (white flowers with dark magenta centers) over Bumpy. The basil went in with a bay laurel that has been struggling to survive since last year next to my front window, and two small clusters of violas for color, and that pot is on the front stoop. I also clipped the five or six spent flowers off of the osteospermum, and set it outside (really, this should not have been in clearance, but who am I to argue good fortune). I had a pot with bolted oregano and a struggling coral bells left from last year, with a tag that says there was also bergamot in there. We shall see whether it perks up once it gets stronger sunlight. I moved a pot of orange begonias outside. Two spindly shoots had wintered poorly. It might come back. And I put the calibrachoa and the other violas in a pot by themselves, and set them outside. All in all, it's not much of a display, but it gets me going for the season. It's a scrimmage, as it were, set on Draft Day. A hint of things to come.

I'm absolutely fatigued, after another night of playing games next door, with a big meal cooked by my neighbor's mother (it was perfect) and a couple of glasses of red wine to mellow me out. I ought to sleep like a baby tonight. I'm not sure I will. My starter hot tub is currently draining, and tomorrow morning it goes to the great beyond, while a new, highly efficient one takes its place. I loved every minute of the practice tub. We used it year round almost exactly two years now. It showed me how correct I was to want one so desperately for so many years. I had a lovely farewell soak instead of eating lunch today, and tomorrow will be bittersweet as the old tub leaves and the new, bigger one arrives. I'm sure I'll be anxious and freaked out tomorrow, with strangers coming in my back yard, bringing in a thousand-pound beastie, and working while my dogs bark from the garage. I should sleep now, so that I have the mental flexibility to handle this. The good news is, by tomorrow night, or Saturday morning at the latest, I'll be able to relax in a new hot tub to unwind if I freak out.

Good

Inspirational song: Everybody's Coming to My House (David Byrne)

This was the least amount of preparation I have put into game night at my house thus far, since we started coming here weekly for D&D. Most weeks, I freak out about panic cleaning and I make a big meal, and I carefully arrange the chairs and table. This week, I was more concerned with the outside than the inside. I had a super late lunch at about 4 o'clock, and it was 2/3 of a GF pizza. I had no interest in cooking. I didn't even bathe until 6 o'clock, and was still dressing and putting on eye liner when the first gamer showed up. It was weird to be so casual, even though during most of the winter I was wearing pajamas when everyone was here. I put forth a half-hearted attempt to wash dishes while everyone was getting settled, but that was it. Maybe this is a breakthrough for me, feeling comfortable around this group enough that I don't have to pretend I'm a more energetic housekeeper than I really am. I'll choose to view it positively, rather than brand myself a sloth.

I did do a lot of work around here today. I had help from my son-in-law, and we knocked out the two years' worth of accumulated debris from the back patio. It has been that long since I had so lovingly cleaned it all up and made the patio a nice place to sit with coffee or a meal. Since then, it filled up with spray paint cans and cardboard, spa chemicals, backpacks, rusty nails, gardening tools, and mountains of leaves and tufts of dog hair. We moved a crazy amount of kindling wood (from his apple tree, oddly enough, intended for smoking meats). I made an error in judgement and looked at a rug that had been wrecked by dogs, and threw it in the trash in the alley. I was lectured for that later, when I was sternly reminded that it goes in the back of the truck when Murray travels. I wasn't thinking along those lines. I just saw an icky rug on the patio. We made quicker work than I expected, and by the time I had to leave to get XS from school, I had moved everything except the hot tub that will need to be drained tomorrow in order to cart it off for the new one to arrive. I'm getting very excited. I've showed the brochure to everyone. Without the chaise lounge seat, there will be plenty of space for four adults, and it won't be creepy with us shoulder to shoulder with each other. And while the first month of water bills will be high, all subsequent power bills will be blissfully smaller. And best of all, with the lid lifter, I'll be able to use it more often, even on days when I'm here alone and my shoulders are hurting. In fact, I'll especially use it then. It will do me good.

I showed off Harvey's photo essay from this morning to my friends and family. He told me in great detail that Food Is Love, and he insisted that if I loved him I would pour out a half-dollar sized spill of cream while I was making my coffee. I tried to say no, but he was very persuasive. I spend the majority of my time in this house calling out to other rooms, "What was that? What now?" There are crashes and dragging noises and sounds of metal on tile, all day and all night. He's an annoying little boy, who will never, ever be as big as his adopted brother Alfred. But in that tiny cat body, there is so much concentrated personality, I have to take the bad with the good. Because when he's good, he's so, so charming.

Use Your Noodle

Inspirational song: Fast Food (Richard Thompson)

I'm very tempted to change out the inspirational song that I'd decided on several hours ago. As I lay in bed, waiting to feel the urge to write, I read through Twitter and saw that the man who wrote most of the Schoolhouse Rock songs died today. I feel like I ought to use one of the tunes that shaped such a large chunk of my early education. There are too many favorites to choose from. I can't do it. So I'm sticking with what I had planned.

It's not the most important passing in my life right now anyway. My stepmother's mother passed away yesterday. I hadn't had the opportunity to spend time with her for years, but I remember her as a strong woman whose ten children and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren loved dearly. My heart is with the family this week.

I had intended on writing about food. My day seemed to center on it, for better or worse. Today was Rotary, and I had just set my plate on the table when XS called me to say her scheduled ride didn't come to the high school to bring her over, and could I come instead. I raced off, having secured promises from my tablemates to guard my food from being collected by the bussers while I was gone. I tried to be extra careful in preparing that food, and I didn't want to take risks with a second round. They had invited the state championship-winning basketball team to lunch today, and I watched the teenager in front of me scoop up sloppy joe filling and tap it on the bun on his plate. I waited until he moved forward, reached for a soup spoon, and dished some of the meat from the side of the chafing dish where I had just seen it refilled. No way I could assure a gluten-free scoop if I lost that one.

There's a local Italian restaurant where Mr S-P worked when we were kids (i.e. 20 or 21). Back then, I'm pretty sure there was only one location, and it was a haven for broke college kids. They made their own fresh pasta, and on certain nights, they had all-you-can-eat spaghetti. When they opened a location in our town, the Mr got nostalgic for those simple days, and he has been looking for an opportunity to go there ever since. He found it when we had our exchange student move in. XS is tolerating my gluten-free house fairly well, but she jokes often about my "fake pasta," the quinoa noodles she uses several times a week for snacks and meals. So tonight they went to stuff their faces with gluten, whille I stayed home. I figured if they were going to have noodles, I'd do the same, and made edamame fettucine alfredo. It was close enough for me, without the horrible side effects. I got dispatches from the gluten wars, and we sent each other duelling pictures of noodles. I also got pictures of XS shoveling wheat-based pasta in her face as fast as she could. They both came home looking bloated and aching from all the wheat swelling in their bellies, but they were so pleased with themselves for sneaking out on me (with my blessing) that I didn't have the heart to tease them for overeating.

I thought about using the pictures we sent back and forth, but you already know what a plate of fettucine alfredo looks like, and I'm fairly certain that I'd be murdered if I posted a picture of a teenage girl shoving a giant forkful of spaghetti in her face (murdered by said teenage girl). Think of her looking elegant for the prom, not starved for platefuls of cheap gluten.

Walk It Off

Inspirational song: I'm Gonna Be (The Proclaimers)

You thought I was being unfair yesterday when I blamed my loss of internet access on Harvey, didn't you? May I present exhibit A:

Somebody decided that there was a bright yellow snake on the counter, and he took it upon himself to save the entire family from the danger it presented. He was most likely surprised that we were not as appreciative as he expected. Lucky for him and for me that the tech support and customer service people at the city power and communications company are super understanding and friendly, and they had a new fiber optic cable waiting for me behind the desk when I showed up this afternoon. It's not something your average Best Buy stocks, even in a town like this, and I had to get one from the source.

I'm glad the internet is back now, and that one of the kids showed me how easy it is to cast videos from YouTube to my television from my iPad. (If I'd only known before...) It was time to explain to XS about spoon theory, and I was so completely bereft of spoons by 8 o'clock this evening that I couldn't speak the words myself. So I showed her a video, and she sort of gets it now. I have been racing neck or nothing through the last few weeks, and I failed to keep a supply of spoons in reserve. She still has trouble imagining that a body can betray you, as most 17 year olds would, but we are getting closer to understanding why I suddenly just stop moving at a certain point in the day.

There was only one answer I feared more than "surgery" at the podiatrist this morning, and that was "don't really see anything." It wasn't nothing, but it wasn't much that was immediately actionable either. Something went wrong with the MRI when the data was transferred to the disc I brought in from the imaging lab, and the doctor had to crank the brightness all the way up to see faint images of my foot. The best he could tell, the posterior tibial tendon that he thought might be torn was intact, as were the flexor digitalis pair. Again, we saw no stress fractures in the bones, which is good, but they were clearly not in the pretty arch that they are supposed to assume. The sign of obvious distress was in the fascia, which was thickened by about 300% and showed distinct pockets of edema where it has been constantly tearing. The doc says he wants to start conservatively, with orthotics and physical therapy (which I had to warn him I'm basically priced out of since my copays are 250% of what they were before the NDAA this year), and if there is not sufficient improvement then we can talk about steroid injections. I'm a big girl when it comes to needles, and not generally afraid of them, but I turned inside out at the idea of a needle going in the arch of my foot. I will do everything I can to avoid getting to that point. (Dammit, another pun. Not my fault.) So here I sit, waiting for them to run the idea of orthotics past Tricare, to learn where I can go for them. I don't want them, because I can barely stand the pressure of wearing shoes at all, and I don't want to walk on giant curved pads, but if I am to avoid a needle and have any hope of re-arching my feet, I'll do what I have to. Who knows, maybe I'll actually feel like walking for the first time in a couple of years.

I promised pretty Harvey pictures, and I will deliver, with a pretty Wookiee dog and a surprisingly patient Rabbit thrown in for good measure.

(This is not cranky Rabbit face. She was actually grooming him until the second I took the picture.)

Past Time

Inspirational song: Old Time Rock and Roll (Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band)

Well, this is awkward. My internet is out. My lovely, all fiber optic, city owned utility, gigabit up and down internet is on the blink. We don't know what happened. It was fine until this evening. With nothing to go on other than knowing my neighbor's is still working just fine, I am going to run on the theory that Harvey did something on the counter to bump the delicate cable that comes in from the back of the house. He can't sass back and tell me he didn't do it, so he's my handy scapegoat.

I was planning on writing about light and how it was affecting my photographs beautifully today, but here I am stuck blogging on a phone that doesn't play nice with the blog platform. It refuses to upload pictures, and has for a couple of years now. I'm starting to wonder whether it isn't just time to throw off the blogspot training wheels and get my own domain. It seems like a big step, but really it may be past time to grow up.

I meant to mark the occasion on Friday, but I let myself be distracted. Friday was the fifth anniversary since I started writing these nightly essays. That's five years since I found a healthy outlet for creativity, a safe place to vent, a calming ritual to focus my memory and intention, and a habit to be proud of. The only night since April 20, 2013 that I didn't put out a post written by myself was in February of 2015, the night of the biggest, most invasive surgery I'd ever had, when I was too knocked out on morphine to GAF. Every other night I have forced myself to spend at least half an hour in reflection (even if the typing part takes less time). I don't know where I'd be without this habit. Probably screaming at my TV and sleeping poorly.

I will attempt to upload one of the pretty pictures from today. If they don't work, and I fully expect they won't, I'll still post one on the Facebook link, and show the rest tomorrow, if my internet is restored by then.

Like a Princess

Inspirational song: Part of Your World (The Little Mermaid)

It's prom night in these parts. We devoted much of the last week to gathering needed supplies. One of our exchange student's Rotarian fairy godmothers made a gorgeous dress, another provided special dancing shoes. I helped with accessories, hair and makeup, and a last-minute trip to get glittery blue nail polish to match the dress. By the time XS was picked up to go to prom with her friend from school, she looked and felt like a princess. We staged a corner of the living room to get pictures for her, and much to our surprise, she decided her feline nemesis Harvey needed to be in several of them. The pictures could use a little cropping, but I'll worry about that later.

The girls went to the Cheese Importers for dinner before the party. I hope they took more pictures there, as intended. It's not just a cheese shop, bar, and restaurant. It is also a fun European import store that has the most amazing collection of girly trinkets, like soaps, perfumes, art, candies, and ceramics. There are several spots that would serve as a great backdrop for photos. I'm waiting to see what they came up with.

Mr S-P took the girls down to the prom itself, held at the club level of Folsom Stadium on CU. I've been to a class reunion there before, and it was a fun venue for this sort of thing. Now it's my job to wait up and take all the kids home from the after-party back in town. I can't express enough how much I hope this was a proper American experience for her. I hope it was fun and silly and fancy and casual and all of the good things all at once. These are things one tends to remember for decades to come. I want it to be one of the highlights of her year abroad.

Here We Go!

Inspirational song: Holiday (Green Day)

I have a choice to make. I could spend this a Friday night doing what I do most nights, watching commentary on political goings-on. Fridays are busy news days anymore, and this one is no different. But I have a record button on my remote, and I have been invited to play. Today is 4/20, and while I am not generally a celebrant of that modern holiday, I do think it would be fun to wander over to a friend’s house in my jammies, and play Mario Kart with people who will be celebrating with vigor. I am terrible at video games, but I will be relatively sober, so maybe I will be on par with everyone else. No matter how this evening turns out, I thought it would be wise to blog now, so I don’t have to do it before bedtime, especially if it will be really late. Now to grab a can of raspberry seltzer from the fridge and don my slippers. Wish me luck!

My Left Foot

Inspirational song: Pyscho Killer (Talking Heads)

I am not a morning person. Never was, never will be. When they told me that my MRI would be at 7 am, with a showtime of 6:45, I was horrified, wondering who on earth wants to start working so early. It was the only time they had available before next week, so I had little choice but to accept it. Generally, I sleep poorly at night, and I wake several times. I woke without prompting right at 6, as people my age do, and I was so depressed when it occurred to me that I wasn't going to be going back to sleep a few minutes after a brief walk-about. I did the responsible thing, and dressed to go across town for a scan of my left foot.

I have had a few MRIs over my adult life, and they really don't bother me. The noise of the machine, the snug fit of the tube, I'm generally fine with it. I know that they give you headphones and play music to drown out the sound of the magnets. Sometimes the rooms are pretty chilly, to keep the machinery from overheating. Bearing that in mind, I wore layers, hoping that I wasn't going to be forced to change into a hospital gown. All I had to do was leave my purse and shoes on the other side of the room, so I was comfortably dressed. The tech wedged my foot into a frame, and packed some foam around it to keep it from moving around, I requested an extra pillow to go under my low back, and she gave me a second one under my head to balance it all out. I put the headphones on, and they pushed my glasses around, so I pulled off my glasses, and sort of held on to them and the band of the headphones, with my arms raised above my head, thinking that maybe that would be a position I could hold comfortably. Boy was I wrong. Based on the number of classic rock songs I listened to while I held myself tense to stay still, I was there about 25 minutes. At first, I was relaxed and listening to Catch Me Now, I'm Falling by one of my favorite bands, the Kinks. Four or five songs later, by the time the first verse of Psycho Killer got to "I'm tense and nervous and I can't relax," I realized it was the truth. I was a real live wire. I've been sore all day ever since. But I have a disc in my purse with all the information from the MRI so I can hand-carry it to the podiatrist on Monday. Let's see whether any new revelations come from this.

This weekend is prom for the local high school. XS has a gorgeous dress that one of the Rotarians made for her. Another Rotarian offered to buy her shoes to go with it. We met at a large shoe store, and walked around for a long time, trying to find shoes that matched her dress, her personality, and her comfort levels. XS isn't really crazy about super-blingy shoe, so all the ones covered in glitter and rhinestones were right out. She didn't want stiletto heels, so we skipped those. Gladiator style shoes didn't appeal. Old lady shoes were a no. She seemed really attracted to a Mary Jane sort of heel, and there were several that worked with her colors of dark blue and kind of a blush pink/nude. The fabrics she selected for her dress are at the height of fashion right now. After trying on eight or ten different shoes, she ended up settling for the very first pair she picked out, dark blue sandals with a chunky straight heel and mesh net straps. They are adorable, and they will go well with the dress that made her feel like a princess. It has been almost ten years since my girls went to prom, and much longer since I went. This is fun getting to relive the process of planning for it. I hope as a quintessential American experience for her to take back to Croatia, this one is special and positive.

Potpourri, Again

Inspirational song: Xanadu (Olivia Newton-John)

I feel sorry for my foster daughter sometimes. She is the game master for one of our two D&D groups. It used to meet on Thursday nights, but some of the members of the various groups have had scheduling conflicts, so we swapped, and now it's the Wednesday night group. Three of us in the group have known each other for roughly 30 years. The other two long-term members are our neighbor who is basically one of the family, and our foster daughter's husband, who also is one of the family. None of us behaves. Not one. We three old farts who used to live together in college back in the late 80s are the least controllable. She has run this pre-planned campaign three times now, and she knows all of the cast of characters. We refuse to refer to them as their proper names. There was one adversary who was called Nawalia (I think). We never once called her that. Every time, we said, "It's Nuwanda, Dammit." We have butchered other names. Now we are supposed to be finding someone with a name like Xenia (I really don't know exactly). Last time it became "Xander," and this week it was "Xanadu." Our GM is ready to give up on us entirely. I'm pretty sure she has stopped taking us seriously, as she should, months ago. Our neighbor has said we give him hope. He's closer in age to our foster kids, but he looks at us and says that he now realizes when he is in his 40s and 50s, he can still act like an "immature jackass." We set such a good example.

I'm still plugging away at my mega to-do list. I counted before I started writing tonight. If I read it right, I'm slightly better than halfway through, with 33 things done to 31 yet to complete before Saturday night. This is the most organized I have been in months, maybe years. I'm feeling so good about it. There are still several big, important tasks on there, but for the first time in a long time, I think most of them will actually happen on schedule.

I have suffered some losses lately. Not all of them are tragic. More than one has been caused by Harvey. I've had at least three glasses shattered in as many weeks. The day my exchange student arrived, Harvey woke me at dawn by throwing a water glass (officially a beer pint glass) on the floor and breaking it. A week later, he broke Mr S-P's favorite coffee mug. Tonight, neighbor knocked a small brandy snifter on the floor, near where he and I were sitting in sock feet. I hope we have managed to get three weeks' worth of broken glass properly swept up from the floor where humans and cats walk barefooted all the time. We might have to start wearing shoes inside, and no one wants that. Especially me, with my gimpy feet with no arches. (At least my MRI is in less than 8 hours, as I write, and I will soon have answers about what to do to make walking sort of comfortable again.)

My final loss was more significant than a coffee mug or beer glass. I had noticed as soon as I let the lizard who replaced Agnes loose in the tank that she had something going on under her tail. When the girl at the pet shop captured her, she spontaneously exclaimed something along the lines of "whoops, sorry!" to the lizard. I don't know what happened, but I have a suspicion that she injured her gravely without meaning to. I don't want to get too descriptive, but I think she squeezed or crushed her pelvic region. Once she was in my tank, she never once hunted. She was already thin when she arrived, so the injury might have been extant before I bought her. Nevertheless, she wasted away rapidly. I thought she had died yesterday mid-day, but she moved before I had a chance to pull her out of the tank. This morning I found her definitely dead, slumped over the bowl that holds cricket meal. I took her back to the store and got a refund, but I feel awful for not being able to save her any better than I did Agnes. After consulting with Mr S-P, we have decided to refer to her as Charlotte. The second most suggested name was Clara, and he said she couldn't have been Clara, because she was the Impossible Girl. I have not yet decided what to do about finding another companion for Bruno. I feel like he must be traumatized at this point. And do I consider the next lizard the "D" anole, or will she actually be Clara Oswin Oswald? (If you follow Dr Who, you'll know why it would be acceptable to name her that.) I'll wait until I actually meet the next anole to decide who she is.

Sing-Sing

Inspirational song: All Together Now (The Beatles)

I had a little epiphany at Rotary today. I realized these meetings are filling a very specific gap in my life. We were all standing up, singing America the Beautiful like we do every week, and I was struck with the feeling of how much fun it is to sing in large groups. It doesn't matter if it's a song we've sung so many times that we really don't pay attention to the lyrics anymore, and can sing and write notes at the same time (as I did for part of it, because I am the one who does the newsletter). There's just something compellingly communal about seventy or eighty people all vocalizing the same melody that feels calming and satisfying somehow. Not everyone sings well. Some weeks I do better than others. It really doesn't matter. What matters is for those couple minutes, singing is as soothing as everyone doing deep, cleansing yoga breathing, but with more to listen to than just whooshing air.

We sat down after America the Beautiful and one of our members lead us in a "rotarized" version of a common song, which sometimes really works and sometimes gets a little squirrelly. Today it was Take Me Out to the Ball Game, and the second verse with Rotary-themed lyrics worked just fine. Last week we attempted to make Beauty and the Beast fit with the concepts of service above self and the four-way test, and it was awkward, but my table-mates and I (I sat with the best singer in our club, as I often do) gave it our best shot. Ever since, the exchange student and I have been spontaneously giggling and breaking out singing, "Beauty and the beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaast!!" (It's even cuter with a Croatian accent, for the record.)

I miss having regular and extended opportunities to sing in groups. If I am honest with myself, that was always the part I liked best about the periods of my life when I attended church regularly, and I was never happier than when I saw For the Beauty of the Earth or Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing printed in the bulletin. It was always special at the end of every home football game when I was at CU, when we were all in the band room, exhausted, sweaty, wearing the stinky shorts or sweatpants we had worn under our uniforms (which were by then shed), and singing the Alma Mater as our last group activity before breaking up and going home. Singing used to be a big part of my life. I used to do it all the time, whether driving, doing dishes, showering, whatever. I sang almost all of my waking hours. I stopped doing that a few years ago, and I don't know why. Over the weekend, I tried to sing in the shower for the first time since I moved in this house, and it felt so weird. Why did I stop? I know the illnesses took a toll on my lungs, but I don't think that was it. I think it had more to do with how I was surpressing joy in my life, and I wasn't in tune with the things that made me who I am. (Sorry, pun intended.) I'm going to start singing again. My voice is rusty and my pitch is pretty bad these days. But I'm going to practice and maybe it will be good enough to make me happy again, and that's really all I care about.

Write It Out

Inspirational song: Kiss On My List (Hall & Oates)

I've been in that state where I had too many things to do, and no sense of organization to prioritize them. I was getting absolutely nothing done. There was only one way to fix this, to clear out the inertia that kept me from accomplishing anything at all in a timely fashion: to write it  all out by hand. I had to put down everything big and small, from "pay taxes" and "prepare back patio for new hot tub" to "take morning pills - M T W Th F" and "buy cat food from Costco." No task is too complex or mundane to appear on the list. And I only focused on this week, the things that had to be done before bedtime Saturday.

This simple solution has already borne fruit. I have been able to mark off ten things since this morning. (I occasionally do "ten thing drills" to tidy up rooms quickly--maybe this counts as one?) One of them I didn't physically do myself (put taxes in the mail), but I needed to help verify that it got done. Two things I got to check off were just taking my pills morning and night, which I'm happy to count as a success, since I don't always remember to do it. I am now one week closer to current on the Rotary newsletter, because I was able to triage my responsibilities. And I rewarded myself for being responsible by doing a fun task, pruning roses in the front and back yards now that new branches have already begun to emerge and time is running out for that duty.

I'm actually looking forward to marking off more from the page. It covers a column and a half of a full page of notebook paper so far. Just by going through my normal Tuesday, I'll knock out four items, and there are another four easy ones I'll do before lunchtime. I'm pretty sure this is actually making my stomach feel good instead of tense, having it all laid out for me, preplanned and itemized. I'm even relaxed enough, I think I'll fall asleep quickly and be able to slip right into dream stage. I won't have to listen to an unquiet mind. Why don't I do this all the time?

In Hot Water

Inspirational song: Oops, I Did It Again (Britney Spears)

My stomach is tied in knots. What have I done? I can't even cop out and say it was a spur of the moment decision. I slept on it, and really thought about it. After all of that reflection, number crunching, and self-bargaining, and with one Croatian teenager enthusiastically asking, "Can we go now?" we went back to the spa dealer, and picked out a newer hot tub. The one I have is nearing the end of its expected life span, at somewhere around 17 years. The control panel needs to be replaced for the second time (my dad did it once, if I remember what he told me correctly), because it keeps pulsing the jets, one second on, one second off, non-stop. Last night I just turned it off at the breaker, and today when Mr S-P returned from a camping trip, he disconnected to blower so he could continue to sit in the warm water. I've had to replace the heater core once already, when we first got it. And to top it off (pun intended) the lid is long past its expiration date, with the leather cracked and hard, no longer sealing the top well enough to keep heat in during the winter. That generation of tub, with the thinnest layer of foam insulating the basin from underneath, is not energy efficient. It probably adds $30-50 in electricity every single month, especially in the winter. New tubs draw less power overall, and the cavities underneath the molded fiberglass basins are entirely filled with spray foam. They said I should expect no more than about $12 a month in electricity with a new spa. That cost savings factors into my decision to buy.

I begged for a hot tub from the moment we bought our very first house, in 1998. Obviously, way back then, I had no idea how to diagnose the medical issues I have had forever, I just knew that I wanted one because spas feel great. We had a door to the deck that came off of our master bedroom in that first house, and I thought it would be perfect to be able to soak in a hot tub and then stumble a few feet in to bed. We never bought one then, and it's probably for the best, since we moved out of that house less than two years later, and rented it out. A spa would have been destroyed by renters. We moved so often after that, it just never made sense to get one. At our last assignment, in Charleston, my BFF had a hot tub, and we went to Bonfire at her place most weekends. On those times the tub was open and running, it was glorious soaking in the water. I knew I had to get one of my own after we moved.

Two years ago, my dad moved out of his primary residence near Atlanta, and off-loaded a whole lot of stuff. (This is when I acquired the Chinese rug that appears in so many of my photos, the one that he bought when I was a toddler and he was deployed during the Vietnam War. I have loved that rug forever, and was so happy when I inherited it.) When I asked him if he was willing to give me the hot tub, he agreed, as long as I would come get it. We flew down, rented a U-Haul, and brought back the spa, the rug, and a whole bunch of other stuff that was either useful or had sentimental value from my youth (or both). Mr Smith griped the whole way there and back about how frivolous I was being, and he made sure that I paid for the plane tickets, truck rental, gasoline, and hotels out of my own savings, because this errand was my folly. It took less than a week of having it on site before he realized that it was so useful, and he was in it every single night, and some days too. To this day, he is in it at least an hour almost every day, rain or shine, snow or wind. He uses it often enough that he forced himself to admit publicly that I was right to insist.

Unfortunately, when he's not around to lift the lid, I don't use it nearly as often as I should. It's good for my stiff muscles, and the forced relaxation is good for my emotional state as well as my blood pressure. But the lid is so heavy, I can't always get it open by myself. If I push it all the way off, I absolutely can't pick it back up to re-cover the water. This keeps me from getting all the good out of the tub that I should and want to. I've been telling myself for months that I should just spend the money and buy a lifter, that it would be worth it, but I held back. Today, while negotiating with the salesman, he said he would throw in the lifter for free. It might be something they only tell people they charge extra for, but it still made me feel good about the deal I struck, and it made me glad I was open about my medical issues while we were chatting.

I picked out a floor model, and it is bigger than the one I have now. I didn't have measurements of my patio when I went to the store, and I'm regretting that a little. The new tub is 78 inches square. It's going to monopolize my little patio. It was after I filled out all the paperwork and got approved for financing and whatnot that I saw the exact same series of tub, in a slightly different dimension. There was one that was 70 x 84 inches, same colors, finishes, gadgets, but with no chaise lounge, just upright seats all around. I have to talk to the delivery manager in the morning, and I don't know what to tell her. Do I go back and get the one that is 8 inches narrower, that fits my patio better, or do I stick with what I bought? The square one is slightly more expensive, but I doubt it would make a significant difference on the monthly payment amount to switch down. I have to get this sorted out by morning, when I make arrangements for financing and delivery (it was late on a Sunday when I signed the agreement, and their bank was no longer open). I really don't know what to choose, and I'm afraid that either way I'll feel like it's the wrong choice. Oh, what to do?

The aging control panel that started the whole thing this weekend...

You have to sit in them to know which one you want. Just like in a mattress store.

Neck and shoulder jets, and something something rare earth magnet therapy?

78" x 78", with the chaise. This is the one, unless I decide the other fits the patio better. (See the "foot blaster" in the center? I'll be using that a lot.)

I love how the filter compartment looks like a fireplace or A/V console in the corner.

This should be way more efficient than our current tub. It's the biggest electricity expenditure in the whole house.

This thing. This right here will transform my whole life, or at least my whole spa experience.