the deep moans round with many voices

1. I had a uterine fibroid embolization on June 4. This is a minor surgery that basically murders a fibroid by cutting off its blood supply. I had to stay in the hospital overnight for observation, since blood clots can be Bad News and this procedure essentially creates an artificial clot -- they needed to make sure it didn't hare off and cause problems.

My sleep was very disrupted for about a week thereafter, and I had some minor side effects as well as discomfort, but I am now pretty much back to normal. It will take a month or two to see if the slow withering of the fibroid fixes some problems I was having.

2. Friday the 20th will be my last day at the rental company. I am trying to get a certain set of tasks complete before I leave, but Lawyer Man keeps yanking me aside to work on stuff related to our imminent website revamp, which is frustrating. I am 90% sure I will not be able to finish everything I want to wrap up, but such is life.

3. I have two U-Haul U-Boxes set to be delivered to my driveway on Monday the 23rd. My parents will arrive later that day, and the goal is to have the boxes packed and collected by midday on the 26th, and for us to hit the road no later than mid-afternoon on the 27th.

Then I get to crash in their guest room and go AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaa for a bit.

4. In July Mom and I will return to Ithaca for my surgery follow-up appointment, and probably also to close my Ithaca bank accounts. Later in July I am road-tripping through western Canada en route to a fandom friends' gathering, and then road-tripping home by way of Washington and assorted bits of the northwestern US, because why not.

Then I will do a bit more AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, and in August I start looking seriously for a new job. New housing will follow, since it's easier to rent an apartment convenient to a job location than to find a job convenient to an apartment location.

5. I have been sorting through boxes and bins of stuff that I have not touched for literal decades, and holy shit I have been clogging my apartment and my life up with so much nonsense. It will be good to start over on a cleaner footing.

I had a dentist appointment this morning to fix an old filling that had gone bad. We were also initially scheduled to do a second filling at the same time, but the dentist decided that since one of the affected teeth was in the upper right quadrant and the other was in the lower left quadrant, doing both fillings would potentially leave me with no good chewing surfaces if either tooth was sensitive after the Novocain wore off.

So now I have a THIRD appointment scheduled for January 28. *sigh*

On the bright side, the filling replacement seems to have gone well and I am not, in fact, having any pain. I also got the dentist to shave down the little scraggly bit on the filling she replaced a couple weeks ago, so it is no longer snagging food, my floss, or my tongue. \o/

Other things done today:

1. Completed a renewal lease and made good progress on creating a key plan for the 1st floor of one of our largest buildings.

2. Uploaded a batch of my 2023 Three Sentence Ficathon fills to AO3.

3. Refilled my blood pressure meds.

4. Bought groceries (and upon getting home immediately realized several items I forgot, so I made a new list)

5. Prepped for laundry tomorrow.

6. Wrote one (1) Three Sentence Ficathon fill.

And now I shall go to bed. :)

Thanksgiving was lovely, but unfortunately I caught a nasty case of traveler's crud (not Covid!) and spent Sunday sleeping, drinking excessive amounts of tea-with-honey, and doing things that required no thought or energy (aside from driving to the grocery store to purchase more fruit juice, tissues, and NyQuill).

I also let Mom Boss and Aunt Boss know I would not be at work today, and have thus far spent Monday doing approximately the same as Sunday, though at least today I managed to dress in actual day clothes instead of just putting my pajamas back on.

I don't really feel up to a walk longer than about two blocks, but I may take a small drive shortly just to get out of the house.

I am currently undecided about whether to go to the office tomorrow. I think I will let Mr. Geniality know I may be out, and then decide in the morning based on how well I sleep tonight.

Bodies. Ugh.

...

Probably gonna take a nap soon. I am exhausted.

I begged off my (tiny, no appointments) shift at Not the IRS Friday evening, because I slept TERRIBLY on Thursday night, managing a total of only four hours despite lying in bed for a bit over nine hours. I kept almost drifting off and then jolting myself back awake with a coughing fit.

I did sleep much better Friday night (switched from soothing my throat with honey to gargling saltwater, which is both apparently more effective and less brutal on tooth enamel), but I am still pretty tired and plan to hit the sack early once more.

The cold is definitely thinning, but I still sound like a crow rasping through an old boot, I have a constant low-grade headache, and my respiratory system continues to produce upsetting quantities of goo. :(

Anyway, I had some interesting tax clients today, including ( obscured for an additional layer of anonymizing ) Which is a nice consolation prize for missing the concert, I guess?!

Tomorrow I think I will have the spoons to attempt some laundry. Am I going to wash everything that's built up while I have been languishing? Oh HELL no. But I think I can sort through and wash... hmm. Probably a load of all my underthings and socks, a load of some skirts and shirts, and a load of linens. That will leave at least two more loads' worth of dirty fabric, but that is a problem for future!Liz.

I continued to feel gross today, so I have decided Not to bake snickerdoodles for the memorial service tomorrow. Instead I will apologetically drop off three boxes of Thin Mints, because A) more sanitary and B) who doesn't like Girl Scout cookies?

I did an apartment tour this afternoon, whereupon my body smacked me in the metaphorical face and waved a "Stop exerting yourself; you have no energy reserves!!" banner until I was back at my desk and could spend a couple minutes just breathing and existing. I hate that part of being ill.

Tonight's tax prep appointment turned out to be real -- we were unsure because the client had been going to a Not the IRS office in another NY county for several years, but they moved to Ithaca in 2023 and did actually want an Ithaca-based tax preparer. So that worked out nicely.

Now I am going to faff about online until 9pm, at which point I intend to take a nice hot shower (for decongestion and relaxation purposes) and then fall into bed.

...

I have a litany I sometimes repeat in the shower when I have a nasty upper respiratory infection. It must be spoken only when the water is set very hot, almost to the point where I can't tolerate it anymore and periodically need to pull the shower curtain aside and gulp cooler air. It goes, "Mother oh mother oh mother of mine, wash me cleaner than clean. Scour me purer than pure. Burn the sickness out. Burn the sickness out. Burn the sickness out." Repeat as needed.

I am fairly sure there are some residual cultural Christian influences floating around in those words, but mostly it reflects a desire to sluice away all the gooey unpleasantness of being ill (why is producing floods and swamps of mucus the human body's go-to immune response? WHY???) and temporarily induce a sort of floaty no-mind state where I stop caring that I am sore and tired and full of snot.

Seeing that I am currently sore and tired and full of snot, I may invoke that litany tonight.