Compress

Inspirational song: Rapid Roy (That Stock Car Boy) (Jim Croce)

Win some, lose some. I watched two CU games on my iPad today. No, strike that. I watched one and three-quarters. I had to turn off the football game when they blew an amazing lead and switched back to their unreliable selves in the second half. That was depressing. The basketball game before that was pretty awesome, though. 

I had better things to entertain me by the time the football game went south. We went over to play Mario Kart and, ah, "taste-test" a new bourbon. I couldn't for the life of me play well, and I could only vaguely blame the bourbon. I finally figured out I was trying to steer with my controller held like I was driving a bus rather than a car. Got better after that.

I have been dusting off my clothing-design skills a lot lately. This past week I have been told to use a compression sleeve on the right side, to stop the very early hints of edema in their tracks. The loaner sleeve the physical therapist gave me didn't fit right, especially at the top, where the silicone strip rolled down and acted like a tourniquet on my upper arm. I looked at the size charts online, and nothing looked better than the one I had, so I started making prototypes. The first one fit around perfectly, but without the unpleasantly constrictive band, it didn't want to stay up. The PT pointed out a style online that was two sleeves connected by a shoulder band. So I made one of those this afternoon with some sturdy spandex out of my fabric collection. (I have no idea why or when I bought it.) So far, it is both well-fitting and staying up as needed. But looking at the weird, torso-less costume I just made, I'm thinking all that time in my mid-20s spent making stage clothes for strippers has come in handy. (Forgive me for not including a picture of the finished product, considering that comparison.)

Soft Pants

Inspirational song: Don't Stop Believin' (Journey)

When all of this pandemic era is over, which side is going to come out ahead? The ones who want to drag us back to the way it used to be, or the ones who have seen the light? You know what I'm talking about, surely. They will to try to make us wear hard pants in public again, I know it. I will not comply. I don't think I will ever again accept wearing textiles that are less than 5% spandex. What is the point? I was always the type of person who swelled up more than average over the course of a day, and inflexible clothes that were tolerable in the morning became torturous tourniquets by sundown. I was born for yoga pants and tunic sweaters. Maybe that is why I look forward to autumn so much. It certainly has been a benefit of our common crisis, recognizing that we can work just fine from our couches, with pets next to us, wearing soft clothes. Don't try to drag us back from this brave new world. Just don't.

You would have thought I had a date this afternoon, for all the effort I put into my appearance, not just an appointment with the fun physical therapist. By this I mean I paid extra attention to my hair and makeup, before pulling on Addidas yoga pants from Costco and a soft, rust-colored tunic sweater from Walmart. This counts as fancy now. And not kidding at all, I felt pretty put-together. I was so happy with how curly my hair came out that I thought I would take a couple selfies until I got one or two that didn't make me self-conscious about my weight or crooked smile. By the first click, I noticed a black and silver head sneaking into the frame, until it became an entire Anne-and-Saoirse photo shoot. The very last one is my favorite, but watching her figure out she was invited to play along over the course of them was pretty fun. Even the ones with double chins showing were amusing. I'll put the best one first, so it is my thumbnail when I post tonight, but I'll show the evolution of the event after that.

I had a major existential crisis this morning. I was in my recliner, looking at how puffy my eyelid was (a topic for another time, maybe), with only indirect natural light in the room. I glanced at my irises, wondering how they would appear under this light. I'd noticed that the switch to LED bulbs had really brought out the greener side of the "olive drab" I'd always called my shade of brown eyes. I looked really hard at the magnifying mirror I was holding, and for the first time it occurred to me to Google what hazel eyes actually look like. I was stunned to see photos that looked like mine. I don't know who I am anymore. Is it possible that after more than 50 years of believing I was brown-eyed, I'm actually not? I need to make an appointment with the ophthalmologist (overdue for checkup required by hydroxychloroquine use for lupus). He is going to think I am the weirdest kid, but I need to ask him what color my eyes are. I really don't know anymore.

Chaos Theory

Inspirational song: Existential Blues (Tom "T-Bone" Stankus)

Every week gets a little weirder, a little louder. Our RPG game night is heading off the rails. The GM designed his campaign to make our characters really powerful, really quickly, and we are loading up with more skills, knowledge, powers, and weapons than any gaming group I have been in, possibly ever, at the very least since high school. Tonight we were all hyperaware of just how chaotic all of our players are... and I don't mean just the characters we play. Everyone talks over each other, we go off on tangents, and steering us forward through the storyline takes heroic effort. And even when we are actively playing, paying attention, at any moment any one of us may pull a wild and crazy stunt that puts all of the characters in danger. The only saving grace is that more often than not, the stunts are so exquisitely silly that it leaves all of us laughing to the point of tears, and we know we will be retelling these stories to each other for years. 

Back when I first started playing these games in high school, the "alignment chart" was familiar to only us nerds. Now with the ubiquity of social media and memes, everyone has seen some version (several versions) of the lawful-neutral-chaotic by good-neutral-evil grid. Until this last year, I'd never seen anyone's characters move places in that grid once selected. Now twice Mr S-P's creations have migrated towards the naughty corner of the chart, and our daughter thought she had to follow him down there. She may only be stuck at chaotic neutral, with her sudden ability and class change tonight, depending on how she builds out the new iteration of her character. 

Two sessions ago, Mr S-P's character (a fiery magical girl named Chornya) stole key items from the group and disappeared. We have been trying to decide whether to chase and confront her or go on and keep gathering the other items like those she stole. The Mr has been present at the games, listening to what we are choosing to do, even though we don't know where Chornya is. Even when he is not role-playing with the rest of us, he's throwing out hints or taunts or just weird little feints to mangle our progress. We bounced back and forth from trying to ignore him, to forgetting and letting him participate in the planning. At the end of the evening, the GM put it better than anyone I have ever heard describe Mr S-P's natural chaos. He said something very close to, "You guys are making a lovely soup, and he is a raccoon who comes up and washes garbage in it." No one could top that. The game broke up for the evening not long afterwards.

Shop

Inspirational song: Jump (Van Halen)

Ahead of the Florida trip next month, I decided it might be nice for me to upgrade my suitcase game. I wanted luggage made within the last decade. Seriously, with all that I have going on, how is it I never got hooked up with one of these four-wheeled numbers? Shouldn't I have gotten something that moves as easily as possible? Well, I solved that today. On a whim, I ran out and made the purchase. I went to Marshall's, so it was inexpensive. I'll wait until December to evaluate performance.

Naturally, I asked the girls to go with me, and I'm happy to report they agreed. (Valerie rarely says no when mommy says they're going somewhere.) As anyone who knows us should have predicted, we made a bee-line for the throw blanket section. We have a common weakness, Valerie included. We put a couple of blankets in the cart next to the baby, and she giggled maniacally and buried her face in them. She helped me pick out a pair of red velvet throw pillows for the new couch too.

She did really well shopping with us, considering that babies do not do daylight savings time any better than dogs or cats do. For her mommy and me, it was barely even lunchtime. For the baby, it was stepping on the toes of nap time. She got tired by the end of the short shopping trip. She sure was cute up until then, though. Cutest baby in Colorado.

Tip Off

Inspirational song: Bargain (The Who)

"We're goin' to overtime!"

Hm, perhaps I ought to write in the brief intermission before the basketball game restarts. I could do one of those "how did I end up here" montages, right? Or just a quick recap, which is more my style. Our Rotary polio prevention fundraiser went very well. We raised just over $10,000, a generous (and anonymous) club member matched that, and the Gates Foundation did a 2 to 1 match. That works out to 20,000 inoculations against polio from our corner of the world. I made it well-known that if a set of CU basketball tickets ended up in one of our auctions, I was gonna thrown down against anyone who got between me and them. I need not have made such a threat. The week they appeared in the silent auction, no one had bid on them until the end of the meeting, and the only person who did was me. I got them for the suggested opening bid, a mere 100 dollar donation to the Polio Plus campaign. A bargain.

The season tickets that these came from belong to the guy I supported for mayor. (He didn't win, but that is beside the point.) These are fantastic seats. We are 12 rows behind the officials table, with a clear view of Coach Boyle pacing next to them. One of my fellow Rotarians told me today that this team we were facing was a serious contender, and this would be a great game. They were so right! Montana State is no pushover team. If we pull out this overtime win, which we just might, this will be a quality, satisfying accomplishment.

There were no in-person games last year. This is the first time in a long time this crowd has gotten to be together. Masks were required, but there were several people around us not complying by the end of the game. Granted, food and beverages were sold, and thus consumed. For the most part people tried to be safe. It wasn't a sold-out crowd, but they had a decent turnout. We arrived very early (so I could be assured of good parking.) For the longest time, there were maybe 40 kids in the student section. Then, as the players were announced, suddenly there were hundreds of them.

Sometime between last season and tonight, the crowd favorite player Evan Battey went from a slightly goofy, always smiling, big kid to a (to use the vernacular) grown-ass man. Still the fan favorite.

Oh, and we won. Woohoo! Sko Buffs!

Dance of Shiva

Inspirational song: Monkey Wash Donkey Rinse (Warren Zevon)

Two days ago, my living room was so tidy. It wasn't Grandma Reynolds perfect, but it was tidy and I was happy. This afternoon we had a little creation goddess going around, leaving traces of her presence over the whole main floor of the house. Now I'm in a pile of fuzzy blankets, surrounded by books, blocks, and every bottle of bubble solution in our collection. I'm pretty sure there are peaches on two places on the rug, and I'm just too tired to check. The steam cleaner can wait until Wednesday.

I really enjoy babysitting, but some times it takes the air out of me. It doesn't help that I started a new antibiotic to attack the same UTI I've had since radiation started in September. (The last round didn't kill it, and it turns out you just can't wish these things away, and trust me, I tried.) I am a little lightheaded as my body decides whether it will allow me to take it or reject it and add one more to my allergy list. I wish I had more energy to chase that baby. She was sure cute today. Wiley, too. She knew when we were trying to catch her and she would zip away. I mostly sat on the love seat and waited for her to get in range.

I went looking on the PBS app for Sesame Street shows. I guess they all moved to HBO, didn't they? I gave up my HBO when I got rid of satellite TV. Val got a new toy, that was like a little cd player with hard plastic discs, with all the classic Sesame Street songs. We thought maybe we could start showing some of it to her, if she was ready for that sort of thing. Do they still have it on the broadcast channel? I will have to investigate. Maybe if she actually sees Ernie singing to Rubber Ducky she will let me play it on her toy. For now all she cares about is hitting the open button and spreading the discs all over the floor. 

Deflated

Inspirational song: In the Dark (Billy Squier)

I'm going to name this cushy recliner "The Island of Manhattan." This evening I traded five cat treats for possession of it. Alfred even moved off of it voluntarily when I shook the jar of treats and advertised my trade offer. I sat in the chair, put my feet all the way up, reclined so far I think my head was lower than the rest of me, and promptly fell asleep. I think I snored a couple times. I woke just now to the Mr turning off all the lights in the room and telling me I should go to bed. I think I'm already there, man.

I was planning on going over to the kids' house to deliver some gingerbread cake I had made, but was waved off when the baby went down for an early nap. She had a rough weekend, having the same 24 hour stomach bug her daddy had last week. She was mostly over it, but still had a slightly elevated temp and lingering tummy issues. I stayed away and let her get some good, healing sleep. They came over here right around sunset instead, to pick up the cake and let grandparents have some cuddle time. It got dark outside, and they looked deflated, like it was their bedtime. My daughter checked her phone and said, it's just 5:30. We all made eye contact in recognition of the same conversation everyone around the country was having today, and no more words were necessary. Time changes are hard. And dumb.

Sometime in the few last weeks, someone driving my car (could be one of four) drove over a broken screw. I had low tire pressure warnings and we kept filling it up, until the Mr finally had a chance to investigate the problem. Yesterday he had enough time to actually address it. I tell you, it is incredibly handy to have a jack-of-all-trades on site. Early on in our marriage, he worked at a busy tire shop in Boulder, and thus knew how to patch the tire once he pulled the screw out. No trip to a repair shop needed. I would never have known how to do that.