The wife and I on our 7th wedding anniversary, May 31, 2021.
Welcome to June, everybody.
Tuesday, June 1:
Final day of vacation.
So, there are reasons why we didn't have the time or energy to clean the house, and why Daisy went out to drink with her work friends to decompress not one, but two nights in a row last week -- her job is possibly coming to an end within the next few months.
Let me explain in the most general way I can without giving too many compromising details -- Daisy's firm announced last week that they had been bought out by a much larger firm (think 20x bigger, maybe larger) and that her firm would be merged with/taken over by this new company. This new company already has established, centralized teams that already do everything that Daisy and her coworkers do, and they do it in different ways within different proprietary systems than Daisy uses. It has also been implied that it is possible all of the (multiple) locations of Daisy's current firm in and around town will close in favor of a new hub location being built for the new company, and it is at this point likely that nobody in the current company -- including people at the VP or senior VP level -- can count on their jobs as being fully "safe" with full certainty. If Daisy and her team is retained, they would also have to learn all of the new systems if they keep their current jobs, and they may or may not be offered equivalent jobs with equivalent pay.
As if this wasn't distressing enough, this sale has been pending at least since November, and likely won't be complete until sometime this fall or into the winter months. At that point it will still take a few months afterward to transition everything as necessary, so best/worst case scenario, Daisy has been told it's quite possible she'll have her job through next May, and if her position is on the chopping block she will know with time in advance and there will likely be a generous severance package.
However, aside from the announcement that it's happening, there have been no further details given whatsoever. Nobody at Daisy's level or below knows anything about what will happen, solid timeframes, etc. The soonest that representatives from the new company will be onsite is June 15, for a simple site visit, and it is not likely there will be new information before that.
This, of course, does not sit well with my wife -- the woman who, as soon as she finds out I've purchased Christmas presents for her, will needle me for information every single day for weeks/months on end as to what they are. She does not do well with having information withheld from her about pretty much anything. Because of that she's been having multiple low-level panic attacks every day as her upward, professional career path she's been building for almost five years within her company just blew away like dust in the wind. With the new corporation taking over, that career path is basically all lost now.
"If someone would've asked us last week who, of the two of us, was more likely to get a raise and who had the more stable job, it is mindblowing to me that the answer would be the complete opposite of what it is now," I told her over the weekend. She agreed.
This revelation throws all of our plans for the next year into complete upheaval, because of course it does. Just because I got a merit-based raise last week and have 16 people reporting to me at the moment doesn't make my own job any more stable; I see it as stable-ish now, but my parent company could end the contract tomorrow if they so chose. I have no guarantee of continued employment, only a promise that if the contract ends, my executive director and team will do everything he/they can to secure comparable positions for us within our parent company, if at all possible. If not possible, I'll likely get 2-3 months of severance pay (at the most, given my position), and will be shown the door. Daisy has a settlement payout for her car accident a few years ago that will be finalized soon as well, and most of that was going to go into paying off credit cards as well as our savings account (after all the medical reimbursements were done, of course). If she loses her job, obviously that will be money we have to live on, frugally, until she is able to find work. Being unemployed sucks, and it sucks harder when you have a mortgage and multiple utilities/other bills to pay. If she loses her job, it is likely that our planned trip to West Virginia later this summer will be put on hold or otherwise outright canceled (again, as we had to cancel it last year due to Covid-19) and any upgrades to the house, appliances, vehicles, etc will grind to a full stop.
We shall see what happens. I am incredibly, uncharacteristically optimistic about the entire scenario. Daisy legitimately has a lot of reasons to be concerned, but I do believe in the power of positive thinking.
Wednesday, June 2:
Working from home, day 269.
20th Anniversary of my High School Graduation.
Twenty years ago tonight, I put on my graduation robes and cap and ventured up to my high school, where I filed into the gym and was seated with my classmates in alphabetical order, for what was quite possibly the most boring ceremony of my life that I legitimately had trouble staying awake through. My parents were in attendance, as was my aunt. While I'd wanted my grandmother to attend, she was too frail to make the trip (even though she wouldn't die for another seventeen years) and at the end of the ceremony -- once we'd filed up onto the stage one by one while our names were announced, each of us receiving our little leather-bound diplomas -- even though we were all told not to multiple times, everyone threw their hats into the air. Mine came down and hit one of my heavily-pregnant classmates hard in the shoulder, which sort of got me a dirty look from her, but fuck it -- she threw hers too, and it's not like I was aiming for her or anything.
I said my goodbyes to my friends for a bit afterwards -- some of whom I would never see in person ever again -- and finally got back to my parents and aunt. The local newspapers took pictures and grabbed quotes for the special graduation section in said papers the next day. We sat in the car in the field outside the school, which had been made into grass parking spaces due to the sheer number of people in attendance, for probably half an hour or more before we could actually get out, due to the traffic of everyone leaving at the same time. It was a Saturday night; the graduation had been postponed a day (and moved inside; we were originally going to do it on the football field) due to severe storms the night before -- storms which had started about an hour before the last school day of my high school career had ended. The decision to postpone and move it inside was a quick one. Once we made it home, my aunt sat with us for a bit in the living room before she left, and once she did, we ate dinner. I don't remember what we ate. Ridley Scott's Gladiator, with Russell Crowe, premiered on HBO that night as the Saturday Night Movie. Eventually, I went to bed. As I did, I felt a sense of "okay, that's done, what now?"
I have not returned to my high school since, for any reason -- not for a visit, not for an event, not for a football game -- never again. Most of my graduating class would go on to college, many of them to local or state schools like Fairmont State, Frostburg, Potomac State, or WVU. The overwhelming majority of them I would never see or hear from again. I don't remember the exact number of people in my graduating class, but it was between 300 and 400 I believe; my memory is hazy now. Of those folks there were maybe 40 I could actually call friends, and another 30 or so I'd call acquaintances -- I wasn't one of those people who "knew everybody." Of those 70 total, a good chunk of them are now dead -- some due to health problems like cancer or congenital medical issues, some due to car accidents, some due to suicide (accidental or intentional), and at least one was outright murdered. Many others I'd remain friends with throughout college, and/or reconnect with later in one fashion or another, but for the most part, most of them outright vanished from my life after high school ended. That day was a cutoff point of sorts; I have no clue where those people are or what they did for work or where they moved to or married or anything like that -- they were just gone. After I started college a few months later at WVU, I thought less and less about those people, not that a lot of them were ever on my mind in the first place.
The friends I held dear, I still hold dear for the most part, even if we're no longer in close contact. When I visit home, Daisy and I now make it a point to meet up with several of them if we have the chance to do so and if they have the time, though all of them have their own lives (and most of them are married or have children, or both). Also, Facebook is now a thing, and it wasn't a thing 20 years ago when I graduated, so...
I messaged my friend James this morning -- James is actually running for mayor of the small town back home where he lives and grew up, a town about five miles from my parents' house -- to tell him that if everything goes well, we'll be back home for a visit in August. He in turn told me that coincidentally (yes, absolutely coincidentally, as I did not know), our 20th high school reunion is also in August.
Fuck man, really?
Like, I'm not exactly opposed to going to the reunion, even though I outright avoided the five-and-ten-year reunions. I lived at home still during the five-year reunion and purposely ignored it. I was living in Kansas during the ten-year, so obviously I wasn't gonna be there. I also don't know if they had a fifteen-year reunion or not, as I've actively avoided the Class of 2001's Facebook page...up until now, when I (almost unbelievably) requested to join it, just so I could see what the overall reunion plan is -- out of sheer curiosity, of course.
Daisy has stated before that she was curious about my class reunions and wondered if I'd ever want to attend any of them. My knee-jerk response was, of course, "fuck no," but ehhh...if I'm actually going to be in town when it happens, I don't have much of an excuse, and I would 100% be an asshole if I was physically there when the reunion took place but didn't go, so...yeah.
We'll see what happens, I suppose.
In the present, back in good old 2021, I return to work tonight for the first time in a week, with my vacation now ended. I feel like a week was an appropriate amount of downtime, and for the first time in a while I am feeling relaxed and mostly unstressed. The holiday weekend itself did not appear to be incredibly busy, but the days prior to it and yesterday (once everyone got back to business as usual) certainly did. Over the course of my week off work, I received at least 2,000 -- possibly closer to 3,000 -- emails that hit my inbox. Multiple times I had people try to call me on my work cell number only for them to hit my "do not disturb, I'm out of office for a week" voicemail message I specifically set up for it (muahahah) and even more frequently did I see emails that said "I just got Brandon's out of office message, please engage a resource to assist" (even bigger muahahah). Later hosers, y'all don't own me, hope your issue gets fixed; kinda actually hope you suffer for a while before it does.
The rest of the "work week" for me consists of tonight and tomorrow, and tomorrow night I'm even leaving early because I have a doctor appointment for our yearly physicals really early on Friday morning, where they'll do bloodwork and I have to fast beforehand and everything -- nothing but coffee and water allowed. I'm okay with this. My goal is to ask what it entails to get me off the testosterone, to get the docs to re-up my allopurinol and colchicine prescriptions for another year (maybe even throw a prednisone prescription in the bucket as well in the event that I have another godawful gout attack, which is unlikely) and see where my overall health is, in general, in regards to like...blood sugar levels, cholesterol, blood pressure, etc. I also want to ask about why I am so fatigued all the time, though I'm sure the answer will end up being "because you're so stressed out, work an overnight job, and never sleep" but I'm not sure there's anything the doctors can do to fix the fatigue. My blood pressure is usually really good, and at my last physical my cholesterol had dropped 30 points (due to my vegetarian diet, which I'd been on about a year at the time). I also had them do a thyroid screening at last check too and that was fine, but maybe it's not anymore -- I haven't a clue. As you know if you've been following these posts, I'm very concerned about my body's dependency on the testosterone therapy and am frustrated with what it's doing versus what it's not doing.
What I wanted testosterone therapy to do: help build muscle, make my dick bigger (hey, a man can dream), make my sex drive go up like crazy, give me more energy, shrink my man-boobs, cure my depression, make me feel more alive.
What it actually did: make my testicles shrink and allow me to grow a full, bitchin' beard in three months instead of six.
So, here's hoping they give me good news on Friday.
Thursday, June 3:
Working from home, day 270.
A few weeks ago, in what I would now describe as "a moment of weakness," I went to Tommy Wiseau's website to look through his selection and possibly order some of his underwear from him.
That is a very strange sentence, so let me explain.
Tommy Wiseau is known for his movie, The Room, more than he is for anything else. By most people's opinions, the movie is laughably bad, but I saw it a few years after it came out (only once) and while I didn't think it was a good movie, it was far from the worst movie I've ever seen, and if you go into it with that mindset -- looking to laugh, of course, and knowing its place in pop culture -- you will have a blast watching it. Yes, it is laughably bad, but it is simply glorious in what it is and what it does, and if you haven't seen it...yeah, you have to see it for yourself, I will not ruin that experience for you. After The Room, Wiseau sort of became a punchline in the entertainment industry, partially because he's -- let's be frank here -- an absolute oddball of a man. The movie gained cult status and is occasionally shown on Adult Swim or is screened for midnight showings in theaters due to its legendary weirdness and its status as "the best worst movie" ever made.
However, Wiseau himself is also a fashion designer for clothing and watches, and in addition to all of the merchandise surrounding The Room, he also has a fully stocked clothing and watch shop on his site, a site that he apparently runs himself (more on this here in a bit). I can't stress enough that the dude is an actual fashion designer, as in, he has rather high-end branded wares:
And everything he sells is dirt cheap.
The underwear 3-pack pictured above was $17. He has jackets for $20, sweatpants for $15, tank tops for $6 each, etc.
I've desperately wanted to get something from his store for some time, so I ordered one of the packs of underwear above and two tank tops. His sizes go up to 3XL, and most of the time that's bigger than I'd need for underwear or tank tops (I'm generally a 2XL guy for both). I also know that he likely runs the site himself with a very small crew of people doing the mailing of orders and the like, as there's no cheap or free shipping -- it's all USPS flat-rate boxes and yeah, the consumer pays that shipping price. This was remarkable to me as the dude is famous, but by all appearances seems to be pretty no-frills, what-you-see-is-what-you-get when it comes to his site.
So I placed my order, and waited with great anticipation. The order shipped last week, but was delayed by the Memorial Day holiday on Monday. It finally arrived yesterday, and I opened the box to find this laying on top:
Holy shit. Holy shit.
Yes, that's an autographed headshot with a personalized message just for me:
to: Brandon
Love is blind!
Love is blind!
Love!
Tommy Wiseau
05/25/2021
I was stunned. I was also completely thrilled. "Love is blind" is part of a line from The Room, of course. It's an iconic line from the movie, so it doesn't make much sense out of context for anyone who hasn't seen it. But, trust me, this is hilarious and receiving said headshot out of the blue, not knowing it would be in the box, 100% made my day.
Daisy, who has no concept of who Tommy Wiseau is, nor has she ever seen The Room, still thought it was pretty neat as well. I told her that the underwear looked like it was amazing quality, as did the tank tops, and that if I liked them, I'd likely go back and order more of his stuff. I'm not kidding about that either -- the clothing is incredibly well-made, especially for the price. This isn't bargain basement stuff that he just slapped his name on, but legitimately well-put-together underwear and tank tops. I also told her that as soon as I found out where The Room was streaming (because it must be streaming somewhere), we'd sit down and watch it together just so she could experience it for herself.
As it turns out, I don't need to find out where it's streaming after all.
When I showered last night, I took out one of the fresh pairs of underwear, intending to wear them once I got out of the shower. When I put them on, they slid up my body like a spandex superhero suit (they're only 5% spandex, apparently) and became one of the most comfortable form-fitting pairs of underwear I've ever worn. They hit my hips, crotch, thighs, and ass just right, and it just felt...good? I don't know how to describe it. The tank top, which I also put on, I found is a little smaller than I expected, but it is thicker and the neck and arm holes are reinforced -- and the decorative star on the front was a high-quality rubberized print too. Like screen-printed, with that thick rubbery decal style/ink? Whatever that style of printing is called.
It's going to sound weird, I know, but it's been a very long time since I ever felt so at ease and so comfortable in two simple pieces of clothing. The first thing I did after getting out of the shower was run right back to the computer to his website to order more. I immediately added another pack of underwear to my cart when something else caught my eye -- the sweatpants. For $22.99 I could get a pair of sweatpants, with zippered pockets and in my size, and get a "free gift" of The Room on Blu-ray. Well, of course, I wasn't going to pass that up. I was going to get more of the tank tops, but hell with that (I'll get more later, I really like them); The Room waits for no man, and I love sweatpants -- as any of you who have seen me over the past few years should know well -- I honestly can't remember the last time I wore jeans or slacks. I mean, I own jeans and slacks, and nice ones at that...but...sweats are life, man. I've been working at home for almost a year and a half now, I've got nobody to impress, and I've basically gone feral at this point, so fuck it.
The order came to $56-something I think, and again, fuck it -- I have stopped purchasing vape stuff so I can quit (and because, well, I can't get it online anymore, at least not most of it and only quasi-legally for the stuff I could still get if necessary), and all of my bills are being paid just fine -- I have a bit of disposable income again and I'm gonna choose to enjoy that while I can.
So, maybe by this time next week, we'll be sitting down with a massive bowl of popcorn and I'll be showing Daisy The Room for the first time. We shall see.
And maybe I'll get another headshot.
Friday, June 4: Day off.
Saturday, June 5: Day off.
Sunday, June 6: Working from home, day 271.
Monday, June 7: Working from home, day 272.
Tuesday, June 8: Working from home, day 273.
Wednesday, June 9: Working from home, day 274.
Thursday, June 10: Working from home, day 275.
The events of these days are covered in my "intermission" post, The Tale of the Physical. Do not read further here if you have not read that post yet as you will likely be very confused from this point forward.
Friday, June 11: Day off.
Saturday, June 12: Day off.
Sunday, June 13: Working from home, day 276.
I would be remiss if I were not to mention that Daisy's job appears to be mostly safe, but of course, not guaranteed. If she is kept on, and it's now been made clear that it's very likely she will be, she will likely keep her same position (if not, it will be a similar position) with a salary the same or slightly higher. Her PTO changes over to the new system, as will our health insurance(s) for our various coverage(s). It will be a different company, but mostly the same structure and stability -- from everything she knows at this particular point in time. Any or all of this could change, but as time goes on it is looking less and less likely that it will change that much. The firm's new owners are making an appearance at her office this coming week, so she'll be there to meet them and to put on a good face for the company as a model employee, or a reasonable facsimile thereof.
The weekend overall has been fairly busy. Yesterday, Daisy and I had our first optometry appointments in over six years.
Yes, I know. Six years is a long time. We're supposed to go in every year or two (the doctor there confirmed with me yesterday that with my newfound diabetes, I should be making yearly appointments to make sure there's no serious degradation starting -- which, of course, horrified me). Daisy had gone in for a quick eye exam a while back at Target, in the interim, where they told her that her own eyes were basically the same as before and not enough to warrant a new prescription -- but I had not been to the eye doctor since 2015 -- and before that...college maybe? Probably middle/high school? I can't remember. It had been a very long time.
When I got my new/updated prescription in 2015, it was like I could see in HD vision with my new glasses. I could suddenly see every detail on every leaf on every tree, every speck of dust floating through the air of a room, etc. It was like I had detailed microscopes attached to my face, and it was really weird and took a lot of time to get used to. That is still the prescription I had up until yesterday, and I've become very desensitized to it over the years. Moreover, I can tell that my eyes are getting worse by the year, if not the month. Everything's just a little bit fuzzier, and I can see just a little bit less further away as time goes on. I'm sure a good chunk of this is due to age as well as sitting in front of a computer for multiple (and yes, I mean multiple) hours every day and night due to work as well as for my own recreational purposes, but still -- when I can notice my eyes getting worse, it's time to go back in for another eye exam. I'd been begging Daisy to just set it up for months.
So she did and in we went.
We then went through a 20-minute screening process where we had to fill out paperwork, give them a brief medical history, and then consent to different types of tests. There's a new one, some laser retinal test, that was an extra charge -- I agreed to it because my diabetes concerns me and the last thing I want is to get diabetic eye disease or blindness or something along those lines -- and I found out because I have diabetes, the cost for it was waived and is fully covered by insurance. Sweet? I guess?
"See babe," I told Daisy, "you could get this free test too if only you had diabetes."
She was not particularly amused.
After about two hours, during which time they performed both our exams -- mine needing the dilation drops (which burn like fire), we walked out of there with two updated prescriptions and two new pairs of glasses ordered. Both of us had eyes that had gotten measurably worse this time around. Daisy got a pair of squared-off, stylish black Ray-Bans and I got a rectangular pair of subtle browline glasses from Columbia.
With our new prescriptions in hand we also went online to Zenni Optical last night and I got two spares -- one of which is the new scrip in the same frames I'm wearing in the pic at the top of this post, and the other is a new frame that looks similar, but is larger than those. I also got a pair of black-rimmed aviator sunglasses with green mirrored tint so that I can look baller this summer in style. Daisy looked through a large number of frames for spares last night but has not settled on any yet. Over the course of the next few months, I'll likely donate the vast majority of my old glasses (Whole Foods has a glasses donation bin) and get duplicate frames of the few pairs I really like with the new prescription in them. No need to hold on to the old ones with the old prescription -- though I told Daisy that I'm keeping my original optometrist glasses from 2015 as a souvenir/keepsake to pass down through generations as antiques.
When I was a child, while searching through the collapsed ruins of my grandmother's old house (long story there, for another time), I found my great-grandfather's old glasses from the early 20th century, maybe even late 19th century. My great-grandfather died in 1942. I have his death certificate. I saved the glasses over the years and my mother has them now, in her possession in our family home back in West Virginia. She never met the man either -- he died eighteen years before she was born, and as he was born in 1866, shortly after the Civil War ended, he would've been 94 had he lived to see my mother born. He didn't live to see any of his grandchildren born, actually -- his first grandchild was born five years after he died. I'm not entirely sure my grandmother (his daughter) knew that I had/found his glasses, honestly. Glasses are just such personal items -- I can't imagine throwing away or donating my really good ones, the primary ones I own, instead of saving them for future generations to keep as heirlooms.
Your grandfather wore these glasses every day, on his face, so that he could see -- so many things were seen through them, good and bad, all times gone by; other eras, other visions, the rise and fall of tyrants, and the horrors of war, life, and death. So much pain, yet so much joy and mirth. Hard work. Countless books read. And now they're yours.
Anyway.
Our new glasses arrive in about two weeks. As Daisy works conveniently right next to the doctor's office, she'll go pick them up when they come in. The spares I ordered will arrive in about two weeks' time as well -- it usually takes a while for Zenni to manufacture, pack, and ship them. So, we'll see.
Hah! We'll see...I made a joke!
Monday, June 14: Working from home, day 277.
Tuesday, June 15: Working from home, day 278.
I wanted to update everyone here a bit on my battle with diabetes, as I am sure some of you are concerned.
I'm fine, really.
Over the course of the past week I've been cautious and have been taking it slow. I've been trying to stay hydrated (the temperature being close to 100 degrees every day is a primary reason for that) and I've been closely watching my diet, limiting portions in meals, and trying to sleep as much as I can.
Through it all I've had the mantra of it's not as bad as it seems or sounds. And it's not. It is manageable. You just have to manage yourself. And I am great at managing myself -- I have wonderful self-discipline and self-control when I apply myself, and when something like my literal life is on the line. To those ends, I've been very conscious of what I eat, how, and when, and most nights my "meal" of the evening has been, well, vegetables and not much else. I haven't had a slice of bread in days, I've tried to stay fairly active and sleep more when I can, and my snacks have primarily been nuts or the lowest-carb trail mix I can find. I weighed myself today for my first weigh-in in over two weeks, and I've lost 5.6 pounds. I realize it's possible that is just my body adjusting and some water-weight lost from being so inflamed before, but it's hopeful. Promising without being too promising, you know?
I've been on Metformin for five days now, and I am beginning to notice...a difference? I don't exactly know how to put it, really, but it seems like I am more balanced. Like I have more energy, more get-up-and-go, less fatigue. Am I still tired? Yes, when I don't sleep enough, I am still tired. But, now it seems like I can wake up better/faster and bounce back a bit more. My digestive system seems to be more regulated and balanced. Permit me to delve into crudity here for a moment, but I did not get #thepoops as a lot of folks do when they begin Metformin. Instead, I've never had more regular, more "normal" bathroom time in my life. This could be a placebo effect, and it could also be because I've eaten a lot of fresh vegetables this week, but so far...I don't have any complaints. If it's not the placebo effect, perhaps Metformin is something I should've been on for a very long time before now. Maybe it's the wonder drug, the one thing that can balance out my physical health.
Because the pandemic is basically over (I say "basically" because it's not like it's ever really going to go away, just the worst parts of it are gone now), Daisy and I wanted to embrace a more active lifestyle again after being cooped up in the house for over a year -- as such, after some careful consideration, she signed us up for a gym membership at a new gym down the street from our house. Said gym has a basketball court, a lap pool, a hot tub, saunas, and more exercise machines/equipment than I've ever seen anywhere else in my life in one place.
It is not cheap. I'm not telling you folks the monthly rate because you'd likely think it's nuts, and I think it's nuts too, but if it means I can lose 100 pounds and get rid of the diabetes, I am all for it. You can't really put a price on your health and well-being.
Let's see, what else is going on?
I got my new shipment of Tommy Wiseau underwear yesterday, along with the sweatpants I also ordered and the "free gift" Blu-ray of The Room, which also had a surprise on it for me:
to: Brandon
Love: Tommy Wiseau
06/09/2021
P.S. Be good!
That's right, everyone -- be jealous.
Luckily for my own ego (and wallet) I don't need any more underwear anytime soon. I actually need to go through my closet and get some donations ready for the local thrift stores, really. I've gotten too clogged up in there as of late, and the pandemic stopped my normal once-or-twice-a-year gutting of old items from my wardrobe. There's just a lot of old shit in there I need to sort through and get rid of, stuff I haven't worn in years. Part of the problem with this though is that Daisy sees what I'm getting rid of and is like "no, don't donate that, I'll wear it" and I'm like "no, you could've worn it all the time I've owned it if you wanted to and you haven't; the point is not to move it from one side of the closet to the other, the point is to get it the fuck out of the house."
Daisy doesn't like it when I call her a hoarder. My response to that is the same as it's always been -- that she should channel some of that negative energy into actually getting rid of a bunch of useless shit she has in the house. I did it with my stuff years ago, and made a BIG purge when we bought the house -- selling, donating, or throwing away probably at least half, it not more, of everything I owned. I'm still waiting for her to do it with her stuff.
Tomorrow morning at 8 is my "telemedicine" (read: doctors should just call their patients with advice when requested, but they can't monetize that, so we have to make it an event) appointment where I will be talked at by my doctor about my diabetes and will probably be told the exact same things that I was told on the phone last week by the nurse anyway. I'm not going to be lectured, and I will be owning the conversation and asking questions, as I am not an idiot. It's also at 8am, an hour after I get off work, and I will have zero patience for any bullshit at that point as I will be looking to go to bed.
Wednesday, June 16:
Working from home, day 279.
Last night at work was hell, and nights like that are likely some of the stress-related reasons my A1C is so high. And last night was only Tuesday. Wednesdays (and some Thursdays) are generally much worse. I don't know how much longer I can do multiple people's jobs every night, or why leadership thinks that's okay. I have a set list of tasks to complete every night, and with those, I need a block of time in which to complete them -- things that must be done on a daily basis when I'm in the office that are my responsibility alone; they're not something I can delegate to or push off on other people when I'm there. If I'm already doing multiple folks' jobs then that doesn't make sense as there's no one to delegate things to.
Anyway. I digress.
This morning's "telemedicine" appointment went very well -- I described to my doctor what my life has been like since our physicals almost two weeks ago now, and how well my body seems to be responding to the Metformin. She told me that's what it's supposed to do -- it's regulating my sugars and boosting my metabolism as a side effect. I talked to her about my exercise plans/goals and our new gym membership, my diabetic eye exam (in most circles, that's just known as an "eye exam," but since I have diabetes...you know), and she let me know I should likely schedule a dentist visit soon for cleaning and checkup, but otherwise to keep doing what I'm doing. There's other stuff too, like limiting myself to 40-60 carbs per meal (this is very easy for me most of the time) and making sure I drink at least 64oz of water a day (this is also very easy with the Sodastream as well as with coffee, Mio, etc). I've got a follow up appointment with her in July, though I can't remember what date -- it's later in the month, I know that -- at which time they'll redo my A1C test to see if it's gone down and to see if my Metformin needs to be adjusted, but basically I'm good to roll; I'm currently doing everything right. I was very satisfied with the call and its outcome, and it was not condescending or lecturing as I expected it to be. It also proved my theory that an office visit was not needed this morning for that conversation.
As an aside, I actually like this doctor. She's smart, seems to be kind, and appears to be pretty on the ball with everything her patients need. However, she is also very much "by the book," as in she will make sure your shit is rectified and has no qualms about marking up your medical chart with everything wrong with you, whether those things "wrong with you" were discussed with you or otherwise. On one hand, that can be frustrating. On the other, it's incredibly transparent and honest. I'd rather she be honest than sugarcoat things. In short -- she's not my old doctor, but she'll do.
Last night before work, I went to our new gym for the first time with Daisy. I did a full mile on the treadmill, only stopping for a quick break to get a drink from my water bottle. I figured a mile was adequate to start getting me back into the groove of things. I don't want to overexert myself, especially not when it's 100 degrees outside (and it is 100 degrees outside) and when I'm just now getting back into the groove of working out and being more active. I'll likely go back tomorrow night and at least once a day over the course of the entire weekend. The gym is two miles from our house and is legit a four minute drive. I need to do at least a mile on the treadmill every time I'm there, and I'd also like to do a mile or two on the bike and some arm/chest/abs/back exercises with the weight machines. When I get really into working out, it's very hard for me not to overdo it, though -- I have an addictive personality, and even when it hurts, as long as I have energy, I want to keep going -- even past the point where it would be beneficial. I'll have to work on that, of course.
I'm on a vitamin regimen every day now as well. I took a multivitamin before, as well as probiotics, but I am now on a few different supplements for iron, vitamin D, glucosamine, etc as said multivitamin doesn't have enough of a good number of things I should probably be taking and/or am deficient in. I'm switching those up soon too -- there's a bottle of high-level Centrum in my Amazon cart I'll be purchasing this weekend, along with a decent gym bag, as well, for the nights I want to use the pool.
Overall, I'm feeling really good. I've even found that I'm sleeping better, and my energy levels don't require me to pound cups of coffee or the Sodastream energy drink (sugar-free, of course) all night long in order to remain awake and alert. Again, and I can't stress this enough -- I am feeling better than I've felt in months, maybe even years. Let's hope this train keeps rolling.
Thursday, June 17: Working from home, day 280.
Friday, June 18: Day off. Payday for me.
Saturday, June 19: Day off.
Daisy has now found out, after a site visit by her firm's new CEO, that her job is safe -- everyone there will retain their positions or will work in similar positions. Some management/leadership may change here and there but for the most part it appears everything will remain remarkably status quo, just with a new name on the company. This is, of course, a huge relief for her and a very large stressor in our lives that is now basically gone. There are other things we have stress about too, of course, but for the moment, this will cease to be one of them.
Both Wednesday and Thursday nights at work were horrifying. I don't know if I can properly or adequately explain how awful the past week or two has been. If I had been dealing with that terrible stress when I was still feeling chronically fatigued and awful every night, I'm not sure I would've made it through. Multiple people in leadership there, on my side of the program, are definitely feeling the strain as well -- I'm not the only one. I have it on good confidence that my executive director already has one foot out the door because he's sick of the continued bullshit we have to deal with every night, and he's even been on vacation for the past week. Our business model is great -- on paper, anyway -- but when put into practice with the constant variables of unreliable staffing, unknown workloads every night (workload can either be light or super-heavy at the drop of a hat, with no real rhyme or reason to it most days), and leadership (including myself and the other managers) that is fraying at every proverbial seam and beginning to suffer from real, true burnout because the job can't function without them -- everything begins to blur, resentment grows, people begin hating anything and everything about even performing the basic functions of their jobs, and they simply stop caring/don't do those basic functions, or both.
I told Daisy the other night that I feel a sense of duty to the people I report to and to the people who report to me, and that I need to do everything I can to keep the program on its feet and to preserve their jobs and positions within the company -- so many people depend on me. Doing that, feeling that...workaholism...has sort of made my viewpoints a bit toxic. For example, I got irrationally angry because one of my leadership colleagues took the night off a few nights ago to grieve for a friend who committed suicide -- taking the night off even though he knew we were down three other people already and that his help was desperately needed. Like, I got yelling angry. Not in the "office," of course, but privately. I didn't care that he had a friend that had just killed himself -- compartmentalize that shit and don't bring it to work; there's a job to be done. Daisy called me out on that for having a toxic mindset.
While I 100% still believe that to a certain extent -- a certain extent -- I do also realize that's a toxic viewpoint. It's also a standard I tend to only hold my colleagues to, not the agents who report to me. When the agents who report to me say that they've lost someone or they have health problems/family problems/family emergencies they have to take care of and can't make it in on any given night I'm almost never angry or upset by it -- I give them the benefit of the doubt and tell them that health or family comes first, that this job is just a job, to take care of what they need to take care of. There's a second layer of toxicity here as well, because most of the time it's easier for me to say that (and gives me some relief, even) because my agents aren't exactly the cream of the crop, and sometimes it makes my night easier when some of them do decide to call out -- so that I don't have to babysit all of the issues they work. It is very difficult to extend that same courtesy to fellow members of leadership there, because as leadership we run the fuckin' show, and that job doesn't exist without us there to regulate. It only takes one major screw up from one of us who is overworked and super-frazzled to topple the first domino, and then we'd all be fucked. I also realize that all of this is a super-toxic mindset as well, but that also doesn't make it untrue.
I will also note that I don't feel the same way when someone takes a vacation or uses planned PTO, and I don't apply this mindset to myself when I take time off for vacation or PTO either. If you're on PTO, to me that's a get out of jail free card -- anything that happens when you're out of office isn't your fault or your problem.
Anyway, tl;dr -- the past few nights at work have sucked, and I'm glad to have gotten a bit of a reprieve in the form of a weekend.
Our new glasses arrived at the optometrist's office yesterday, and Daisy went to pick them up on her lunch. While mine are fine (we'll get to that in a moment), Daisy is dissatisfied with the fit and shape of hers.
Let me explain.
Daisy got a pair of black Ray-Bans, rectangular and black -- nothing fancy, not even glossy. Matte black and rectangular. They're very similar to a few pairs of glasses I already own, and are very much in the vein of something I would wear myself. And they look great on her -- they're sexy, they're hipsterish, they're intellectual. No frills, no weird shapes or fancy colors or angled designs, just basic and utilitarian. They were not cheap, but they were well-optioned and well-constructed -- like a fine automobile. She liked them when she tried them on in the office, and out of several different pairs she picked those ones as the winners.
So when she arrived at the office yesterday to pick them up, she tried them on and hated the fit. The girls there adjusted them multiple times, but the glasses' arms still dug into her head and temples, and it was driving her crazy. She wore them for the rest of the day, but took them off last night out of frustration. She will likely return them for an exchange or (if she can get one) a refund -- I don't exactly know how it works to return a pair of glasses.
I've been supportive throughout the entire process as I want her to be comfortable and feel like she's actually getting her money's worth (our money's worth, I guess, as it comes out of our FSA account for all of our medical expenses) and if she wants to exchange or return them I'm all on board -- I offered to go back to the office with her tomorrow in order to get it done, as the sooner she can see like she's supposed to see, the better. The entire process has left her extremely frustrated and at last check, she didn't know what she wanted to do, really.
Meanwhile, my own glasses are...weird.
These are the frames I ordered. You can click on them to see them larger if you want. They're pretty basic rounded-rectangular, subtle browline frames by Columbia -- yes, the expensive outdoor-equipment, fleece-and-hiking-shoes people. They're also apparently really popular, as they're one of the highest sellers they have, according to their website (where I grabbed this photo). Multiple other companies have also manufactured their own version of this frame as well, because since I ordered it that day I've seen so many slight variations of it on different websites, some of them almost completely identical. I didn't pick it because of that; I actually thought I was getting something kind of unique and different than a lot of the other glasses I've seen on the market. Silly me. However, I wouldn't know, it's not like I follow the eyeglasses "scene" or anything -- I just know my style and know what I like. When I picked them up in the office to try them out last weekend, I put them on my face and was like "yep, these are the ones," with no hesitation. This is partially because they were an "extended fit" (read: big/wide face and/or huge head) option, and they sat perfectly on my face, ears, and nose -- to the point where I barely realized I was wearing glasses at all. So I told the girls in the optometry office "this is it, sold," and they did up the order.
Before I go any further, I want to again note two things:
1. my prescription has gotten stronger, especially for my right eye, and
2. I have been using the same prescription for over six years until now.
These things being said, when Daisy brought home the new glasses last night I was extremely excited to see what they'd feel like, and, well, see like.
Hoo boy was I in for a surprise.
So not only is my prescription stronger now, it is much stronger. I didn't realize how much until I put on the new glasses. They sort of made my head spin and made my eyes twitch -- it felt like I was wearing literal magnifying glasses on my face. Like, Sherlock Holmes-style, "the game is afoot, Watson" magnifying glasses. That's how much stronger my new prescription is. For a few minutes I thought maybe they accidentally flipped a number here or there or something, because this is way more powerful than what I was expecting.
I know now that they didn't, that it was just the "adjustment" period between the old glasses and the new ones, which I am still in, to an extent. They are strong. They are thick. They are powerful, well-built, and provide extremely sharp vision. But after six years with my old prescription, they are definitely going to take a few days to get used to. I don't notice a hugely noticeable improvement in overall vision, but I will say that everything is more well-defined and just seems...sharper? A little more close up? It's tough to describe. And moving around with them on feels weird too, almost like I'm looking through goggles. They have a very precise focal point (based on my pupillary distance) which is difficult to get used to so far, but eventually I'm sure it'll feel normal. I seem to recall my first pair of (adult) prescription glasses feeling the same way, to the point where they irritated my eyes so much during the first week or two of wearing them that I had to take them off and give my eyes some rest. These ones aren't like that, but I get the same sorts of feelings.
My spare pairs with my new prescription from Zenni are still being manufactured, a full week after ordering them -- they take forever to make them and ship them. I also ordered another pair from a site I found advertised on Facebook, Payne Glasses. I'm sure I'll have them all by the end of the coming week, but the waiting process is maddening. Until then, I guess I've got some time to get used to my prescription.
Sunday, June 20:
Working from home, day 281.
West Virginia Day.
Father's Day.
Summer Solstice.
On this day in 1863, my home state of West Virginia became a state. It is a big deal back home to celebrate the state's birthday; it was when I lived there, too. People treat it like a holiday and do cookouts or go to parks or what-have-you. Out here in Nebraska, it's just a normal Sunday for me.
Today is also Father's Day. Daisy and I went over to the parents' yesterday afternoon, taking a bottle of wine and a bag of gummy bears (vegan, of course) from Whole Foods over to her father to celebrate the occasion. I sent my own dad a Deadpool t-shirt and made sure to call him yesterday to chat for awhile. I work tonight -- much as I do every other Sunday -- so for any Sunday-based holiday (Easter, Mother's Day, Father's Day, etc etc) we always arrange our celebrations on the day prior. It sort of sucks but it's something we're used to at this point. I never know when or how I'm going to be awake on Sundays; for example, today I was awake by 11am, but that's not usually the norm.
I also feel it appropriate to note that my actual father never gets a Father's Day greeting or call from me because he hasn't spoken to me in twenty years; I do not have any desire to speak to him or contact him as he hasn't actually been a father to me since I was a very young child (and he was spotty even then). So many people I know have strained or estranged relationships with their actual fathers -- I don't have any relationship at all with mine. We're friends on Facebook, and have been for some time now, but we have never interacted. He has never reached out to me, and I have never reached out to him. I'd be extremely surprised if he ever looks at my Facebook or reads any of my posts. I would assume, in fact, that I'm likely muted on there for him -- I post a lot of pictures of my wife and myself being happy and living our best lives, and I've not made it a secret that I am very liberal, pro-Biden/Harris, pro-Bernie, pro-vaccine, and pro-Democracy/rational thought -- everything that my more rural family members seem to be pretty heavily opposed to.
As an aside, I know I've "lost" a lot of family and friends to the Radical Trump wing of political thinking, and wow is that disheartening. I mean, I always knew I was the most intelligent member of my family (and that is not up for debate) but to have it proven to me repeatedly and frequently made me "mute" and hide a lot of them as well.
I also have another story to tell you about something that happened yesterday. I do not want to tell it (no, it does not involve ghosts) but it is disturbing as fuck, and I am a bit traumatized by it.
As we were getting ready to leave the house yesterday to go to the parents' for our Father's Day celebrations, I heard Daisy freak out and scream my name downstairs.
"I need you to come down here," she said, trying to keep her composure. "There is a mouse in the toilet."
"...is it dead?" I asked.
"I think so, I don't know, I shut the door and ran away."
So, I go downstairs, open the bathroom door again, and look. Yes, there is indeed a mouse in the toilet, a large mouse, and it is indeed dead. But...
"[Daisy]," I said, "It's not just one. There are two of them."
Indeed, in the toilet, drowned and very dead, were two large mice. I mean, I think they were mice, they could have been rats too. I couldn't tell you, it's not like I follow the rodent "scene" or anything.
There was no water on the floor, there was no signs of struggle or anything else, just a toilet with two fresh, dead rodents in it. And yeah, they were fresh -- no signs of decomposition at all, just dead. I fished their stiff bodies out with an old broken slotted spoon we were planning to throw away anyway, tied them up inside two grocery bags, tied that up inside an actual garbage bag, and tossed everything into the garbage can in the garage. Behind the second one in the toilet was what appeared to be a wad of shredded, dessicated toilet paper -- but not a large one or anything.
I flushed the toilet a few times. It flushed fine, with normal water flow and fill, much as it always does.
I will mention that we've never had a rodent problem inside the actual house, and it's been fifteen years since I've lived anywhere that actually did. The AC guy fished a dead mouse out of the inside of our unit when he came to service it and make sure it was going to run correctly for the summer, and we had mice at one point out in the garage that chewed up a few bags of stuff we had out there in storage (that stuff has since been removed and properly dealt with, of course), but we have never had or seen any sort of mouse or rat inside the house, and especially not in the goddamn toilets.
To put Daisy's mind at ease, we baited two non-lethal humane traps (they're little little plastic cages) and put one in our utility closet (where the water heater, furnace, breaker box, and AC drainage line is) and put the other in the actual bathroom itself. I work downstairs on overnights five nights a week, ten feet from each room -- believe me, if they catch anything, I will know.
"That bathroom door stays closed 24/7 now," I said, closing it behind me. Daisy agreed.
So, with the problem dealt with, what in the actual FUCK? I've never lived anywhere in my life where I've found dead rodents in the fucking toilets, and I've lived in some pretty shady places.
Daisy did some research, and apparently it's not uncommon, which traumatizes me that much more -- to find dead mice in toilets. However, it is much more common for them to be rats, which can enter throughout the house's sewer pipes -- like where they connect to the city sewer system, and climb some of them -- but they'll obviously drown when they hit drain traps and interior water systems and the like. The fact that there were two of them and that there appeared to be a wad of toilet paper behind the second one alludes to them getting caught in a clogged or otherwise tight pipe and were kicked loose when the clog kicked free. Maybe not even my own pipe, maybe the actual city sewer line -- but I'm only making speculations here, I don't know. I just know that this shit's never happened to me before.
"They can also come up sink drains too," Daisy added later.
"Stop telling me these things," I replied.
What the fuck, nature?
My problem is that if it happened once, it can happen again -- and then I think back to last summer when the floor drain in our utility closet backed up and overflowed. We don't know what caused that clog, but the rooter guys were able to clear it out quickly and drain it. Who's to say that wasn't caused by one or more dead mice/rats down that drainage line somewhere? That empties out the main line of the house too, just like the toilets do, and the rooms are right next to one another. The thought is, frankly, horrifying. We have enough problems in life as it is -- I don't need to add "rodents in the pipes" to that list too.
I've since used the toilet multiple times with no issues. Daisy refuses to use it as she now calls it the "mouse toilet." She says she doesn't know if she can ever use it again. I don't have that problem.
Monday, June 21:
Working from home, day 282.
As you can see, my gym adventures have continued unabated.
I've taken a few rest days here and there -- I took last night off from the gym because after working out my arms on various machines and doing two miles on the bike on Saturday, as I was sore and my body felt like jello yesterday. This "four days a week" plan that Daisy wants us to adhere to is really rough sometimes, even with the extra energy I now have. It will get easier, I have no doubt, but getting back into the groove of working out all the time, especially during the summer when it's so nasty outside most of the time now, is a little more grueling than I expected it to be. But I'm trying. Oh yes, am I ever trying. Eventually, my body and diabetes will thank me for it.
As you can see, the beard is almost back to what it was before I previously shaved it. This is pandemic beard #2, and again while I love it, that doesn't mean it's not a pain in the ass to take care of. I've considered shaving it off again, but I'd like to get a haircut first to see if I look good as one of those hipsterish guys with short hair and a long beard. I also haven't had a haircut since a week or two before the pandemic blew up big and sudden, so it was likely early March of last year.
I planned to go back to the gym this afternoon once Daisy got home, as I skipped what will become a normal Sunday gym trip -- however, I think working out my arms on Saturday messed up my elbow -- my right elbow, my dominant hand, my mouse hand -- to the point where it is now swollen, stiff, and feeling very arthritic. I can move it, but it is not comfortable at all to do so I don't think this is a gout issue, as it was last summer with the other arm, but a "Brandon, you pushed this too hard on your first arm workout back at the gym and now you're horribly inflammed because of it" sort of issue. It was aching me some yesterday, but this morning the pain woke me from a dead sleep to the point where I needed to get up and go take ibuprofen and one of my anti-inflammatory colchicine pills in order to make it subside enough to sleep another five hours. It feels better than it did before, but it is far from pleasant and makes a lot of movement difficult.
I told Daisy when I woke up about my sudden injury, and she was relieved -- not that I'm in pain, of course, but because she had no desire to go to the gym tonight at all, and she knew I'd originally wanted to.
"Just come home and we'll eat salad and watch The Handmaid's Tale and you can love me," I said.
Please note that this is all I ever really want out of life -- food, TV, and the wife.
She said that sounded lovely.
I would also like to make a note that my wife is a life-saver of animals -- more than being vegan normally is. Let me explain.
Last night was Father's Day. Her goals were to go take the last gift over to her father (it didn't arrive via Amazon until yesterday afternoon) and then stop at the grocery store on the way home for some essentials. She didn't leave the house until the evening hours to do so, which isn't a big deal other than it's later than she would normally go out. I stayed home because, well, I was tired and had to work last night, and the last thing I wanted to do before I had to work all night was run around town for hours.
Anyway, as she was returning at 9:30ish -- as I was getting my computer booted up and ready for work, since I start at 10 -- I hear her open the door in the kitchen and say "turn on the light and help me," which in itself is not unusual but sort of unexpected. I got up, went to the kitchen door (which leads out into the garage) and turned on the light -- what I found was definitely unexpected.
The garage door is open, her car is at the far end of the driveway and barely pulled off the street into it, and Daisy herself is rummaging through the back of the garage...with a big gray cat under her arm.
"I'm taking her to the humane society," she said. "She's so loving and so sweet, she came running right to me off the street. But she's covered in ticks and I don't want her to get hit by a car -- she has to be somebody's baby. I'm doing the right thing, right?"
I looked down at the cat, who was -- let me tell you -- gorgeous and appeared to be well-taken care of. A big Russian Blue-colored gray cat with big, beautiful, golden-orange eyes. It looked like Church from Pet Sematary. Spitting image. But, you know, not evil. It also did not have any aversion to being held or stuffed under my wife's arm as she dug one of our cat carriers out of the back of the garage. It was as if this cat was like "thank fuck, someone's saving me, I'm going to be okay."
Stray cats and feral cats don't act like that. Trust me, I know. This cat was an escapee from someplace and was likely someone's baby.
She put the cat very easily into one of our carriers and took it over to the Humane Society, which is only a few streets away -- the facility isn't manned 24/7, but there is a 24/7 dropoff spot for found animals/lost pets, where you can put them in a box-like room that has food and water and where they'll be safe until the morning hours when the staff comes back in the next day. Daisy took pictures and recorded videos of the cat -- who she said was torn between getting love and drinking all of the water available and possible inside the drop-off area -- and came home.
I, of course, asked Daisy to strip and scrub herself down in the shower once she got home so that anything that cat could've had wouldn't be passed on to our own cats, which she did. I'm all for saving animals' lives, but not at the risk of giving my own geriatric cats distemper or parvo or whatever the hell else could be passed on to them from us being in contact with a stray animal.
"I left a note," Daisy told me, "that if nobody claimed the cat to immediately call me. Please don't be mad. That cat is so incredibly sweet and loving."
"I'm not mad at all," I said. "That cat needs a home and needs love. I'm onboard with taking it if its owners don't come to claim it or if it doesn't have owners."
This is true and is a 180 from my normal viewpoints on these types of things. I don't want any more cats, but the thought of this little gray baby being unclaimed and unloved is too much for me to bear. There are likely others who would give the cat a good home too, but I don't know that they'd be able to give the cat as happy a home as ours.
Still, I have a sense of realism. The cat is likely chipped, it is likely someone's lost pet, and it is likely that its owners will come to claim it. Daisy put up a post on the Lost Pets of Omaha Facebook page, and as of this evening that post had 73 different people share it. The Humane Society has a three-day holding period and, after that, it'll be determined where the cat will go -- either to the owners or into the adoption pool, I would imagine. That means we'll likely know more by Wednesday or Thursday.
But if not, well, I mean, at least we saved an animal's life, saved a sweet cat from getting hit by a car or eaten by a coyote.
Tuesday, June 22: Working from home, day 283.
Wednesday, June 23: Working from home, day 284. Daisy's birthday.
In the overnight hours of June 22 -- past midnight it made it the 23rd, Daisy's birthday -- I took an extended lunch and put my master plan into action.
I opened the box I'd hidden in the dining room, an Amazon box that contained vegan, gluten free yellow cake mix, vegan and gluten free cream cheese frosting, a giant cake topper, a bag of kettle cooked Ketchup flavored Ruffles I'd imported from Canada at a ridiculous cost, and a big tub of popcorn kernels. I set the latter two items aside, and in the middle of the night, began making a big birthday cake for Daisy -- all in secret.
For those of you who don't cook often, don't bake often, and/or do approximately zero cooking or baking for vegans, it is...sometimes difficult. A lot of baking requires eggs or egg substitutes, and even on an "extended" lunch hour from work my time is still limited, so it's not like I have time or patience for kitchen alchemy or what have you. I was also unsure of how to make a cake without eggs or any other non-vegan ingredients, but I remembered something from back in the day about using a can of soda to replace some ingredients in cake, so I googled that.
Apparently, you can replace oil, eggs, and (I'm assuming some, if not all) sugar in a cake by just adding a can of soda to it instead of those items.
I rarely keep soda in the house these days. I have a few bottles of the Pepsi Blue left, and a few nights ago Daisy was able to find us the new Mountain Dew Baja Blast Zero Sugar, so I do have that -- but neither of those would really lend themselves to making a good cake. Most of the cake recipes I saw called for a neutral, citrusy-flavored soda like Sprite or 7UP. I don't keep those around (any soda, sugared or otherwise, is pointless without caffeine).
However, I do have a Sodastream. And I do have normal (diet) soda flavors for it, including cola, root beer, their version of Diet Dr. Pepper, and full-sugar ginger ale syrup.
Initially I settled on the ginger ale, because it actually had sugar in it and I thought it might lend itself well to the cake, but...for some reason I gravitated towards the Dr. Pepper. Daisy loves the Dr. Pepper -- it's probably her favorite of all of the Sodastream stuff -- and at the time, a Dr. Pepper cake sounded delightful. So, I made a bottle of it and added it to the mix -- along with a melted stick of vegan butter and half a cup of almondmilk.
And I mixed. And I mixed, mixed, and mixed some more. I had to do it with a wire whisk, because getting the hand mixer out and running it would have certainly woken up Daisy. I broke the wire whisk once and had to put it back together, then continued mixing. In about ten minutes of constant whisking, I had a cake batter that actually looked, smelled, and tasted like cake batter. I'd considered cupcakes, but fuck cupcakes, that's too much work. Instead, I pulled out our big glass casserole dish from the cupboard, a dish I'd chosen specifically because it has handles on the sides, greased it (as instructed) and slowly poured the batter into it, making sure it was evenly spread out, and stuck it in the oven at 350 for 35 minutes.
As I had to wait, and as I was on an extended lunch anyhow, I used the time to make myself something low-carb and not too diabetically-awful to eat, though I can't remember what it was now. I'm trying to do well on that, by the way. I've been mostly successful, but more on that later.
Once the 35 minutes was up, I checked the cake. You're supposed to be able to put a fork in the center of it and pull it out dry, if it's done. The fork came out mostly dry, but not completely. I put another 10 minutes on the timer and finished my "lunch." At that point the fork came out dry, and I turned off the oven and took it out to cool...and had to go back to work.
The cake, and it looked like a normal cake, was promising. I took a tiny bite of it with the fork, and it tasted cake-like, mostly. This gave me hope. It sat on the stove for probably three hours before I could get away from my desk again long enough to open the can of vegan, gluten-free cream cheese frosting and spatula the shit out of it all over the cake.
Look, it's been a very, very long time since I baked a cake, I don't exactly know how to evenly frost one. I think the last time I did, I just microwaved the frosting to liquify it and then poured it evenly over the cake to let it re-harden as it cooled down, like a glaze. That's one way to do it, I guess, but I wasn't going to do that with Daisy's cake and especially not with an $8 can of special vegan, gluten-free frosting. So I slopped it on with a rubber spatula, trying to keep it even, like I was laying mortar for brickwork.
Once everything was together it looked cake-like, but also looked like it was missing something. I tore apart the kitchen cupboard above my coffeemaker until I found what I was looking for in the back -- sprinkles. I proceeded to coat the cake in sprinkles, then attached the gaudy-as-hell but hilarious cake topper to it, and....well....
Behold: the wife's birthday cake.
I then went to bed at the end of my shift after strategically placing the popcorn kernels and the Canadian Ruffles with it on the stove, in full view -- those were her birthday presents as well. The kitchen had been cleaned, the dirty bowls and utensils used to make the cake were in the dishwasher, which was running, and now she could have cake for breakfast.
I went to bed just as she was waking up for the day -- she had taken her birthday off work, as everyone should -- and before I went to sleep she went down to see her presents. I assured her they were all 100% safe for her to eat and were fully vegan, due to my meticulous research, and passed the fuck out for the day.
Thursday, June 24: Working from home, day 285.
Friday, June 25: Day off.
Saturday, June 26: Day off. "Lucky Day."
Over the past several days, a lot has happened, so I'm going to try to go through the interesting stuff one by one in hopes that I can sort it all out here in writing. June has been a very busy month:
I am okay.
My diabetes seems to be under control as much as I can manage it to be. I still have (mostly) the same amount of increased energy I had before, and still have had no real side-effects from the Metformin whatsoever. I am taking it twice a day (basically, whenever I eat), and my meals this week have consisted of a lot of salads, nuts, roasted vegetables, trail mix, a little rice here and there, wraps on low-carb tortillas, etc. I do still have the occasional sandwich or two, and last night I made and ate a packet of ramen for the first time in months (so I do have my occasional "cheats," but it's not an everyday thing). I purchased and am taking a much more powerful multivitamin every day, and I feel a lot healthier than I've felt in a very long time. I am still in good spirits; I am going to the gym as much as possible -- four days a week, as Daisy originally planned, is infeasible for us most of the time due to work schedules, time, and energy levels -- but we're doing bare minimum of two or three days and if one or both of us don't feel it for the other day(s), then that's fine. I'm just now getting back into the swing of all of it and I injured my arm last week when I began weightlifting again, so I would rather not overexert myself and/or injure myself even further. I'm of the mantra that any exercise I get is better than what I was doing before, which was nothing. It's all a process. I haven't weighed myself in several days, but I'm sure it's fluctuating and/or going down a bit simply based on my increased activity levels as well as the overall changes in my diet, but we'll see on my weigh-in day at the beginning of the month.
About that cat...
The cat is five years old, female, spayed, and chipped -- the humane society has her listed name on record (read: the name she was chipped with) as one of the goofiest, stupidest names I've ever seen given to a cat, and she enters the adoption pool today. Her owners, who they have on file, never claimed her, and she's been brought into the shelter more than once. She's been cleaned up and vaccinated through 2023, and it is likely the wife and I will venture to the humane society this morning to formally "meet" the cat and see if we think she'd be a good addition to the household. In the several days since Daisy rescued her, both of us have had our apprehensions about adding in another cat, for jealousy and territorial reasons with the cats we have already, but also...if this cat's not used to being around other cats and/or doesn't like other cats, and isn't used to being indoors 24/7, well...we can't in good conscience force this cat into that scenario, no matter how much care and love we'd be able to give it. I told Daisy that as sweet as I think this cat is, and beautiful as she is, my whole heart is not yet in it to just adopt her without any other rational thought. In an ideal world I would be 100% "let's go get her and give this cat a wonderful life" but this is not an ideal world and I have to be Spock-like in my logic and realism. So, we'll see.
About the toilet rodents...
There have been no further instances of toilet rodents or any other rodents anywhere in the house, and both traps we've set up have been left untouched. Daisy is still apprehensive about using the downstairs toilet, but I am not and have used it multiple times per day/night as per the usual. At this point, with no actual plumbing problems and no further rodent-related issues, I've chalked it up to an isolated incident of sorts and while it will probably always remain in the back of my mind to a certain extent, I'm not overly concerned by it.
About Daisy...
Daisy took off Wednesday, Thursday, and yesterday this week to get some time off around her birthday and some time to decompress, de-clutter the house, and relax a bit. I support the hell out of this. I wanted to take off this time for her birthday too, but I could not -- I must save all of my available PTO I have now, plus earn another 13ish hours, in order to be able to take the time I need for our trip to WV in August, as I need about six days' worth of PTO to make it work, give myself some buffer time and an extra night or two off before I return to work, and to be able to re-acclimate to Nebraska and my work schedule. I wish I could've taken the days of vacation and decompressed a bit myself -- this past week at work has yet again been another awful week and I've been really stressed, so Daisy and I have squabbled a few times over stupid shit simply because of that. Speaking of which...
About work...
Work has fucking sucked as of late. On Thursday night, when we were/are at our lowest staffing for my own work week, our VPN (FortiClient, for any of you who were interested) crashed out and killed our accesses to any company systems or anything on the internet at all. It stayed connected just fine, but somewhere a network node went down -- I couldn't tell you where -- that made the VPN program itself a useless lump. It took over five hours to restore connectivity through it, during which I could do little else but wait, play on my phone, make a meal, try not to fall asleep, etc. I had to stay at the computer because I needed to know the exact moment it came back up in order to dive in and finish everything I'd started five hours beforehand. One of the reports did not get completed (I informed the director over that segment why not, and he understood) and I still worked almost a full hour late trying to get everything else taken care of and cleaned up, because I have a sense of honor and wanted everything left to be as neat as possible for our daytime crew (also, because my executive director ordered me to do so).
Anyway, moving onward --
So....
About our glasses...
Hoo boy, this is gonna be a long one.
So two weeks ago, we had our eye appointments. The glasses arrived the next week (really quickly, like, a few days later) and my new prescription took some, ahem, getting used to, as I mentioned previously. I am still getting used to them, sort of. It's much easier now and my eyes have acclimated (mostly) but it's been a long process, and reminds me every time I take my glasses off just how bad my eyes actually are. But I liked the fit and finish of my glasses, and still do -- they are remarkably comfortable and I haven't had any real problems with them. As I mentioned above, Daisy wasn't a fan of her new ones, at all, and had gotten them adjusted by the optometrists multiple times. She finally got fed up with them and adjusted them herself here at home, and has been fine with them since -- but it was a several-day process.
The night of our eye appointments, new prescription in hand, I ordered two spare frames and a pair of sunglasses with said new prescription from Zenni Optical, who I have used for almost all of my glasses since 2016 -- only one pair of the glasses I currently own came from another site (Coastal), and I cannot get those frames any more as they have apparently been discontinued (which makes me distraught, because look at them):
Alas, it's not to be. I tried.
Anyway, the Zenni glasses should arrive in the mail today, but a few days later I ordered another set of frames for like, $6 from a manufacturer based in Pittsburgh called Payne Glasses -- I'd seen ads for them on Facebook, and they had a bunch of really interesting, really inexpensive frames on their site, so just to try them out (so to speak), I picked my options, picked a frame similar to my style, and placed the order -- with shipping, it was less than $15 total. They even had an option for Amazon Pay, which means I could basically order them through Amazon. Cool, right?
Stylish, cheap, and very much in the vein of what I'd wear. So, I ordered, and waited.
And waited.
And waited until earlier this week, I received an email stating that they would be delivered on Wednesday, several days earlier than expected. Sweet, I thought, I'll get these before the Zennis, and if I like them, I'll get more from this company.
When I woke up on Wednesday (again, Daisy's birthday) I checked the mail, at like...4pm? The mail had not arrived yet. This is extremely odd because usually the mail is in our box by around 1:30 -- you can almost set your watch to it, and I know this because we have multiple security cameras around the front of our home, so (in addition to tracking everyone/thing else) we can track a mailman's comings and goings, know when packages are being delivered, see who's at the door when the bell is rung, see the goings on of the neighborhood -- etc.
Around 6:30ish my notifications went off. Daisy yelled upstairs that it was the mailman, because she knew I was waiting for the glasses to show up.
I open the door, reach into the mailbox, and no glasses.
I check the shipping tracker on my phone, as I can pull it up quickly -- DELIVERED, In/At Mailbox, June 23 6:37 PM.
The fuck they were. I was pissed beyond belief.
Thursday came and went, no glasses. Still showing as delivered on the tracker.
Friday (yesterday) rolls around and I get my "informed delivery" email from the USPS that states that the tracking number for those glasses is still active and would be arriving in the mail that day. Oh okay, I thought, must have been a mixup, but they have it in their systems still and it should get here today. The mail came, no glasses. Still showing as delivered on Wednesday on the tracker.
I opened an investigatory case with the USPS -- the second such case in a month, the first being for the missing puppy pads -- because I'm getting fed up with this horseshit. Yes, this is 100% a first world problem, and yes, this is also 100% likely a "delivered to the wrong address" scenario, but for fuck's sake, postal carriers -- read the fucking address on the packages you're delivering, please. Because of this, who knows who got my glasses, who knows where they actually are now -- they're likely forever lost in the mail.
You know me. I don't say these things lightly, nor do I file complaints lightly. I adore and support the shit out of the USPS, which if you've followed this blog for a long time, you already know. But when stuff like this keeps happening, when I have to keep filing investigatory cases, when I receive comics in the mail six months after they were released and beat to shit like they've been in the bottom of a backlogged mail bin for months (because yes, this has happened too)...it makes it really hard to keep defending and supporting the USPS both with my words and with my wallet. It makes me want to stick up for them less and less. No organization is perfect, but if I'm experiencing this many problems with them, how many problems are other folks experiencing that are going unreported?
In my report I mentioned that I could confirm they were not delivered and even have video evidence from that date and time of the mailman dropping off what mail was dropped off, and the glasses definitely not being delivered to my home that night (because I do have that video). I added that they were likely delivered to the wrong address as a subtle "this is your fault" jab at them. I was, however, kind and respectful and businesslike.
Adding to my bitterness is that the investigatory case involving the missing puppy pads was never resolved -- they sent me an automated email saying they were looking into it and they'd follow up in a few days, and then never did. Then a week later I got an email link to a survey asking how I'd rate my experience with how the USPS dealt with this case...so I tore them a new one and told them there had been no investigation or follow up to my knowledge because nobody had ever reached out to me personally to address it...and then I got no response to that, either. Who knows where my puppy pads went or who received them, same as my glasses. They've vanished into some mailspace dimension, never to be seen again.
I will tell you this -- if my $75 worth of Zenni glasses (three pairs, with extensive options on each pair) do not arrive today and I am told via my tracker that they've been delivered, I'm going to completely lose my shit on these USPS folks -- essentially going postal on the Postal Service. I will ring their phones off the hook, I will write letters to the local postmaster general, I will go full Karen.
Anyway.
Aside from going to see the cat today, I've told Daisy that I want to go to the gym (at some point), and go to the grocery store and Walmart as well -- though that will likely not be necessary now as I just scheduled a Walmart delivery for this evening, so we can probably eliminate those from the schedule. I have a horrific headache either due to allergies or due to just being awake (could go either direction at this juncture, really) so we shall see.
I also wanted to mention, in passing, that today is 6/26 -- 626. 626 has always been one of those numbers that keeps popping up for me in my life; I wouldn't necessarily call it a "lucky" number or anything like that, but it's odd for me that for the past 20ish years or so, it comes up on occasion -- in stores, on clocks, in emails, on television, etc...always something relating to me or something I'm interested in or currently doing. But, historically -- even if it's something small, 6/26 has always been a "Lucky Day" for me. Most of the time (and I've checked) I've never documented anything that happened to me on the 6/26. Last year we had our washer repaired. In 2011, I purchased my (now very, very missed) Monte Carlo. I'm writing a separate "anniversary" post about that, telling the story about the life and death of that car, though it'll likely not be posted until sometime in July.
Sunday, June 27:
Working from home, day 286.
We did not get the cat.
Let me explain, as it was a very difficult decision for us.
The Nebraska Humane Society has changed up its policies as of late; gone are the days where you could just walk through the facility and look at all of the animals at once -- now you have to submit an application online, make an appointment, call about said appointment, they put you on a list, and then they text you when you've been cleared to enter the facility. They then make you fill out another, paper form, and then you're taken into a holding-cell-like area where they bring the animal to you a few minutes later. It's all so sterile, so clinical that it feels like a doctor's office.
So we went through all of this process and sat down with the cat that Daisy rescued, now free of fleas and ticks and nice and clean, and...she immediately bonded with me. Like, didn't want to leave my side, wanted to be with me, sat on my lap, let me rub her and hold her, and purred like a freshly-tuned engine.
So what was the issue?
In the room next to us, there were multiple kittens. They were very young and very tiny, and we were separated from that room by a big wooden fire-door-like door. At the door, every time one of the kittens came anywhere near close to the door, the cat we rescued began hissing like crazy. She couldn't see them -- it was a wooden door. But she knew they were there -- she could either hear them or smell them or what have you, and every time, she hissed and got aggressive at the door.
"Nope," I said, sadly, as soon as I saw this. "We can't have that."
I have three cats. They're all senior cats but they are other cats. This cat couldn't stand cats on the other side of a door from her -- there was no way she was going to work out to be a cat who could share space with three other cats who would be around her at all times. I saw this behavior and foresaw nothing but trouble.
Daisy agreed and saw this would be a problem as well, as well as how quickly that cat bonded with me -- it would be a huge problem were that cat to try to take the place of any of my other cats as my "shadow," so to speak, as I already have a shadow cat. As sweet as she was, the cats I already own are my first priority -- they are my children and there's no way I could introduce...strife? into the household, especially not a surefire conflict.
We had to let her go; we told the Humane Society that we really hoped she would find a good home, but unfortunately that home would not be with us. That cat deserves peace, love, and a home where it can be the center of attention, and regrettably -- as much as I want to -- there's no way we can give all of those things to said cat in the ways in which it deserves. We left the Humane Society heavy-hearted, but with no doubt that we'd made the right choice not to take it in.
So that's the end of that story, I guess.
Before we left the house to see the cat, I told Daisy that if possible, and if she didn't mind, I really wanted to go get a haircut afterwards.
Now, mind you, I love my long hair. It looks remarkably good on me and most of the time, it's pretty comfortable -- I could even tie it back, as it has now been sixteen months (read: since before Covid struck) since I last had a haircut. But, it's summer now. It was 105 degrees last week, and I actually like leaving the house when it's that hot without fainting -- I save my fainting for the doctor's office, as you know. I also like my hair to not take two hours to dry after I shower, too. These are all kind of important things in my book. In two months, I'm going to be in the car on the road for many hours both ways, to and from West Virginia, and while I love the wind in my hair, I also need to not sweat to death in mid-August.
Not to mention the sheer amount of sweat my hair soaks up in the gym. Having it drip off me and make my hair greasy is not fun.
Daisy agreed to this. I offered to get her a haircut too, to pay for it, to even set up an appointment for her to make it happen at the same place I get mine done (Great Clips, across town from us, near her parents' place) but she wasn't interested.
I'd also like to say that most of the time I'm not particular about my haircuts anymore -- I pull up my Pinterest on my phone (yes, I have a Pinterest, I've had one for years), find a picture of David Beckham, Zac Efron, or some other rando with similar hair, and point at it for the stylist -- "give me as close as you can get to that" and then put away my phone, take off my glasses, and let her get to work. It's always a woman, too -- I don't think I've had my hair done by a male hairstylist in close to 20 years, unless you count when I used to do it myself when I was poor and lived alone. Even then most of the time I'd drive myself to Walmart (where, at the time, there was still a SuperCuts or similar chain inside the front doors) and spend $15 or whatever to feel pampered for a while. On average, I get a haircut once or twice a year. It's gone up in frequency since Daisy and I have been together...but since Covid wrecked that timescale, it's been 16 months -- like I said before.
Yesterday, I opened my phone, pulled up the picture of some rando and said "that, as close as you can get to it" much as I always do once I'm seated in the chair. The lady who cut my hair -- who had been working for Great Clips for eighteen years -- was like "so basically a crew cut?"
I thought about it for a moment and was like "Huh, yeah, I guess." I'd never really thought of it like that, but when I cut it short and taper it from down to the skin on the neck/back/sides up to a #1 or #2 clip at the longest on top, it really does resemble a crew cut. I always called it the "hipster dude with a big beard and glasses hairstyle."
"Cool," she said, and got to work.
We had some small talk about the heat and allergies and the storms we've been having over the past week, about the hair donation charity that they now give hair to instead of Locks of Love -- who apparently recently started charging recipients of their wigs -- and she sold me on a 2-in-1 shampoo/conditioner that would keep my scalp from getting too oily and/or possibly eliminate my need for dandruff shampoo.
[EDIT]: In retrospect, she was right about that -- my head/scalp feels great.
She was done in maybe ten minutes, and I bought the shampoo/conditioner from her as well. It turned out that I'd picked the best weekend possible to get my hair cut, as they were doing specials and promotions on everything this weekend -- which honestly I had no clue about; my haircut was $5 off what it normally would've been, and their shampoos/conditioners were buy one, get one half off. I offered the second item (the half-off item) to Daisy, as I know how hard it can be for her to tame her long curls, and after some research she picked out a Paul Mitchell conditioner she used to love when she was younger. The entire experience, including a $10 tip to the really sweet hairstylist, was $39. I saved like $15-20 by going this weekend. So, I guess the 626 rule holds up, at least somewhat.
The result? Because I'm sure all of you read up to this point just waiting on me to post a photo:
It feels nice, I won't lie.
I'm not yet sure whether I'm going to keep the beard or shave it off; I actually really dig the "long beard, short hair" look I've got going right now, and I don't necessarily want that to change. The beard is absolutely a pain in the ass, though, so I'll decide in a few days how I feel and if I want to take it off again. There's a nagging thought in the back of my head about pictures I'll be taking when I visit WV, and the question of whether I want the beard in those pictures or if I want to be clean-shaven or have my usual goatee, and honestly I don't know yet. I know that I can't grow back a full beard like this in two months; what I've got now has taken almost four. I may get another haircut before I go back to WV again anyway, so would I have to start all over again? Eh. It's not a huge concern at the moment. As long as I'm still working at home and as long as I don't have anyone to impress but me and the wife, I'll likely grow the beard back for a third time going into the winter months anyhow, even if I shave it now. Choices, man.
After the haircut we ran into the grocery store to pick up a few things -- something I'd mentioned I wanted to do anyway but was now almost completely unnecessary as I'd placed a Walmart order that morning for delivery in the evening, and my phone buzzed as we were in the parking lot of the store -- it was a notification from my security camera of the mailman delivering my Zenni Optical glasses, as I expected him to do. I got irrationally angry for a few seconds when I thought he hadn't delivered them, but I watched the video a second time more closely, and he had.
The grocery trip was mostly unnecessary, but I did get a few things I wanted/needed, as did Daisy. We then stopped by her parents' place for about 20 minutes to say hello -- we would've stayed longer but Dad wasn't feeling well and Mom couldn't get Daisy's sister off the phone to save her life for about 80% of the time we were there...and we also had frozen items in the car from the grocery store.
We came home, picked stuff out of the garden, and Daisy made a frozen (vegan) pizza that she picked up at the store, which was far too carby for me to enjoy, but she counterbalanced this by making me two smaller pizzas on the low-carb tortillas I really like. We ate, watched some TV, the Walmart order was delivered, and then we had another decision to make:
"Would you like to go to the gym after we finish this episode?" she asked me.
"Yes," I said, "I would."
My real answer to that is "no, I really don't want to, I just ate and would like to take a nap because I've been awake since 4am and we've been running around since 10am, but I really want to get some cardio in and get a decent workout without pulling my arm/elbow out of socket again, so I probably should just suck it up and go do it."
The gym closes at 9 on Saturday nights (don't ask me why). It was already around 7pm. The Walmart order was scheduled to be delivered between 7 and 8, which didn't give us a lot of wiggle room to figure something out. Right on time, however, the Walmart order arrived at 7:10 or so, and we put it away, got dressed, and went to the gym. I did a full mile on the treadmill and then used the arm bike (I don't know how else to describe it, but it's like a stationary bike for your arms) to work on my arms/chest/back without needing to lift weights and...hoo boy that is a machine, my friends.
They are not fucking kidding. I'm adding this to my daily gym routine, because holy shit, the entire upper half of my body felt like it was on fire and that someone had beaten me even after a few minutes on it. My upper body strength is abysmal and I desperately need to build it up as much as I can. I did it for maybe five minutes, but I'd like to be able to work up to doing it for the better part of an hour every time we hit the gym. My goal is to be able to crack walnuts on the inside of my elbow, eventually.
A man can dream.
Afterwards, we came home and I showered to get all the hair and sweat off me. I tried to read the news on my computer but kept nodding off. Eventually I just sat in my chair and dozed off for a few hours, getting that nap I'd wanted all day but would not let my body have.
The new glasses are wonderful, by the way. Perfect prescription as expected, and as comfortable as any other Zennis ever have been. However, I've still heard no feedback on the pair that disappeared in the mail.
Monday, June 28:
Working from home, day 287.
Daisy is working from home today and tomorrow, as we slowly come to an end of the month of June. It's been a very busy month, both at work and at home/around the house, as evidenced by this post being substantially longer than a lot of my other "Isolation Diaries" posts over the course of the past year.
During work last night, even though the night was slow, I was exhausted -- I'd been awake since noon or so yesterday for no good/real reason, and I'd been suffering from digestive issues as well...again for no good/real reason (my diet hasn't changed in the past few weeks since I've started watching/counting every carb and since I've been taking the Metformin). I felt like, for a good chunk of the day and night last night, like I was going to pass out and/or just needed some real, true rest. Yesterday was the lowest-energy day I've had in weeks, probably because I had disjointed sleep after running around all day on Saturday and then going to the gym that night on top of it.
Around 12:30 AM I was fading fast, despite the caffeine in my system, and as it was slow, I told the boys I was going to take a lunch at 1 to get some food in me (translation: I lied, I needed to lay down for a bit), and I clocked off for my lunch and took an hour-long power-nap with the cats on the couch. I awakened to my alarm at 2 feeling groggy, but once I got up and began moving around, I felt 100% better. I needed that nap to push myself through the rest of the night, which ended up being one of the slowest work nights I've seen in four or five months. It was a thankful reprieve from the wall-to-wall idiocy I've seen in that place every shift I've worked for weeks on end now.
When I got off work this morning, my digestive issues continued -- I don't know what I ate or if I had/have a case of mild food poisoning or what, but my guts have been feeling horrific for the past 48 hours or so. I don't have diarrhea, though I may as well have it, because everything wants out of my body in the most painful fashion possible.
"Maybe it's the Metformin gut issues finally hitting you," Daisy said.
"...three weeks after I started taking it, when my diet has been good and drastically altered from what it was before I started it? And when I've had no real changes to said diet since?" I replied. "That doesn't make sense to me."
"The only thing you've had different were those flax wraps," she said.
This is true; the only different food I've had that my body hasn't been used to over the past several weeks is that yesterday, I made two wraps on two sheets of low-carb, high fiber flax-based tortilla wraps. I've had them before and they've never given me issues, and the fiber content isn't out of control compared to all of the other high fiber foods I eat on a daily basis (like all the salads and vegetables). I didn't even eat both wraps yesterday -- half of one of them is in the fridge with the rest of my leftovers.
So yeah, I don't know. While writing this, I had to pause to run to the bathroom again for the most uncomfortable, painful bowel experience yet.
If nothing else, I guess nausea will curb my appetite even further and will probably help me lose more weight, so there's that. Weigh-in day is Thursday.
In other news...
The cat is still at the shelter. I've put out some feelers to friends and coworkers to see if we can help find her a home, as she's such a sweet little thing and I feel so terrible that she has to be locked in a cage, alone and scared, feeling unloved and unwanted. I can't dwell on the thought too long or it will send me spiraling down into a crippling depression, and I feel like I've been right on the verge of that for a few weeks now anyhow -- despite feeling better physically than I've felt in months (even with the above bowel issues the past few days).
I've sent inquiries now to the USPS for both the missing glasses as well as the missing puppy pads, in order to try to get any sort of updates whatsoever on what "investigation" is taking place -- if any. I have received no responses, which fires up a low-lying, deep anger in me. Conversely, I sent a courtesy email to the Payne Glasses people to tell them "hey, this probably isn't your fault and I've already opened a case with the USPS, but if tracking tells you these glasses arrived -- just like it told me -- I'm here to tell you that's not the case" etc etc. I got a response from their helpdesk folks in an hour. I'm not trying to get anything free out of them, or anything like that, but just wanted them to be aware in the event they're asked/questioned about the shipment. Would I be opposed to them sending me another pair out of the goodness of their hearts? No, of course not, but I don't want them to have to go through the trouble -- I want the USPS to find the ones I already had shipped to me but somehow vanished. I don't seek restitution or reparations; I seek justice.
I will say that I've gotten used to my new prescription now, to the point where when I take my glasses off, everything is really blurry and seems/looks unnatural. I often wonder if this is what the rest of my life is going to be like -- my eyesight getting just a little bit worse year after year after year, with stronger prescriptions not just expected but a certainty every time I have another exam done. I bagged up all of my old glasses, with the exceptions of my three favorite (older) pairs, so that Daisy can take them to the donation bin at Pearle Vision when she has the chance to do so soon. For now, I have my new expensive ones from the eye doctors, two spare pairs in different frames from Zenni, and a new pair of sunglasses. If I ever get the ones from Payne, I'll have yet another spare pair. I'm fine, I don't need any other new ones and I don't need to keep the other, old-prescription ones anymore other than as absolute emergency spares or on the off-chance that I can ever get new lenses put in them. I might eventually order duplicate frames with the new prescription for one or two of my beloved older pairs just for a bit of variety, but I predict it will be some time before I want to.
Oh, to be twenty years or so younger, back when I had nearly perfect vision and only needed to wear a pair of readers if my eyes were tired or if I really needed to be able to concentrate on what I was doing.
Tuesday, June 29:
Working from home, day 288.
I checked my email this morning upon getting off work to find that the Payne Glasses team had initiated a "remake" order for my missing glasses, as a sort of make good gesture. I really didn't expect them to do this and feel sort of guilty now that they did -- it's not their fault that the USPS likely fucked it up. I wasn't given any other correspondence on this, just an email that said my order was being redone for free. I know a lot of companies will do this just to be gracious and to try to keep customers from having a poor experience, but to me gestures like this have always been over the top and genuinely appreciated. I sent an email back to the helpdesk lady who worked with me yesterday thanking her immensely.
Still no response from the USPS on anything.
I've decided I'm keeping the beard as-is for the time being -- I really like the "short hair, big glasses, long beard" look I've been cultivating since my haircut. Plus, I have two full tins of beard balm. We'll see how I feel in a few weeks.
Wednesday, June 30:
Working from home, day 289.
Well, here we are, at the end of June. It's been a long, eventful month, with lots of ups and downs. I think June has likely been the busiest month of the year so far in many ways, for many reasons. I've decided to make July's post be the end of the "Isolation Diaries" series, as...well, we're not really isolated anymore. The pandemic, after almost a year and a half, is essentially mostly over, at least for now. There's no need to keep writing here like it's not. July will be the wrap-up of everything, and then from August forward I'll likely begin a new series of posts with a new theme, though it is not known as of yet what that theme will be.
Of course, if we get a second wave of Covid-19 or we all go on lockdown again, I reserve the right to change my mind on any or all of this.
I don't yet know where the rest of the year is headed for me yet -- none of us do. But we'll see.
Onward!
