The Isolation Diaries: The Next Few Weeks

Since this virus hysteria doesn't appear to have an end in sight, let's continue...


Saturday, April 18:
Day off. Because of her parents practically begging to see us, Daisy and I go outdoors on this beautiful, sunny-and-73-degree Saturday and venture to the parents' house; she wears a mask the entire time and we stay outside their house on the porch while they sit inside on their sun porch, keeping, at minimum, 6-8 feet away for the most part. "Social distancing" at its finest, folks. This marks the third time I've been outside the house in over a month, and the first time I've actually gotten any vitamin D from real sunlight. I wear my KMFDM Virus album cover t-shirt because I find it darkly appropriate. The hemorrhoid is awful, but begins to heal, slowly, after continual treatment with some Tucks pads (which I purchased about two months ago, knowing this could happen). Batch 3 of the CDs is now completely archived, and out of the 100ish discs (I don't keep count, I just know I ordered a 100-pack and it looks pretty close to that when I open the box), I get 72 full albums ripped to my hard drive -- everything from Avril Lavigne and the Backstreet Boys to Eric Clapton, David Bowie, and U2. It is the best collection yet, by far. It is only 72 because some of the albums won't rip or don't have embedded track listings, and well, when you get an unmarked CD with some sort of design instead of text on it, good luck figuring out who or what it is if it doesn't have an embedded track listing. I spend the afternoon and evening hours napping while the wife watches trashy reality television and makes us a dinner of potato nachos. I also finally spend a small bit of the stimulus money to get a bunch of random, but necessary items from Amazon, including three different things to treat/lessen the pain from my hemorrhoid and prevent it from returning.

Sunday, April 19:
Working from home, day 15. I move most of the stimulus money over to our savings account so that we have a cushion in the event stuff gets really bad before it gets better, and to help replenish a good chunk of the savings we've used in the past year or so. I get confirmation that batch 4 of the random CDs arrives tomorrow, and load everything I want to listen to from batch 3 onto my mp3 player, which I also fully recharge in preparation for the night/week. I also begin to realize, now that we're basically on lockdown for the most part, just how much cat food my cats go through every week or two. The hemorrhoid is almost healed, but I am very cautious with it as I have to spend at least 40 hours this week chained to my desk, and my fairly uncomfortable desk chair, for work. There are 22 training courses our company has assigned both me as well as my staff to take care of this week, so I'll have something to do if the night remains quiet -- and it does. I finish all of the training courses but one, as the last one has a glitch that stops me from being able to complete it. I relay this to the team. The night ends quietly, and I am in bed almost before Daisy leaves for work.

Monday, April 20:
Working from home, day 16. 4/20. Even in a work-at-home environment, any absences or PTO taken for today will come under intense scrutiny by leadership, guaranteed. When I awaken, I shower and shave -- and shave clean, down to the skin for the first time in a few months. It's more comfortable for me, and I'd like all of my beard to grow back in at the same length at the same speed. Batch 4 of the CDs arrive, and I glance through them -- they appear to be just as good of a collection as batch 3, and contain multiple albums I had on cassette as a child but have since lost (including the Cocktail soundtrack). I am also pretty sure there are far more than 100 in there, which means bonus! I begin archiving them in the afternoon hours once I'm alert enough for the day/night to do so. Also arriving in the mail today are two more Bathroom Reader books I ordered some time ago and a 24-pack of Monster -- which I will drink sparingly and interspersed with a lot of water to as to not irritate my gout. The hemorrhoid is almost gone -- it's still physically there but, thanks to the care I've given it, it produces almost no pain or discomfort. I expect it to be gone within another day or two. However, my knees and joints are inflamed for some reason today, so I take some glucosamine to try to make them feel better. As for work, the night is dead silent, and the last few hours on the clock are legit like watching paint dry.

Tuesday, April 21:
Working from home, day 17. I'm truly beginning to notice some depression creeping back into my brain. My appetite is...well, mostly gone. I'm constantly tired and achy. I haven't played a video game on my computer in almost two weeks, and have barely touched my Switch. Reading, unless I'm on the toilet, has also mostly lost its appeal because I can only do so much of it, and I'm trying. I'm sick of eating the same food every day, sitting on the same couch (or chair), and hearing the same news about the virus because it never stops. Social media is full of nothing but virus bullshit as well. The weather is gorgeous -- after all, it's almost May -- and while I don't want to socialize (I never want to socialize) I do want to be outside, to go somewhere, to do something. Daisy suggested that we go walking on one of the nature trails around town this weekend and I almost jumped at the opportunity -- such a thing is not something I'm ever really enthused to do most times, but goddammit, it's something different. At this point, I desperately need something different. I've begun thinking about my presence in or on people's lives, but more than that, their presence on mine -- locked inside the house, I no longer have anyone to impress, no longer have anyone to show off to or feel superior to because of my intellect, fashion sense, or wit and sarcasm. Daisy and I are equals; any bullshit posturing I once had, she saw through many years ago when we first got together, and I've never had to put on a front for her; she knows the real me. However, I've realized how much that bullshit posturing previously affected my daily life -- being able to show off a new pair of shoes, new glasses, or a new t-shirt to my coworkers or people in public gave me a sense of pride, a sense of accomplishment in life. Being able to make a biting joke or point out something or someone's stupidity in front of others made me intellectually superior. Being able to solve a difficult problem in front of others at work in full view of person-to-person leadership made me valuable and garnered me respect. I haven't been able to do any of these things in weeks, and what I can do is minimal and stunted by social distancing and working remotely. I was not built to be a cog; rather, I was built to be the hero, the leader, the center of attention. Being knocked down a peg and having the playing field digitally leveled makes me no better than anyone else -- just a name and a number. And that doesn't sit right with me, especially as one of my primary drives in life has always been to be better than everyone else in every way possible -- it's the it is not enough that I succeed, others must fail mentality.  Some people say they just want things to go back to normal, others say that they want that too, but it must be a "new normal"...I can't stand the back and forth on it; I just want to be able to order a pizza without fear of catching the new plague, go to the store and wander about without having to wear a mask, and go see a fucking movie in a theater. I want my body to stop trying to atrophy and stop creating more health issues because it's locked in a house 24/7. I want to be able to get excited about things again and have things to look forward to. ...Anyway. I archive about 20 more of the CDs and look up more tattoo ideas, and more Amazon stuff -- including most of the cat supplies and hemorrhoid treatment stuff I ordered -- arrive today. I turn around and order peanut butter, instant coffee, laundry detergent, and a few books off Amazon. On one level it's sad that this is what most of my shopping is now -- on another level, the list of items I've purchased on Amazon as of late provides a really depressing glimpse into what our lives have become for us all during this pandemic. I don't think I've ever bought peanut butter online before, for example. As for work, the night is mostly dull, though I do get an angry phone call from my executive director in the morning about an issue that one of my agents didn't work properly (and that I was completely out of the loop for), aside from being on the email trail, that got escalated up to AT&T executives for no reason as it was already fixed. This sours my mood for most of the morning until I go to bed.

Wednesday, April 22:
Working from home, day 18. I fall asleep in my chair in the morning after work, and in the process seriously tweak/sprain my left arm -- adding to the growing list of aches/pains/health problems I've had as of late. As I have previously experienced gout symptoms in this arm (yeah, this is a real thing, apparently), I take ibuprofen and a Colchicine pill. When I awaken at nearly 3PM, it is already too late in the day to go lay down in the bed, and as I haven't showered in two days anyway (and we just washed/changed the sheets last night) I didn't want to do that. I get up and shower, and bring the mail and garbage cans in from the road. Daisy's vote-by-mail ballot arrives in the mail today, but mine does not -- which pisses me off because we sent the requests on the exact same day. My hemorrhoid cream arrives from Amazon, for a hemorrhoid that is almost now completely healed and is no longer giving me any pain or other issues. I am still in a mostly foul mood, though I put on a brave face for the evening as I know I have this one last night that I have to be somewhat normal and helpful on the clock for work. My patience is tested even more when my CD drive does not want to read half the CDs I'm trying to archive without multiple tries, and won't read the track listings for most of them when it does want to work, and pushed even further by my allergies making it nearly impossible to breathe without blowing my nose over and over throughout the afternoon. Almost everything begins to cause me anger and irritation. Today is payday for the wife, so on her lunch hour she masks up and goes to Natural Grocers to get some food and other supplies for the house, and stops by Whole Foods on the way home to get a few other things as well. I have a meeting first thing tonight with our leadership team to discuss some problems between shifts, as well as the resentment bred by a lack of accountability in work transitions and work assignments between those shifts. This meeting goes well but I'm not sure the consensus of it doesn't fall on deaf ears when relayed to the team. My arm begins to feel stiff and more painful throughout the night, a sign that perhaps this isn't just a strain.

Thursday, April 23:
Day off. It is not just a strain -- I have a full on gout/arthritis attack (dunno which one it is, just that it hurts) in my elbow joint when I wake up. It gets progressively worse throughout the day and evening, to the point where I have to hold my arm with my good hand in a position that causes less pain -- not none, but less. Pain meds and anti-inflammatories aren't helping, including the second colchicine that I take in the afternoon. Finally, later in the evening it gets so bad that I can't move it, and the pain is excruciating. When I go to pee, I accidentally let my arm drop and legit almost black out from the pain. I become a crying, dirty, mess of a person in pain and frustration because I am just so fed up with being in pain from one thing or another almost every single weekend and am so sick of feeling like a fucking invalid. I don't even care about the swelling, I tell the wife that I just want the pain to stop so that I can move my arm and use it normally -- swelling and inflammation will eventually go away on its own, whether it's gout or arthritis or whatever. Between three aspirin, four ibuprofen, and three acetaminophen pills I have felt nothing lessen or feel any better at all. I'm beginning to go actually insane from the pain. Daisy ties up a sheet into a makeshift arm sling, and ties it tight so that it restricts all movement of the bad arm. Very slowly, it begins to help. I take a short nap in my chair after she goes to bed, and then move to the bed (removing the sling) several hours later -- after taking more ibuprofen. I sleep, though I do not sleep well.

Friday, April 24:
Day off. Payday for me. I awaken a few hours after Daisy has already gone to work, and the arm is not as bad as before -- I have limited movement in it and the swelling does seem to have gone down a lot. I take more acetaminophen to see if it helps kick the last of the pain out of there, and plot out the times today that I can take the other meds (ibuprofen in another two hours, another colchicine in three, etc). I feel sweaty and grungy because I haven't showered -- I don't know that I actually can shower without hurting myself more -- and because of the pain it ruined our night together last night, so I didn't even eat dinner. That's right, folks, I've been taking all of these medications (with a lot of water) on an otherwise empty stomach, because fuck whatever this is, just digest the pills and get them into my bloodstream. The pain almost completely subsides throughout the day and is only present when I tweak the arm/elbow in a certain way, and I slowly begin to regain most movement. I still have to wait until I regain full movement and mobility to shower, however. In the span of one day I drink over 100 ounces of water, as if it is gout-related, drinking as much water as possible speeds the healing process. Also, I'd like the water to help wash those pills out of my system once they're done working, so that my kidneys don't go into overdrive. The remaining CDs of batch 4 are archived, and the albums/songs I want are moved over to my mp3 player. Batch 4 gave me 72 albums and 879 tracks total. Not all of them go onto the mp3 player, but a lot of them do. The wife makes a pesto/tomato/vegan mozzarella pizza for dinner and we watch an episode and a half of Supergirl before I pass out in my chair for most of the night.

Saturday, April 25:
Day off. Thunderstorms in the morning, thunderstorms in the evening. Today is my big black cat Pete's 13th birthday, and he gets a meal of a fresh can of tuna to celebrate his old age. My arm is a great deal better, though not 100%, and (with pain and some creativity) I am finally able to shower. I slowly begin to wean myself off the ibuprofen I've been taking at regular intervals to help the inflammation go down in my elbow. The hemorrhoid is gone. My vote-by-mail ballot comes, and I dutifully fill it out and seal it up to stick in the mail for Monday. I order four more bottles of vape juice from my supplier, which should last me another month and a half or so. Daisy takes the car into the shop during the morning thunderstorms and has an oil change and transmission flush performed (which we find out, is not cheap). In the afternoon hours we venture out to hike the trails behind her parents' neighborhood in the gorgeous weather, and visit the parents for another "social distancing" visit, where they sit on the front porch and we sit in the driveway to talk to them for a bit. We return home for the second round of storms, Daisy makes a very good curry for dinner, and we watch another episode and a half of Supergirl. Daisy showers and goes to bed while I take a less-than-two-hour power nap before getting back up for the night to reset my sleep schedule for the coming week of work. This is good, because at 2AM, the curry wants back out of me, so to speak. I pay off my remaining medical bills from the previous month's gout tests and urinalysis, and try to pay my cell phone bill too, but the site is down for maintenance. Daisy thinks she may be getting sick, but also doesn't know if it's just allergies -- allergies have been awful for us both for the past week or so.

Sunday, April 26:
Working from home, day 19. I am exceedingly physically tired and achy today, and while my arm isn't any worse than it was yesterday, it's not any better really. I try to drink as much water as I can and take another Colchicine, proactively, to try to wash the remnants of whatever is in my elbow/arm out of my body. Daisy works in the yard most of the day and then comes inside, rests, and starts making dough to bake bread and bakes me a new batch of soy curls (the woman possesses an energy without bounds). At work, I basically have to pull my boss aside and ask him to step back and realize he's being an asshole not only to me, but to the rest of the team -- advice which he (remarkably) takes to heart. I spend most of the night working on a difficult escalation with one of my agents, but I am still able to leave relatively on time, after which I eat a quick breakfast and force myself to go to bed before 9AM so I can get up early enough to shower and feel like a human again.

Monday, April 27:
Working from home, day 20. I do not wake up early; I wake up around 4PM, which is about two hours later than I normally do. I shower and get the mail, and make sure the cats are fed, before I see some texts from the wife saying she's having trouble breathing and her rescue inhaler (she's had asthma her entire life) was making her feel worse and feel dizzy. I tell her to stop working, drink some water, breathe deeply and slowly, and once she feels good enough to move, to come home. She instead drives to the parents' to pick up seedlings they have for us to plant in the garden that Daisy is building, and spends 90 socially-distant minutes there. My arm is no longer in any sort of pain, but the elbow joint is still a bit swollen and still moves stiffly. The night of work is hectic and soul-draining, and I get chewed out at least twice by my boss for shit that wasn't even on my work radar for the evening, without getting any gratitude or respect for the multitude of stuff I took care of, smoothly and efficiently, that was on my radar. I did, however, get my boss to admit that I was right and he was wrong, in writing, on a specific issue, and that is far more gratifying in the big picture than anything else that happened during the night (as it is exceedingly rare). I end up having to work half an hour late.

Tuesday, April 28:
Working from home, day 21. I am exhausted. While I slept for almost eight hours, my body does not want to awaken or get up, and I have to force myself to do so, which is on my top five list of things that I hate and make me incredibly angry. This slowly wears off as the evening goes on, though there's still that switch in the back of my brain that I know could be flipped at pretty much any time. Thunderstorms are rolling through the area, slowly, which makes my allergies flip out. It does not storm here. I am disheveled, unshowered, unshaven, and not at my best mentally (the depression is slowly starting to creep in again). Daisy draws up plans for the garden she's slowly putting together in the backyard, and recruits me to help her work on it when I can. At work, I immediately engage on a super-hot issue to help out one of my buddies on the day shift, and I work it all night -- breaking a few protocols here and there to get it fixed. I get great thanks and commendations from our side, but almost zero recognition from the higher ups in the company. Such is life.

Wednesday, April 29:
Working from home, day 22. I wake up groggy and confused with three cats on the bed with me. I try to shave, as I haven't done so in a week, and my razor gets repeatedly clogged, so I have to switch it out to finish. I shower, feed the cats, bring the trash cans and recycling bin inside, and get the mail. My USPS order of two sheets of stamps arrive today. It is amazingly pleasant outside, with some nice wind and beautiful sun with fluffy clouds, and for a minute I regret that I never get to see these days or spend any real time out in them anymore. Daisy procures all of the lumber and tools she needs to construct her raised garden beds and mows the back yard in preparation. The night at work is relatively quiet, and I stick around a little extra to help out the folks in our sister site in El Paso. Before I fall asleep, Daisy calls me to tell me that on her way to work, a rock flew off a vehicle in front of her and smashed her windshield enough to leave a big, bullet-hole-looking impact mark.

Thursday, April 30:
Day off. I sleep until the deep evening hours, then get up and help Daisy bring in the last of the needed materials for the garden (stakes, mulch, a tarp, a new wheelbarrow, etc). Daisy orders two tons of soil to be delivered to our house the next day. Daisy's windshield should be able to be repaired (not replaced), and insurance covers it -- she schedules a repair appointment for Saturday morning to come to the house and do it in the driveway. We have vegan burgers and fries for dinner and watch two episodes of Supergirl. I have trouble sleeping in the overnight hours and finally pass out after taking a shower and basically forcing myself to try to rest.

Friday, May 1:
Day off. I awaken around noon, get up and begin working around the house -- I wash all of the bedsheets and blankets, wash the bathroom rugs and shower curtains, and run two loads through the dishwasher. I feed the cats, I drink coffee, and I try to keep moving most of the day. I do not eat, because I know as soon as I eat, I will be worthless as it will make me tired and want to take a nap. After hemming and hawwing about it for a bit, I decide to go ahead and order a fifth batch of CDs. I balance the checkbook and pay a few necessary bills, then order probiotics, low-sodium V8, and almonds off Amazon. I have gained four more pounds in two weeks, and this is not good, because I can't really eat much less than I've been eating now that I'm basically a shut-in -- I eat what I need to keep going and that's about it. Both Marvel and DC announce that they're resuming shipments to stores and distributors -- so after over a month of getting nothing, I should resume receiving my comics soon. It hits 85 degrees in the afternoon hours. The two tons of dirt is delivered, via dump truck, to our driveway. We can't move it until the raised beds are built and ready to go, so in the evening hours -- for three hours -- Daisy and I build half of one of the raised beds. We are interrupted by wasps and yellowjackets (twice) and I take out two nests of them on our porch with my Raid-slinging abilities. Throughout the entirety of our time working outside, we are joined by Dot -- the baby rabbit that lives in our backyard, so named because it has a white dot on the middle of its forehead. It is smaller than my fist, and at this point has realized that the wife and I are no threat to it. It sits in the grass less than ten feet from us at all times and just watches us, eating. We talk to it and make kissyfaces at it. Daisy makes vegan chicken alfredo pasta for dinner, and we watch another episode and a half of Supergirl before going to bed.

Saturday, May 2:
Day off. I awaken at 4am to the noise of what sounds like gunshots a street or three over, because Omaha. Against my better judgment, but needing the thrill, I order batch six of random CDs -- it is a 300-count triple batch. I plan for this to be the end. I decide to stay awake as long as I can in order to help the wife with the garden and the glass repair on the car (whenever that happens) and to take a nap in the afternoon or evening hours for a bit to help reset my sleep schedule for the work week. The auto-glass people come repair Daisy's windshield practically before she is out to bed -- they call to wake her up and by the time she gets downstairs and outside, they're almost done. It begins raining, so we pull a massive tarp over the pile of dirt in our driveway before beginning our work on the raised beds. By 1PM, both beds are built and the wood pile (moved when we had to have the retaining wall repaired/replaced) is moved back across the yard to its rightful spot. Dot watches us do everything, and at times is within six feet of one or both of us. I go inside, shower, and sleep -- and while I do, the wife fills both beds with the shovel and wheelbarrow, because the woman is young and still has actual energy. I wake up just as it's getting dark (and just as she's finishing up for the night). She rests for a bit and I make a light dinner for myself so that she doesn't feel like she needs to make a big meal...and then she gets back up and makes an enchilada casserole. I have no idea where she gets the energy she does, and I feel envious. We watch two episodes of Supergirl and then she goes to bed; I, in contrast, awake for the night, decompress and finally get a little downtime.

Sunday, May 3:
Working from home, day 23. It really seems at this point like we've all been doing this forever, when -- in reality -- it's been only a little more than a month. My body doesn't like me and I have a hard time getting up in the afternoon, but I do, and eat "lunch" with Daisy while watching another episode of Supergirl. The night at work is so slow that I consider painting something just for the excitement of watching it dry. At the end of the night it is raining, and Daisy goes to work while I very quickly go pass out in bed.

Monday, May 4:
Working from home, day 24. Onsite IT informs me that they've worked on one of my employees' PCs, at my explicit request to fix or replace the fucking thing so that my agent can do her job, so here's hoping. It has been cool, gray and rainy all day. The wife picks up some groceries from the store and picks up my meds -- which is good, because I only had one pill left of my allopurinol and I would like to keep the gout-free train rolling. I shower and shave. I am still exhausted. This whole "social distancing" thing is wearing on me badly. I need to do something different, I need to eat something different, I need to keep from losing my mind. My POW-MIA shirt arrives in the mail, a shirt I ordered to help fund charities for military families (and also because my family, as well as the wife's, has a rich military history, and I respect the hell out of veterans). The fact is also not lost on me that Memorial Day is in three weeks. In the afternoon hours I develop intestinal distress and have some, ahem, bowel problems that I hope isn't signaling that another hemorrhoid is coming. I place a vape juice order with Vapewild, formerly my favorite company to do business with but now one of my least favorites, just to burn some store credit I had and get some of the last juices I like that were actually in stock (the company was purchased by a tobacco company and are now pretty much defunct). The night at work is fairly slow, but punctuated by a lot of technical difficulties (not mine, but for people on my team) that I have to take care of.

Tuesday, May 5:
Working from home, day 25. It is not only Cinco de Mayo, but Taco Tuesday as well. Not that any of that matters to the wife and myself, as both of us still have to work and Covid-19 has put a damper on anything fun for pretty much the entirety of 2020 thus far. I wake up very late, right before the wife arrives home from work, and sort of rush around in a panic to get stuff done before I have to log on for work. The internet goes down, and I call Cox to report it -- I am told there's an outage in the neighborhood and the estimated time to repair is 10:50 PM. I start work at 8PM, so I text my boss to give him the heads up that I'll be online when I can be. I spray down and remove three different wasp/hornet/yellowjacket nests that are in the process of being built on our back porch, and make sure all of the fuckers in them are dead. While I wait for the internet to return, I wash a load of laundry and put away two other clean loads. While Daisy had originally planned to do tacos for dinner, due to the work involved and the lateness of the time she would've started cooking, we decide to postpone it until the weekend. The internet bounces a few times, and then comes back up and remains stable about twenty minutes before I would have to log on for work. The night at work is steady, but not busy -- I end up working a few issues here and there, and am able to be done on time.

Wednesday, May 6:
Working from home, day 26. I again wake up really late, and feel like I've gotten no real rest (or, conversely, like I could sleep for another 6 or 7 hours). This is a common theme as of late, and I don't know why. I immediately shower, go downstairs and get the mail and trash/recycling bins, make coffee, and by the time I come back upstairs and sit down at my desk, I hear the garage door open -- signaling Daisy's return home from work; she has stopped at Home Depot to pick up the last of the materials she needs to build a small rabbit fence around the raised garden beds, as well as some more plants to put in them. Our resident baby rabbit, Dot, returns to the yard for the first time since the weekend. In the recycling today, batch 4 of the CDs is recycled. Batch 5 is scheduled to arrive by Monday, and batch 6 (the huge one) does not yet have a known arrival date. I eagerly await them. My joints hurt, both my foot and my elbow, but I don't think it's a gout thing (yet), I think it's a fatigue thing. At work, I see that our other After Hours director, for our sister site in El Paso, has responded to my email requesting we all get together tonight to discuss coverage for Memorial Day, as that's coming up -- and shortly after it, I took the night of our wedding anniversary off as well. I am not opposed to working Memorial Day week straight through on my normal schedule if the coverage is necessary (I mean, it's not like we plan to go anywhere or can go anywhere because of the virus) but whether I'm needed will remain to be seen. The actual discussion never takes place. One of my employees, who has been out most of the week, lets me know that today she was tested for Covid-19 and has a strong possibility of having it; I am told by HR that they need the testing results as soon as they are available. The night itself is slow, and I leave on time.

Thursday, May 7:
Day off. Payday for the wife. She stops on her lunch hour and gets a few groceries and the like, and I sleep most of the day. She returns home late from work because of this, and she makes zucchini noodles (zoodles) for dinner, which we eat fairly late while watching an episode of Supergirl. I find out in the overnight hours that the newest version of Linux is now available for my computer, and it's a long-term-support (LTS) release, which means it'll be a big download and a complete overhaul of the OS. As such, I perform a backup of my computer's files to my portable hard drive, in the event that the upgrade fails or bricks my computer. I also download the latest .iso DVD image file so that if this does happen, I can get my computer back to what it needs to be relatively quickly (trust me, it sucks to do this, I've done it a few times before and I'm not a fan). As if on cue, my internet begins waffling/bouncing here and there, and I decide not to mess with it; instead, in the overnight hours I sleep, as I plan to get up in the morning and do trimming with the weedeater.

Friday, May 8:
Day off. Payday for me, this time. I pay up all of my bills through June and breathe a bit. I also put in two large orders on Amazon for various around-the-house items (cat food, laundry detergent, coffee, etc). Normally Friday is my chore day, and as mentioned earlier I planned previously to run the weedeater....but it's not even 60 degrees outside and there is a whipping wind, so I decide against this. Instead, I decide to make macaroni and cheese, from the box, and do as little as possible. In this, I succeed, taking a nap afterwards. Daisy arrives home with $120 of groceries from Fresh Thyme, and together she and I pound the majority of the stakes in the ground for her rabbit fence around the garden before it gets too dark to see. The internet is bouncing like crazy, but it seems to stabilize in the evening hours, enough for us to eat (vegan) burgers and (vegan) hot dogs off the grill and watch an episode and a half of the second season of Rust Valley Restorers, which we have been waiting for Netflix to put on there for the better part of a year. Daisy goes to bed and I stay awake for a little longer playing on my phone and listening to Joe Rogan's podcast before I also pass out in my chair.

Saturday, May 9:
Day off. I wake up before dawn, extremely thirsty while also having to pee very badly. I down about 20 ounces of water in one go, take my pill, and go to the bathroom all within the span of about 90 seconds. By 9:30 in the morning, I've drank my (first) entire 48 ounce bottle of water -- I've been trying to drink a gallon a day, or close to it, mostly with success. My arm is stiff and my elbow is sore -- it has not completely recovered from the arthritis/gout attack three weeks ago; I'd say it's at about 85%. I'm hoping it heals completely, in time. On a whim, on eBay, I order a mechanical keyboard for $28; it has LED backlighting of the keys and is something I've wanted for a very long time. I like many things about my current desktop computer, but the keyboard it came with is not one of them. It's compact and small and would work well as a backup in a pinch, but it's too uncomfortable for prolonged use. I also order three more batches of CDs (bringing the total to nine) and decide that this is it, I am done, no more. Batch 5 is scheduled to arrive on Monday. Batch 6 should arrive on Wednesday. I try to check the weather to find that neither of our Alexa devices are working -- like, not connected to the 'net, dead. I spend an hour troubleshooting them and hard-reboot every internet appliance in the house (including the wifi extender) before the one downstairs pops back online. I factory-reset the one in my room and finally get it to reinstall/reconnect. Daisy wakes up to use the bathroom, tells me she wants to make pancakes and (vegan) sausage for breakfast, and goes back to bed for three hours. When she gets up again, we do have our breakfast, we go drop off the Mother's Day present for her mother, and then return home where I nap for five hours. She makes the tacos for dinner that we'd originally planned to have for Cinco de Mayo, and we watch two episodes of Rust Valley Restorers before she goes to bed for the night.

Sunday, May 10:
Working from home, day 27. Mother's Day. I call my mother at 8AM, after dozing in my chair and almost missing my opportunity to do so. She is fine, but her Mother's Day present will not arrive for almost another full week. I sleep and awaken in the afternoon hours, eat "lunch" with the wife, and then chat with her for a long while. My elbow/arm is beginning to hurt again, and it's much more stiff than before -- telling me that the elbow joint is swelling and I'm probably about to have another gout/arthritis/whatever attack. Daisy makes me a big chocolate protein shake for the overnight hours as we're trying to be more low-carb and I want to lose some more weight. Work is extremely quiet, with eight issues total to split between six agents on shift. As I prepare myself for bed in the morning, I notice that my arm is getting stiffer and more achy as the morning goes on.

Monday, May 11:
Working from home, day 28. I awaken to some major stiffness and pain in the arm/elbow, and I know for certain that a new attack is coming. I immediately call the doctor's office and request a refill of the Prednisone via voicemail, and follow up with an email. My doctor's nurse calls me back within a half hour and tells me that my request has been granted, that she's given me a steroid "pack" to take and increased my daily dosage of Allopurinol from one pill a day to three. Daisy stops on the way home to pick it up. Batch 5 of the CDs arrives and it is mostly crap in a box. There are a few random highlights thrown in, such as KMFDM's album XTORT, which I've never owned, but the batch is by-and-large a vast disappointment. On a related note, the KMFDM shirt I ordered back in March, before I started working at home is now on its way to my house, finally, after I thought it was lost in the mail (it was supposed to arrive by April 16, but I didn't get any tracking details on it for over a month). Daisy brings home more groceries than we can fit in the fridge, but she also brings me new cashews and a box of golden raisins. I start the Prednisone, which entails taking six pills over the course of the night (those are the directions, so I do it). Work itself is not bad, but I am plagued with an extremely laggy connection (when it wants to work) for the first three and a half hours of my shift -- causing me excessive anger -- before I am finally booted off completely. I log back on and everything works wonderfully...for ten minutes, before our entire BUILDING goes hard down. I spend the next seventy minutes on a bridge while the technicians work to restore service to the building, and once it's back up and everyone is back online, I feel like a hero. The rest of the night goes slowly and I leave on time.

Tuesday, May 12:
Working from home, day 29. My new spindle of DVD-Rs arrives, so I will have discs to burn future distributions of Linux. I'm about halfway through archiving batch 5; even though it is an overall disappointment, there are still some good collections of jazz, big band swing, and ragtime in there -- CDs that would generally be overlooked or discarded by most folks, but music that I really enjoy. My tastes are eclectic and wide-ranging, what can I say? My arm is better -- the swelling has noticeably gone down and I have almost no pain whatsoever in the arm or elbow anymore, and I have a bit more of a range of motion than I've had in recent weeks. I am cautiously optimistic. The Prednisone I'm on this time around is different than the pills I was prescribed for my foot. I think it's less powerful as it's not working as fast or giving me the weird dizziness (or feeling like my lungs are full of fluid) side effects that the other ones did. But, it does seem to be working, so I'm not complaining. Tuesday night is trash/recycling night; the first half of batch 5 is recycled. Batch 6, the massive 300-count batch, is scheduled to arrive tomorrow. Work goes well enough; I am consistently busy, and I make myself look like a rockstar on numerous issues -- to the point where it makes others look bad (remember, It is not enough that I succeed, others must fail) and I leave relatively on time.

Wednesday, May 13:
Working from home, day 30. My front porch is covered in packages when I wake up, enough to where it takes two trips to bring them all inside. Included is my new keyboard and batch 6 of the CDs (which I make a vow to myself not to even open or look at until batch 5 is completely archived), as well as the KMFDM shirt that, seven weeks after ordering it, finally arrives. The swelling is almost completely gone in my elbow, and I now have about 95% of its mobility back, with 5% pain still there if I tweak it too much. I still have three days of the Prednisone pack to go. It is a cold, rainy day, and thunderstorms (possibly severe) are predicted for the overnight hours; Wednesday is really the only good day for severe thunderstorms, as our sister team onsite in El Paso overlaps with us for work on Wednesday nights. I archive about another 20 or so of the CDs in batch 5, including the five or six albums I actually wanted in the whole thing (KMFDM, Sonic Youth, The Specials, Pete Yorn, etc). I am confident that I'll get through the rest of batch 5 tomorrow and begin the very large undertaking of batch 6 for the weekend. Daisy stops at several Walmarts on her lunch and on her way home to get tomato cages, and -- of her own accord, mind you -- look for all of the new Ghostbusters toys that have been released as Walmart exclusives. She snatches up a PKE meter for me in doing so, for $20 -- that is already selling for double that on the internet/eBay because collectors are also hoarders and price gougers, but cannot find any of the figures or a working Ghost Trap without busted packaging. I expect the night at work to be slow when I log on, and those expectations are very, very accurate. It is 4am before all of my team members have issues to work, and after 5 when everyone on shift has something to work on -- we could work comfortably with 1/3 of the people we have. I stick around for a few extra minutes at the end of the night to make sure everything is covered, but still leave relatively on time. It does not storm or rain a drop.

Thursday, May 14:
Day off. I stay up for a little longer than usual in the morning to work my way through some of the remaining CDs of batch 5, and decompress for a bit. It is dark and dreary outside, which makes me even more tired. I sleep, get up, and shower. As I have maybe ten discs left in batch 5, I open batch 6 and start looking through it. It is, mostly, more crap. Of the 300-ish CDs in batch 6, I find 15-20 albums I've actually heard of and want in my collection. There's a ton of weird stuff in there, but while batch 5 had a lot of jazz and big band stuff that I like, batch 6 appears to contain a LOT of classical and Christmas music (like I need any more of either of those) and an ungodly amount of Christian music that immediately goes into the recycle bin as I come across it. There may be some hidden gems in some of it, but batch 6 is mostly a bust at first glance. This makes me glad that the three-pack of batches 7, 8, and 9 will be the end of it. Those are scheduled to arrive on Tuesday. On the plus side, from this project I've assembled quite possibly the largest collection of Christmas music this side of the Mississippi, from the well-known stuff to the impossibly obscure. While I'm messing with this stuff, Daisy returns home from work and begins working in the garden to put up the rabbit fence...in the rain. The rain does stop, but as she told me she wanted to do this tomorrow night, I took this into account, and (as mentioned) have already showered and cleaned myself up; I am not about to go outside and get all dirty again working on garden stuff. I tell her this; she is not happy -- but that is her issue and hers alone. Perhaps she should have gone with the original plan or let me know before coming home that she wanted to do this tonight, as a common courtesy. I do help her in a very limited fashion here and there, but mostly get in the way -- so instead I go inside and do the dishes. We eat (vegan) quiche and (vegan) chicken salads for dinner and watch an episode and a half of Rust Valley Restorers before she goes to bed. I fall asleep shortly thereafter as well, in my chair.

Friday, May 15:
Day off. I awaken right as Daisy does, and I make sure she gets up. It is a day of great chores and great cleansing. I make it my mission to unfuck the kitchen, which has almost no counter space left whatsoever, getting about halfway done with it before noon (at which point I have to take a break and let the dishwasher run). To kill time and be productive, I format the 500GB portable hard drive I purchased specifically to use for the CD batch archives, and once batch 5 is finished, I load all five batches onto it. I then move to my other 500GB portable hard drive and back up my computer's important files and documents -- it is finally time to upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04, as I've now put it off for a week and a half. While my portable hard drive is filling itself up (a very long, slow process), I do three loads of laundry -- one of which being all of my tennis shoes -- and I go through my shredder bucket, feeding sheet after sheet into the shredder of old sensitive documents I no longer need (as well as junk mail, credit card offers with our address on it, etc). Today is weigh-in-day; each 1st and 15th, we write our weights on a chalkboard above the scale in the bathroom. I weigh exactly a pound more than I did on the 1st of the month. This is a little frustrating, because I've been trying to do everything I can (within reason) to pare down my diet and to make healthier choices in the food I eat as well as the amount of it that I eat. I am on my second-to-last day of Prednisone, and aside from a very minor ache in my elbow when I bend it hard enough, it has done its job and kicked all of the swelling and fluid out of the joint. Once I finish the Prednisone I've been instructed, as you know, to ramp up my Allopurinol intake to 3x what it currently is. I am sort of nervous about that, but it is what it is. I make, and eat, a light lunch while I wait for the laundry and my backups to finish. After a few (very stressful) snags, Ubuntu 20.04 is finally installed on my computer. it looks a little different, but all functionality is there. Twice, while doing laundry, the dryer squeals and grinds and then turns off by itself, not turning back on until it's been unplugged and the drum rotated back and forth a bit. I think the belt (or driveshaft or pulleys or what have you) is possibly going bad. In other news, I install the new keyboard, with all its pretty backlighting and mechanical key clacking, and it works really well. It is also all aluminum/steel construction, so it weighs like five pounds. The default backlight is red. I can change it to pretty much any color, I think, but I'll mess with it later. My CD drive starts giving me errors and not wanting to read audio CDs about 85% of the time. This so will not fly when I have literally 600 CDs left to go through and archive. I tear up my room until I find the portable CD-R drive I purchased eleven years prior (when I still lived in Missouri, even) and it works, but my archive ripper won't recognize it as an active drive, so I can't pull stuff from it. The entire ordeal starts to make me a little nutty. Once Daisy returns home, we work on the garden until dark (mostly her), and after it gets too dark for me to see, I go back inside and continue to unfuck the kitchen by disinfecting it as much as possible in some of the more important spots. We end the night by having a pseudo-Mexican dinner of rice and beans with fried tortillas, finish  Rust Valley Restorers, and go to bed.

Saturday, May 16:
Day off. My optical drive in my desktop is officially dying. I can only get it to work about 5% of the time now. Beforehand, it would've been a rarity if it didn't spin up on a CD or DVD, and usually only if the disk was damaged or really dirty. Now I basically have to try repeatedly and jiggle the housing, and proverbially pray that once it starts reading something, it will continue to do so. Because of this, I go on eBay, search for the part for my particular desktop, and purchase a new drive for $16. It will be the biggest pain in the dick to install, but I've done drive installs before. Power supplies too, RAM upgrades, etc. It's fast, it's just an overall pain in the dick to get the case off, get enough space on your desk to take it apart, plug the shit in, and put it all back together. However, the case of my particular machine -- and by case I mean the actual PC case -- is an oddity, and the drive covers on the front contain bezels that make them flush with the rest of the machine. Because of this, the replacement drive I purchased has a bezel on it that doesn't exactly match the case I have, as they put these exact drives in a lot of machines. If I can't remove the bezel on the new drive and still have a functional button available, I may have to purchase an entire new case just to be able to access the optical drive once it's installed. This is maddening, infuriating, expensive, and I am about ready to scream. I shoot the seller a quick email asking if it's possible to remove it, because I can't exactly tell from the pictures on the website. Because of my dying drive, I have only been able to archive 13 of the 300+ discs in batch 6 (I'd normally be done with about ten times that at this point otherwise). The entire process has become tiring, but I'm pot committed with 600 more discs to do at this point, so I can't really stop now. Heavy storms are predicted for the entire day, and Daisy takes the opportunity in the morning and early afternoon hours to go outside before it starts to work on the garden and fence some more, and finally gets everything done and most of the plants in the ground. It's hot and muggy, so I can tell the storms are already coming. Our allergies are nuts, too, which is another good sign. The storms hit around 6PM. Apparently, tornado sirens go off in nearby Bellevue (a suburb of Omaha); I see nothing on the news or on Facebook about it, but an acquaintance confirms. We eat a (vegan) boiled dinner -- sort of -- and watch three episodes of Supergirl before Daisy goes to bed early since she'd been working on the yard all day. I, as always, am up for the night. I figure out the optical drive issue -- my optical drive in my PC is indeed dying. It's either a bad laser or bad motor or what have you, but that's what it is. After a few hours of troubleshooting in an attempt to be a little productive in the overnight hours, I find some command-line codes that allow me to fully enable the portable optical drive I purchased in 2009, and like magic, it spins up and works wonderfully. Suddenly, I can resume my archiving...albeit very, very slowly. These older drives aren't exactly fast. What used to be a ten-minute exercise in ripping a CD now becomes a 30-minute-or-more process, longer for CDs with a lot of tracks. This also means that, if I can find them somewhere in my room, I can also pull out all of my old hard drives and access data from them that I thought was long, long lost -- because I now know how to properly operate one of those hard drive dock things, which I either already have somewhere or Daisy's father does. In addition to this, it means that even if the bezel on the replacement drive can't be removed or otherwise won't fit into my machine, it's no worries -- I'll keep it as a spare and put it away so that I can stick it in my next machine (almost all of these drives are the same; I only got the one I got because I wanted the same model). The only downside is that I have to manually mount the portable drive for every single CD -- mount as in mount the filesystem, you perverts. In case y'all didn't know, Linux operates weird that way, and every time the CD drive is opened or used it mounts the drive, and un-mounts it when done. And dang, does that also take time. I may just say "fuck it" and eventually buy a newer, much faster external drive and put this one back away. In fact, I'll probably just do that once we get paid this week. It's a holiday weekend coming up, after all -- I'll have some spare time to kill. I finish my Prednisone, and as the last of it works its way out of my system in the overnight hours, I feel the stiffness and a little of the pain and swelling returning to my elbow, which frustrates me to no end. It's not bad, but it is indeed noticeable, and my mobility of said arm goes from about 95% to about 80% again. I also start the 300mg of Allopurinol, as per my doctor's orders (versus the 100mg that I was taking before) and it does, mildly, irritate my stomach -- which apparently it is known to do in the higher doses, especially when taken on an empty stomach. When I feel the ache become really troubling, I go to bed.

Sunday, May 17:
Working from home, day 31. I wake up an hour or so after I go to bed in a lot of arm/elbow pain and swelling. Arm and elbow mobility is now reduced to about 70%. I know my Prednisone has an extra refill on it, so I (inadvertently) wake the wife and ask her to call it in. I can start taking it and regain my mobility for the week, and can reach out to my doctor for next steps afterwards -- tomorrow or Tuesday, depending on pain levels and energy levels. The words "cortisone shot" wander through my mind. Today begins the last full week of work I have this month -- I have taken the necessary PTO, all well in advance, to give myself some time off -- both next Sunday, the night before Memorial Day, and the next weekend as well for our anniversary at the end of the month. It has been some time since I've taken any days off; I believe it's been well over two months. In that time, I've built up enough PTO to not have to worry about taking a little time here and there if necessary. I'm scheduled to visit my parents this fall as well (more on that later, of course) as long as this virus stuff calms down, and will need it then anyway. I look forward to a little more downtime than usual as we wind down May; this time last year, as most of you may remember, we got the storm that destroyed our fence and retaining wall, leading to six months of stress and calculations on how we could get that fixed. A year later, we now have a massive garden and a new wall and fence, just going to show you that most of the time, everything works out. However, now that I've acknowledged that this week is going to be my last full week of work for the month, I'm sure that it will be horrifying to endure. I make this prediction now because I'd rather not be taken by surprise by it when it turns out to be correct. Also, bonus prediction: the week will seem four times longer than it is.  When I wake up for work, my elbow is still stiff and swollen, but the pain is minimal for the most part. During the day, Daisy has gone out and picked up my Prednisone, and (thankfully) this time around it's not the metered pill pack but the "take two pills a day for five days" kind in the bottle that I got back in the beginning of March when I first had the awful gout attack in my foot -- the high end stuff that knocked out that swelling and pain in like 8 hours and prevented it from coming back since. I have high hopes it'll do the same this time around, and maybe if it does I won't have to endure a cortisone shot or anything along those lines. I begin taking it, as well as taking more ibuprofen to help it along. I slooooooowly rip five or six more CDs from batch 6 in the afternoon and early evening hours. The portable drive holds up well. The night at work is (almost predictably) slow, and this is fine. I work a little late only because I have to wrap up an issue and get it assigned to one of the morning agents as a placeholder.

Monday, May 18:
Working from home, day 32. My allergies are killing me and I have so much post-nasal drip that it's given me a sore throat -- this is typical of Nebraska weather in the spring, though, and typical of my allergies. The weather is gray and dreary, which is fine with me because it's good sleeping weather. I have a very hard time getting up and getting out of bed for the day, though -- I'm so very fatigued and tired, and my body really wants me to go back to sleep for another six hours or so.The Prednisone is working wonders, and my arm/elbow feels almost completely normal -- there's still a little stiffness/tightness, but I'm back to about 98% of my original mobility with no pain and no further issues seen; because of this, I decide against reaching out to my doctor for the moment, but I keep that option on the table in the event I feel the need to in the coming days. The guy I purchased my replacement OEM optical drive through on eBay replies to my message that yes, the troublesome bezel can be removed without affecting functionality, and he ships the drive. I also find that through my package tracking, the final batches 7, 8, and 9 of the CDs arrive tomorrow. The plan for coverage for Memorial Day weekend at work is finalized and we have nothing to worry about in regards to staffing -- Covid-19 and the whole work-at-home thing has basically made everyone realize that they don't have anything better to do anyway...the hourly workers, at least. I've been a salaried member of leadership there for almost four years now, so while I'll work a holiday here and there, I am as removed/detached from the situation as I possibly can be. We find out that our car insurance is offering relief until May 31, and that our premium for the month has been reduced to $12-something. The math doesn't particularly add up in our eyes but I really don't care, I'll take a $12-something insurance payment for the month of May for full coverage on the car, whatever, man. While the wife wraps up yet another Home Depot visit for more gardening stuff, I rip another three or four discs with my slow portable drive and prepare for the night of work, which ends up being mostly quiet overall.

Tuesday, May 19:
Working from home, day 33. The last batches of the CDs are scheduled to arrive today; they do not. Tracking places them somewhere in California, in transit. This is fine, as again, the portable drive is so slow that it'll take me weeks to get through batch 6 with it -- in my time I'm not chained to my desk working, or sleeping, I can only archive about six or seven albums per day. Before the drive in my PC died on me, I used to be able to do about three or four times that. Because of this, I break down and just order a second portable drive, for $30ish, new and far faster. I don't know when the OEM drive I ordered from eBay will be here, and when it arrives it's still going to be a massive pain in the ass to install, so knowing myself, I'll put it off as long as possible. The weather is changing and my allergies are ramping up with it -- this week is much warmer than it was last week, and is slowly building to the chance of severe weather all the way up to and through the holiday (Memorial Day) weekend. My allergies can tell already. My arm/elbow is better, though; I have regained full mobility and have no pain, which leads me to believe that this round of Prednisone kicked everything out of the joint and now it just needs a little time to heal up. I have two days of the pills left, and am cautiously optimistic that after that, I won't need them any more until the next actual gout/arthritis attack. Workwise, Memorial Day schedules are finalized and coverage is aligned for overnight shift as it stands, with daytime and 2nd shift coverage slowly aligning in the background. I made sure my people were covered first and foremost as I knew I would be out -- everything else is, as they say, out of my hands. I also own at least four issues myself in the overnight hours and oversee their completion to get them all into a good place.

Wednesday, May 20:
Working from home, day 34. The last day I work before a five-day holiday weekend. My mother tells me that my aunt is in the hospital with a blood infection of unknown origin, but as she doesn't have the symptoms it's implied that it's not Covid-19. It is still troublesome. I have a very hard time getting up as I am exhausted and the warm, humid weather this week isn't doing me any favors allergy-wise. My replacement external drive arrives (yay for Prime one-day shipping) as well as a cleaning disk I ordered to see if it'll help the current drive inside my PC. I really just want to get through the night and have it be over, when I receive an email from the director at our sister site in El Paso requesting a call with me and our escalation manager. I am mildly concerned, but not overly -- he's a good dude and I don't report up to him, and I'm pretty sure it's about getting opinions on a replacement for the outgoing 3rd shift manager down there (her last day is this weekend, I think). I expect the conversation to be something along the lines of "hey, so who should I choose as the successor?" and I know I will get really angry if it's instead "...so we need you folks to cover the holiday weekend because she's leaving" because that's not going to happen, at least not from me. The conversation consists mostly of the latter, as expected (3-2-1-not it; my colleague volunteers as I am on PTO for the weekend) and details several other changes coming up within our organization -- none of which will affect my team a great deal, but will absolutely be noticeable. The night continues. Aside from me losing my connection from almost exactly 12 to almost exactly 1 (leading me to believe there was a planned maintenance on the server I use, but nobody else uses) and a really large outage in Florida, my night was relatively quiet. At the end of it, I put my OOO messages up on both my email and phone, and happily skipped away from "work at home" for the beginning of my five-day holiday weekend.


***

So for the moment, folks, I'm going to end things here. Be advised, there will be more of these long, diary-like posts coming as long as we're still working at home and in isolation....

The Isolation Diaries: The First Few Weeks

In news that should be surprising to approximately no one, I recently started working from home.

When I say "started" it really translates to "does your VPN work? because if it doesn't, we're gonna make sure it does really quickly; get off site and get all of your people off site too."

...because that's really how it happened. Within 48 hours, I once more had full remote access (something the IT teams onsite hadn't been able to fix properly in two years -- and it still took my technical know-how to actually fix it on a workaround and get it working) and the first members of my team were working from home. More followed, and by around the end of March, all who could do so were doing so.

As some others have done via more, ahem, live sites like Twitter or Facebook, I've decided to keep a diary of sorts here documenting not only my time working at home, but my overall isolation (or, as the media likes to call it, "social distancing").


Monday, March 23:
My last day at work onsite at my job. I gathered my things and brought them home as I was able to confirm that afternoon that my VPN worked, and worked well enough to do my job. After I arrived home after my shift Monday night, I have not left the house since.

Tuesday, March 24:
First night working from home. I read fifteen comic books over the course of about six hours, do two loads of laundry, replace a light bulb in the spare bedroom, drain my phone battery twice from playing app games, drain six vape batteries, and eat half a 30oz carton of Goldfish crackers. I find out that replacement light bulbs, ordered from Amazon, will take a full month to arrive due to shipment delays because of this virus bullshit.

Wednesday, March 25:
Second night working from home. I eat half of what's left of the Goldfish, along with about 2/3 of a bag of salt and vinegar almonds. I read ten more unread comics. I find out that comic publishers/shipments are basically on hold for the foreseeable future, so I control myself and save the rest of the books I have for upcoming shifts. I do another load of laundry out of sheer boredom and spend a good chunk of the night pacing the room. I hear a loud bang downstairs, so I unsheath my katana and walk the entire house to check it (all while the wife is asleep). I finally break out the mp3 player and listen to music just to crack the silence. I tell my coworkers that I'm not sure whether this work from home thing will make me fat, a hermit, or a fat hermit.

Thursday, March 26:
Day off. I have not changed my clothing or showered since Monday, so, uh, I do that. I decide not to shave my beard, as coming out of this quarantine with a full-on madman look may be hilarious. I may change my mind on this in the coming days and weeks. I dutifully put away all the laundry I've washed and folded over the course of the past two days, and spend my downtime sleeping and playing the new Pokemon Mystery Dungeon game on my switch.

Friday, March 27:
Day off. Payday. This is good, because the electric bill and mortgage are due in a few days. I do some household chores, bake a homemade pizza, and take an afternoon nap. I take the online test tryout for Jeopardy! and am pretty sure I fail it miserably. I order a Judas Priest t-shirt on Amazon so that I can have something to look forward to. The coronavirus stimulus bill is signed into law.


[EDIT] I should also mention that the wife is still working in her office five days a week, as her job is not one that can easily be made into a remote work position in a secure fashion. Yet. We are waiting to see if it can be.


Saturday, March 28:
Day off. I shave the beard and leave the goatee. The wife and I discuss isolation planning for the next few weeks -- when we will absolutely need to leave the house and why. Orders from Amazon are delayed for anywhere between 1 and 4 weeks, yet the light bulbs I ordered less than a week prior arrive this afternoon. This gives me a little hope. The wife makes vegan BBQ pork and coleslaw sandwiches for us for dinner and we watch no less than three hours of Jeopardy! on Netflix. To give myself something else to look forward to, I (almost shamefully) order two 100-count "random grab bags" of used music CDs from eBay, as the thrill of random chance, and/or possibly reclaiming some records I once had but "lost" excites me. I find out that there was a power outage at my office that turned off some of the team's computers -- computers they'll need to have online in order to work from home. I let leadership know and ask anyone who's onsite in the morning, if anyone, to make sure all computers are on and working. My own computer works fine as I was able to log into the VPN as per the usual.

Sunday, March 29:
Working from home, day three. In preparation of the CDs' arrival, I also order a second 500GB backup hard drive, as the one I have is seven years old and filling up quickly, and I will need to have space to digitally back up the music on (whatever I want to keep, anyway; the rest will go into the recycle bin). The night is quiet as hell and I have to pace the room several times to stay awake and/or not go stir crazy as I'm locked to my VPN for 11 hours straight.

Monday, March 30:
Working from home, day four. It's announced that the general "stay at home" orders are extended to April 30. This is fine with me, the guy who has showered twice over the past week and is saving a lot of money from not being able to go anywhere or do anything. The night of work itself is a shitshow, as it is a massive struggle to get the remaining work-at-home folks up and online, and three big outages made everything frantic, with nearly double the number of issues my team would normally work. At the end of the night, I wanted to drink.

Tuesday, March 31:
Working from home, day five. This marks one week straight that I have not left the house. I have barely even gone outdoors. The world has now become a frightening place. I am out of Mountain Dew, though a new case of Goldfish crackers arrived from Amazon today, along with the new backup hard drive. The night of work is awful, with multiple outages causing multiple issues nationwide. I work for almost 40 minutes after the time my shift is supposed to end (7am).

Wednesday, April 1:
Working from home, day six. I ask the wife if she knows whether they're going to allow her to eventually work from home (translation: have they figured it out yet? How long are they going to make you do this crap?). She has no real answer but it probably won't happen. I receive my new issue of X-Force in the mail, which tells me that perhaps comic shipments haven't stopped but are instead greatly delayed, as that book came out over three weeks ago. I drink my last Mountain Dew I have in the house and make a big batch of instant coffee in one of my Nalgene water bottles so that I can keep caffeine flowing through my system. I am almost out of allopurinol and a lot of basic necessities here and there, and the wife mentions that she wants to go to the grocery store this weekend. The night of work goes slowly, and I do laundry during it...until one of my agents working from home disappears, and I spend the next two and a half hours working her issues for her to get them into a good place. I work a full hour after the time my shift is supposed to end.

Thursday, April 2:
Day off. I wake up with what feels like another gout attack starting, so I immediately take the meds to make that stop. The wife confirms with me that she wants to go to the store after she gets home from work. It is the first time I've left the house in eleven days. We put on masks her mother made for us and vinyl gloves, go to two stores, and spend nearly $400 on groceries -- trying to ensure that we do not have to do this again for another month. While out, I notice that most people are not wearing masks or gloves, nor are they doing anything whatsoever to protect themselves, and more than that, are looking at us strangely because we are. A new pair of glasses I've ordered arrives in the mail, as does my new issue of Marauders and the first batch of random CDs from the previous week's order -- said batch of CDs contains a lot of stuff I've never heard of, two or three artists I have, a bunch of jazz and blues (nice) along with some classical and a ton of Christmas music. It is, mostly, a bust. I slice open my index finger really deeply while opening the box, and it bleeds a lot until I can get it properly cleaned and bandaged. We begin watching Tiger King on Netflix. I later pass out in my chair and sleep for about four hours during the night, and when I awaken, it is snowing and icing like crazy.

Friday, April 3:
Day off. Now that there is food in the house (at great cost) I can actually plan some real meals again and do some light cooking.  I begin the process of archiving the new CDs, taking great care to name and file them appropriately. There are some hidden gems in this first collection, so I'm not too dissatisfied with it -- and there's another collection coming shortly too, so there's that. More than that, I obtain a weird sense of peace when I archive things digitally, almost like the process and the order of it all soothes me, comforts me in knowing that the talent that went into making this music won't be forgotten, nor will it be unappreciated. It also makes me feel like I'm doing something constructive instead of menial chores or, well, sitting in my chair playing Pokemon. 

Saturday, April 4:
Day off. The gout is back full-on, in my ankle this time -- it migrated there from the normal spot (on the top of my foot) over the course of about 18 hours. Treatment and further preventative measures are in place, but unfortunately, it sidelines me for most, eh, excessive movement until it goes away again. I internally ponder whether they'd re-prescribe me the steroid again if I need it without needing to go back to the clinic, if the swelling balloons up again [EDIT: they won't]. I end up having a full-on gout attack that basically ruins my entire day and evening, before vanishing completely in the overnight hours. Archiving the CDs proves fruitful as I find a lot of really good music within the random mix of stuff in the first collection.

Sunday, April 5:
Working from home, day 7. The night is slow as hell and nothing really happens. The first batch of CDs has been fully archived at this point, and the tracks/albums I like are moved to my mp3 player and put on shuffle so that I have something new to listen to in the overnight hours. The discs, aside from a few I pull aside for the wife to keep and listen to in the car, are recycled.

Monday, April 6:
Working from home, day 8. I emerge from my cave to shower and spend a little time with the wife, who now barely sees me as when I wake up in the evenings, she is just getting home, and for me it's generally a mad rush to take care of everything I need to take care of before I am chained to my VPN all night (once I'm logged into the VPN, I cannot access the rest of my computer or it freezes/crashes, and I cannot let the VPN go idle or lock my screen or it kicks me off the connection). Finally, after two weeks, our network at work begins experiencing capacity issues and goes hard down for an hour or so in the evening before I log in. The problems persist for many of my agents for most of the night, and I end up working half an hour late to make sure everyone's issues are taken care of because of this. The second batch of CDs arrive in the mail.

Tuesday, April 7:
Working from home, day 9. Payday for the wife. We pay our bills and I order some more household supplies and cat food(s) from Amazon, which is still experiencing shipping delays on some items up to three weeks or so. My foot is aching like it's going to try to give me another gout attack, so I take a colchicine and some ibuprofen. We experience our first spring heat wave, and the temperature hits 80 in Nebraska for the first time since the end of last summer. Daisy and I discuss her plans for getting the backyard fixed up and a garden planted (the yard has been wrecked all winter after the contractors put up the new retaining wall and fence, and now that it's warm she wants to start a garden and get it all cleaned up/squared away). The amount of money and time this will take deeply frustrates me as we have bills to pay and have not seen any of that promised coronavirus stimulus money yet. It is a full moon, a fact that is also not lost on me or my coworkers as the night is in-fucking-sane.

Wednesday, April 8:
Working from home, day 10. My foot still aches, so I take another colchicine and some more ibuprofen. Daisy comes home after stopping at Lowe's to get tools and the like to begin prepping our garden, because who knows how long this virus bullshit is going to last and we eat a lot of vegetables. In the process of showing me her new stuff in the garage, we get locked out of the house for half an hour (in the garage, not outside) and it takes Daisy's rage and two butter knives to pop the lock. I begin archiving the second batch of CDs, which has a lot of actual good music in it from people I've heard of. I get an email that says my student loans are now officially in forbearance because of the stimulus bill (which I confirm when I log into my account), but my payment info and due-date still has the normal amount on it. The night at work is relatively slow and seems to drag on forever, though there are still a few things I have to help my team on, either directly or from a distance.

Thursday, April 9:
Day off. I am so incredibly tired. The ache in my foot is gone for now, though Daisy says it still looks a bit swollen (I don't think so, but whatever, right?) She works in the yard some more when she gets home from work and then we have vegan tacos for dinner. I archive about 30 more CDs and pass out in my chair in the overnight for 5-6 hours. Today marks another week straight that I have not left the house.

Friday, April 10:
Day off. Payday for me, this time. This is good because I have many other bills coming due that must be paid with this check. I spend the day doing many household chores, including dishes, laundry, changing the sheets, unclogging the bathroom sink, cleaning and refilling the cats' water fountain (because, oh yes, they have a fountain), and some other odds-and-ends around the house. I archive another 30ish CDs from the second collection, and find that I'll probably be able to finish the archiving in the overnight hours. Knowing this, I go back to eBay (the thrill of finding new and underrated music has now gotten me addicted) and order two more random 100-CD sets from different sellers. I now wonder how many times I'll do this before I get bored of it.

Saturday, April 11:
Day off. I sleep off and on most of the day, as does the wife. This also extends to the overnight hours, as I have trouble staying awake and because my sleep schedule is completely fucked now that I no longer leave the house. All goutlike symptoms are gone, though I do think I may have sprained my toe somehow (go figure). Daisy and I finish Tiger King. Before I go to bed for good in the late overnight/early morning hours, we get a decently strong thunderstorm that rattles the house.

Sunday, April 12:
Working from home, day 11. Easter Sunday. In the morning while I sleep, Daisy goes to Walmart and stocks up on fresh produce and some other essentials that she couldn't wait on -- for the first time in a month, she is able to get toilet paper. It is very cold and rainy/snowy most of the day. Still somewhat out of it, I get up, shower, and eat around noon, then take another nap in the afternoon hours, awakening an hour before I'm supposed to start work. This is good, because while the night starts slowly, I get engaged on a super-hot issue around 3AM that dominates my time for the next five and a half hours, including 90 minutes after I would normally be off shift. While I get sincere thank-yous from other leadership in the program (including my Executive Director) for my help, I end up working a twelve and a half hour shift.

Monday, April 13:
Working from home, day 12. By this point, even though it's only been twelve days of working from home (with days off thrown in there too; I work four-day weeks, so this is the start of my third week in a row of doing this), it seems like I've been doing it forever. I've noticed that I'm going through much less laundry and consuming far less consumables (both food and around-the-house stuff) than I would be if I were going to and from work every day. Gas prices are less than $1.50 a gallon and flights are practically free since nobody can go anywhere. While I'd like to book the wife and I a getaway for our anniversary, who knows where society will be at that juncture -- if it even really exists at all. Regardless, I request our anniversary off from work (it's a Sunday night) and my request is granted. Tornadoes rip through my parents' neighborhood in NC, though they (and their house) are thankfully unscathed. My finger that I sliced open while opening a box almost two weeks prior has now completely healed, but in its place is a deep scar that will probably remain for the rest of my life. I order two books of stamps, not because I need them (I will eventually, but not at this moment), but because I want to help keep the USPS funded. Bernie Sanders endorses Joe Biden, which makes me so depressed that I feel queasy. The night at work is steady, but not crushing. For the first time in almost a full week, I am able to finish my shift at the correct time.

Tuesday, April 14:
Working from home, day 13. Days seem to merge together at this point, and everything seems to be one long day interrupted by a few hours of sleep here and there. I have been outside the house twice in the past full month. In that time I've also only needed to do like, three loads of my own laundry (meaning, nothing but my own clothes). I'm not stir-crazy or anything, but I'm starting to fray a bit at the edges. I can easily and comfortably survive on the household supplies and food I have, though I put together a Prime Pantry order of crackers and Rice Krispies treats to have some comfort food around the house I can eat in the overnight while I'm working (since fresh produce has been really hard to come by during the pandemic). I cannot tell you how much I just want to go see a movie, or go get a pizza or order some Chinese food, or wander around a store/mall aimlessly just to enjoy doing something different. The night at work is horrific, compounded by a very slow network that gave me extreme lag on my applications and made me want to scream and punch things. Despite this, I am still able to finish the shift by around 7:15 or so, with the last bit of that primarily being conversing with our morning leadership team about updates on issues in the overnight hours. One of the KMFDM shirts I ordered almost a month prior finally arrives in the mail.

Wednesday, April 15:
Working from home, day 14. Our Coronavirus stimulus check finally hits our bank account, meaning that money is no longer a concern, at least for the short term (the $2400 is more than I personally get paid in a month, by a substantial amount). I'm fighting off some mild depression, so this helps it go away. You know what else would help it go away? Being able to get new comics in the mail, as I have 20+ active subscriptions that are all on hold because of the virus. I'm not sleeping well; when I sleep, I either wake up over and over, or I have nightmares, or I sleep too long and end up wasting or losing time I need to do other things. The weather forecast predicts 2-5 inches of wet, heavy snow between tonight and Friday afternoon -- which, on April 15, is solidly in "this weather forecast is total horseshit" territory. The night of work is mostly quiet, though I do have a steady stream of things to keep me busy -- including a hot one I was heavily engaged on for the last two hours before I left (which resolved itself within 30 minutes of me transitioning it to a morning colleague). As both first batches of random CDs are fully archived now, the boxes of them are recycled when the garbage/recycling trucks come today.

Thursday, April 16:
Day off. I fall asleep in my chair for a few hours in the morning after "breakfast," and when I awaken, glance out the window -- no snow yet, just another gray spring afternoon in Omaha. I go to sleep for another two hours in the bedroom and awaken to 2-3 inches of heavy, wet snow on the ground and on vehicles/structures, but not really sticking to the roads. By the time night falls and Daisy arrives home from work, this has increased to 5-6 inches, and it is still coming down when she goes to bed for the night. Two shipments from Amazon arrive, including nuts for me and tuna for the cats (both of which had been out of stock for weeks on Amazon until I was lucky enough to catch them available). Batch 3 of the random CDs arrive, and it is by far the best batch, with many well-known albums, most of which I've never owned before. I archive about 30 of them before passing out in my chair in the overnight hours, and awakening in the morning around the time Daisy was getting up to go to work.

Friday, April 17:
Day off. As the sun comes out and temperatures begin to rapidly warm back up to what April fucking should be, the snow begins melting and falling off trees and structures in big clumps. I begin developing, what I personally believe, is an internal hemorrhoid -- probably from being chained to my computer for close to twelve hours a night, four nights a week, for work. It is so uncomfortable and painful that it makes my stomach queasy and makes me afraid to eat -- which is good in some sense because maybe that'll prevent me from becoming a fatter hermit than I already am. A full half of batch 3 of the CDs are now archived, and it looks like batch 4 will arrive on Monday (based on the tracking estimate I have been given). We have not yet spent a single cent of the Coronavirus stimulus money -- we're good on groceries and supplies, and bills are paid up at the moment. I consider us lucky, because not many people can say that. Our (shameful) president releases some guidelines to the states about how to "reopen America" that I sincerely hope fall on deaf ears as we're nowhere near close to being done with this virus bullshit yet, and to think so is lunacy. I spend the day doing some light laundry and chores and finally eat, watch a movie, and take a nap in the afternoon hours.


And the story continues...

Energy, Part IV: Big Dick Energy

(written mid-March, 2020)

Buckle in, folks, this one might be a little triggering for some of you.

On the Friday I finished my prednisone, I had a follow-up appointment with my primary care physician as an interim, stopgap step between the gout lady and my urologist appointment (which was still on the books for the Friday after that). The goal here was to check in and see how I was doing, and to probably get a prescription for some sort of anti-uric-acid drug I'd have to take every day.

"Your foot looks fine now," she said. "How do you feel?"

"Pretty much normal," I replied. "Slight muscle aches in the calf, like when you get a knot in the muscle, but that's about it."

"Well, your uric acid levels were high," she said, "so it was probably a gout attack. You said this has happened before?"

"Yes, but this was the worst one he's ever had," my wife chimed in.

"Yes," I said. "I agree. About once or twice a year I'll have it happen in one leg/foot or the other, or occasionally my arm, and it goes away within a few days. I thought it was tendonitis or repetitive stress injury, etc. before, but apparently it's not."

"The thing about gout is that it recurs, and that it's always damaging to the joints," said my doctor. "Which is why it's worse this time than before -- those joints are getting a little more damaged every time it happens."

This makes sense. My weight is also slowly creeping back up (though I don't know why) and that generally puts a little more stress on my body.

"So," the doctor continued, "I'm going to put you on allopurinol for the uric acid, and colchicine for flareups."

"My dad is on allopurinol," I said, "so I know the basics about it."

"It is the go-to gout medication," said my doctor. "Works pretty well, minimal side effects if any; it helps. But you'll have to drink a lot of water while you're on it."

"I've been doing that since this shit started anyway," I replied. "I have a 48oz Nalgene bottle that I try to drain at least once a day, twice if I can."

Note: even if I drink two of them a day, that's only 96oz of water. A gallon is 128oz. I don't know if you've ever tried to drink that much water (or liquid in general) in any given day, but it is hard. As I've told Daisy, I just don't think I can put that much fluid into my body on a daily basis. It feels like a job, it feels like I'm forcing it. It does not make me feel good. It makes me feel, well, bloated. With how I'm slowly gaining some weight back, I want to feel and look less fat, not more. 

"Well, keep that up," my doctor said. "It will only be beneficial in helping to flush excess uric acid out of your body."

"What's the colci....coldic...--"

"Colchicine," she replied. "It's a plant-based natural anti-inflammatory."

"Take it when you're having an attack and it will help," she said. "It's not an every day thing. If you take it every day it may trigger an attack and make it worse."

Note: I've not been able to find info on that, per se, but I did find this:

So, I mean, whatever.

Apparently if I start to have a gout attack, that stuff will kill it in 12-24 hours, so there's that. 

Anyway.

"So let's talk about my urologist appointment next week," I said. "Do you know how that will go, what I'm supposed to do beforehand -- fasting, drinking more water, etc?"

"I do know," she replied. "You don't have to do any special preparation for it or anything, but I'm pretty sure he'll want to scope ya."

Scope...me?

"The doctor takes a thin tube with a camera and goes up inside your urethra, all the way up into the bladder, and looks around inside to make sure there aren't any cuts or lesions, burst blood vessels, anything like that which may be causing the blood in your urine. If they see anything actively bleeding or anything like that, they'll cauterize it while they're in there."

As she said this, the look of horror I gave her must've been amusing, as a slow, evil smile spread across her face. The wife found the contrast between my face as well as the doctor's hysterical. 

"And, uh, there's not any other way they can do this? Like an X-ray or CT or something?"

"Nope," my doctor said, very much trying to hold back a laugh. 

As an aside, that IS incorrect, which I will get to later. 

What I wanted to say: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!! Oh my gods, I'm going to die, because fuck it, I'd 100% rather have the bladder cancer than deal with that. Bladder cancer at least gets me out of work on FMLA on whatever percent of my salary that would give me. Fuck it, no, no. No. My dick isn't falling off, so I'm not dying, thank you, check please, we're done here.

What I actually said:
"So, ahem, any special things I should do beforehand? Should I like, shave everything into a heart for the doctor, or something?"

What I said when we got out to the car, much to my wife's again, hysterical laughter:
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!! Oh my gods, I'm going to die, because fuck it, I'd 100% rather have the bladder cancer than deal with that. Bladder cancer at least gets me out of work on FMLA on whatever percent of my salary that would give me. Fuck it, no, no. No. My dick isn't falling off, so I'm not dying, thank you, check please, we're done here.

I'm sure the phrase "they're going up my peehole" was uttered a few times as well, while I did my best to hold back tears.

The wife, infinitely amused by this, was pulling up videos of the procedure on YouTube later that night. "Oh, I found video of it, it doesn't look that bad, do you want to see?"

"FUCK NO I DON'T WANT TO SEE IT!"

[EDIT: I later did watch a video of the procedure and it is pretty much the most horrifying thing I could have imagined, with little exaggeration.]

For a full week I dealt with the fear of the scope, knowing that the next Friday, I would have a camera -- and not a small one, either -- shoved up my peehole. UP MY PEEHOLE. It is supposed to be an out hole, not an in hole. 

I felt the need to tell my coworkers -- management especially -- that depending on the results of said scoping and any subsequent, ahem, work that would need to be done. Getting scoped is one thing -- finding something that needs to be repaired, or cauterized, is something completely different and would make for a rough few days afterwards, which would mean I would not be going to work after such a procedure for at least one day, maybe more.

"They, uh, can't go up the butt instead?" asked my Director.

"Sadly no, though I fucking wish they could," was my reply.

The appointment came, and externally I was cool as a cucumber -- internally, I was at possibly the most anxious I've ever been for any doctor's appointment, ever. This was evident in my blood pressure, which was forty points higher than usual when they took it in the office that day.

Daisy, the wonderful wife that she is, did everything she could to keep from giggling at the situation. She failed.

Now, I'd like to rewind here for a minute to set the scene: at this point I had been on allopurinol for a week, all gout symptoms were gone, I'd been drinking close to a gallon (again, not an entire gallon most days, but close) of water every day, and I hadn't seen blood in my pee for over two weeks -- probably three at that point. Physically, I felt great. I felt better than I'd felt in some time both mentally and physically. At this point I was sort of wondering why I was actually even there, so far removed from the original situation and cause for concern. 

The urologist I saw was probably in his early seventies, if not older, and had zero sense of humor about his job or his patients whatsoever.

After the nurse got a urine sample from me to run through the labs there that day (!), the doctor came in and asked me a long list of questions, including asking if I had diabetes twice.

I don't -- every blood test I've ever had confirms that I don't, I'm just fat. It's okay, I'm that rare type of healthy fat person that people can't believe when they see.

"Okay," the doctor said, "I'm going to go get the results of your urine sample, and I'd like you to undress from the waist down, put on this gown, and jump up on the table for me. I'll be back shortly."

This is it, I thought. This is when they put the scope up my peehole.

I am not generally scared of a lot. I used to be anxious about everything possible, but at this point, even for most medical stuff, it's meh. I used to hate having my blood drawn and would nearly pass out (or actually pass out) every time it happened. In comparison, I've been stuck with so many needles over the past two months, either to put something in me or to take blood out of me, that it's become completely routine and doesn't really bother me anymore. The last two blood draws I had were nearly painless and didn't bother me in the slightest, and between those, my tattoo, and the other things I've been injected with over the past few months (vaccinations and the like), I've been fine.

But this, this was different. For quite obvious reasons.

The doctor came back in, told me to lay down on the bed, and let me know in his old, slow and metered voice that he was going to perform an exam of my midsection and genitalia, which he did. It was fast and minimally invasive, and didn't bother me in the least. It rather tickled as he was pressing against some different places on my abdomen and pelvic region, which made me laugh slightly, because it felt like when my cat walks on me with all of his weight. He even apologized when he had to examine my actual genitalia, which I found amusing until I was in the car later, thinking to myself perhaps he was apologizing because it's so small and was frightened when I was there. 

"Okay, well, nothing seems to be out of the ordinary so far," he said. "Hop off there, turn around and put your elbows on the bed, and spread your legs as far as you can go -- I'm going to check your prostate."

...okay.

Now, several thoughts ran very quickly through my mind at this point -- the first was oh, I'd so much rather have this done to me than get the scope, followed by I guess I should have expected this, since, well, all guys get this done to them at some point, followed by but they don't usually have their wives in the room to witness it, followed by this is going to be an interesting story to tell the guys at work.

And by the time these thoughts ran through my head, he was inside me.

Look, over the years, especially in my younger years, I had my share of questionable sexual experiences, and only a few of them have involved a man inside me. So by those standards, and approaching it from that point of view, it was fine. During the 20 seconds or so that the exam was actually taking place, I thought about this particular meme I'd seen a few weeks before:

This did not happen to me, but as soon as I felt him press on and feel around my prostate, I started laughing.

The wife, who did not know or understand why I was laughing, also found this hysterical as well, and did her best to stifle her own laughs.

And then his fingers were out of me and he was done.

"Everything feels pretty good and normal to me," the doctor said, with a quizzical look on his face. I tried not to look him in the eye.

"You can get dressed now," he added. "Here's some tissues to wipe the jelly out of your rectum. I'll be back in a few minutes."

Wipe the jelly out of your rectum!

I thanked him, I think; I was trying too hard not to burst into insane peals of laughter like a twelve year old, despite the fact that I'd just been violated.

"Wipe the jelly out of your rectum!" I whisper-yelled to the wife once he was out of the room -- my wife whose face was red with laughter -- as I was, ahem, attempting to do so. "Oh hell, there's so much of it, it's all up in there. Don't look at me. Don't you look at meeee!"

Once I, ahem, wiped the jelly out of my rectum, I regained my composure and re-dressed myself.

"The look of horror on your face..." Daisy started.

"It was fine," I said. "It didn't hurt or anything. Just felt odd."

This is true. I now no longer understand why all of the guy-dude-bros get all nervous or worked up about the procedure. It didn't hurt, it was only slightly uncomfortable for less then twenty seconds total, and there are far worse things to get shoved up one's ass than an old dude's rubber-gloved fingers.

"Did you like it?" Daisy asked, with a smirk.

"It's not something I'd like, choose to do just willy nilly," I said, "but I didn't dislike it; it is what it is."

It was at about this point when the doctor came back to the room.

"So," he said, "your urinalysis is clean, and looking great. No blood at all, nothing."

"That's very good to hear," I said.

"Your prostate feels normal, and I didn't detect any abnormalities in my exam, so that's good too. What I'd like to do next is to schedule you for a CT scan of the pelvic region, both with and without dye, to get some imaging done -- sort of like an X-ray -- to make sure there's no stones or anything else in there that would be a cause for concern, and then come back here to discuss the results a few days later. Does that sound good?"

"Sure," I said. Because, at this point, why the fuck not, right?

"I don't expect to see much of anything as you're asymptomatic for any problems right now, but if they do see something on this scan, I'll want to perform what they call a cystoscopy."

AHHHHHHHHHH!!!

"A cystoscopy is when we insert a flexible tube with a camera and a light on it up through your urethra into the bladder so that we can, well, look around and check for any problems visually."

I could begin to feel my hair standing on end.

"Now, I know that sounds scary, but it's not that bad," he added. "we coat the scope in novocaine jelly so that you don't feel it as much and to minimize any after-pain -- it's also so we don't have to perform an injection of novocaine into the penis, so you don't have to worry about that."

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

"Oh, that's neat," I said.

"Now, we'd only need to do that if we see an issue in those CT scans," he said. At least that's what I think he said; I was terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought at this point.

"I get that," I replied. "Better to be safe than sorry, and eliminate all doubt."

I thanked him, and he left -- and the nurse returned.

"I scheduled your follow up for a week from today," she said. "So I need you to call the hospital to get the CT set up good to go for sometime between now and Wednesday, otherwise the next open slot is in another three weeks."

"Uh, okay," I said.

I would later realize that this nurse lady, brusque as she was, was doing everything she could to pull some strings and do us a favor to get this done as quickly as possible. Daisy and I agreed, as with the coronavirus ramping up and everything getting put on lockdown more and more every day, the thought of getting all of this shit taken care of ASAP was first and foremost in our thoughts.

I got the CT scan scheduled for 4PM on Tuesday, and the follow-up with the urologist the following Friday at 3PM, same time as the previous appointment.

"No food for four hours before the scan," the nurse said. "Clear liquids are fine. Call them to reschedule if you get sick between now and then, as they won't do it if you're sick. It should be fast -- they'll want to do one scan without the dye and one scan with the dye to see the contrast in reflectivity. You won't drink the dye, they'll give it to you in an IV drip. It's an iodine-based dye."

Greeeeeeat. I hate IV drips. Those are the most painful needles they can possibly stick into you. And you have to wait for the stuff to empty inside you.

And all this for a little blood in my pee weeks ago.

So that brings us up to the present. On Tuesday I'll go in and have that done, and I'll be taking off work for the night for rest purposes afterwards, as I will have to get up early to do it and it's a good excuse to not have to go in and deal with the normal horseshit of my job, especially when I expect that job to only get harder over the next few weeks while this coronavirus stuff ramps up.

I will, of course, make sure everyone here is updated with the latest once we see what happens.