Weekly protests matter even if small. I sat this one out in the coffee shop across the street.
There a friend and I talked about a journalist named Ryan Hatch and his discovery of Danny’s obituary through a CU alumnae magazine. What a sensitive response! It knocked me down, honestly.
One of my main takeaways is this: we do not know what our legacy will be. The fact that Danny’s life, including his love of Stephen King, moved a perfect stranger to such eloquence is amazing to me.
I hope kindness is part of my legacy. I hope my acts of generosity and sharing of insight will offset the impatience and frothing rants that punctuate my days.
Something to think about.
In closing, let me say that the Jack Smith memes on threads almost make the poisonous idiocy of this week’s hearing before the Senate worthwhile. Here are a few.
PS In one of the posts Jetpack spit up in the memory batch yesterday, there was one that referenced Danny calling to tell us (on October 4, seven years ago) that it was snowing hard in Boulder. I will forever miss these kinds of updates.
I offer this telling in the same spirit that I sometimes collect images of Kimberly Guilfoyle — like, is this shit for real? please feel free to skip. But if you skip, be sure to see book updates below.
Sat down to begin the Plan B Medicare sign up and noticed that the required PDF proving I currently had employee-provided health care was not signed. Ken’s was. Mine wasn’t. Okay. Sent it off to HR in Houston.
This pisses me off a little. Reminds me a lot of our financial counselor whom I have to inform at EVERY FUCKING visit that I’ve been collecting SS since age 62. Why is this so hard to remember? It’s literally his job and he has computer programs to track the data.
It gets difficult to not take this personally. The wife. The non-earning wife.
Fortunately HR in Houston responds quickly with new PDF.
Meanwhile, I have a Social Security account and a Medicare account but now you need to use login.gov.
In trying to set up a login.gov account, they offered first the typical six-digit verification code, but then a longer one that for some insane reason they would only mail to me. It would take a month they said. Well great, because I have two more weeks of employee-provided health care.
I called the number on the website and spent an hour and twenty minutes on hold (because the three times I tried to leave a call back number, I was interrupted before finishing the area code. They couldn’t hear me?) (It’s okay, the wait — I worked on my jigsaw puzzle). Of course the result was a distant voice saying they couldn’t help. “Go in person,” she said.
Mailed verification number? Go in person? Seriously?
So we went to the Social Security office first thing the next day and in a very orderly process got an authentication number in person.
Back to signing up for Plan B.
When we finally figured out how where to apply ( hint: it’s not on the Medicare site, it’s on the SS site), they wouldn’t accept the PDF of my now signed employment verification form.
But wait — first we had to track down the email with the HR PDF attachment. Having not used email on the desktop in months, I had to use two step verification to sign in to Google. By some fucking miracle I could readily find my most recent password. But they didn’t send the code. And they didn’t send it some more. Not in my stated email. Not by text to my phone.
Was I losing my mind? Was this part of a plot to make seniors stroke out and ease the burden on our health care system?
Finally! Finally! Saw that they send a notification (not an email) to the google mail app on my phone. Huh?
Now ready, we filled everything out on the required form but it would not upload the required PDF. We tried and tried. Watched the spinning circle. Walked away from the spinning circle. Tried again.
WTAF? Mercury retrograde anyone?
Finally, started over and it was a go. Probably the form had timed out. Maybe should have considered that sooner.
This was a day and a half process that I thought would take 15 minutes. I’m not stupid, I tell myself. Really I’m not.
Still have to sign up for supplemental and drug plan. Wish me luck.
Meanwhile, this is happening.
Amazon’s mysterious algorithms have me as #1 in New Releases for biographical historic fiction. The book hasn’t even launched yet and pre-sales are barely double digits so I truly don’t get it.
Still it was a thrill, so official looking and all.
You can preorder the EBOOK version of my novel on Amazon, Kobo, and Apple Books. You’ll be able to order the paperback on 9/5.
The Weight of Cloth tab up in the menu is getting lots of my attention. Grooming with related links etc. Check it out. You can tap the link here or go up to menu and tap the link there.
Heat dome: We walked Finn late, early or not at allFloors are cooler than rugsEchinacea coming earlyAstilbe adds pink notes to the phase of yellowScrap happy, as they sayRule: use only precut stripsWhat even is this?And why laboriously hand quilt along pattern lines when it barely “shows”?Daisy flea bane and rudbeckia going wild. I did not plant either. Glad it’s over
I arrive early, per usual. Two of us wear masks. Three of us chat about how we seem to all have appointments at roughly the same time with the same periodontist. I’m here for crown and tooth extraction and an implant.
They’ve double booked the 1:00 slot. They call the other patient in first.
The remaining woman and I chat the way women who’ve just met sometimes do — with a casual intimacy. We both have osteoporosis and a history of failed implants. She likes Waze. I do not. She’s a gym rat, doesn’t trust meds. I tend to rely on meds but agreed the science on fosomax is iffy. You get the idea.
But let’s go back a little.
Fifteen or so years ago, my dentist prescribed the anti-anxiety med diazepam for me. He got it. All these years later, I had one left. I was relying on it hard.
You know how when you’re anxious you make big and little preparations — TO BE READY?
I’d already had my stern talk with Deedee. How she couldn’t come with me. What her reward would be. When I come back,we’ll rewatch that satisfying opening to The Hit Man and then take a bubble bath.
I filled a glass with water. Set the pill next to it and went back to some random barbecuing show that I’d put on for Finn during my absence. The plan was to take the pill exactly one half hour before my appointment and then walk over.
Damn dog licked it off the counter! I could not believe it. To the usual line up of worries (failure of Novocain, a cracking, difficult-to-remove tooth, swallowing a chip), add the worry about coming home to a dead dog.
He’s a fast metabolizer, my brother had said after a second chocolate incident early on. No throwing up. No diarrhea. Just guilt.
He looked guilty, Finn, when I stood dumbfounded in front of the counter where my pill was supposed to be.
I had earlier given him half of one of my statins by mistake (don’t ask. Just don’t ask) and then correctly, half of one of his allergy pills. Five milligrams of diazepam in the mix?
But here’s the thing: with the office running so late I’m spared the worry about the pill’s effect wearing off before they finally call me to the inner sanctum.
Here’s a more important thing. Having already had one procedure with this doctor, I know he’s good. He has a crackerjack team. They’re ace communicators. They work FAST. The day’s snafu is asking me to trust them. And I do. It’s not even a stretch.
Two more things: sharing the story about the pill made the assistants laugh and got us talking about dogs, always a good thing.
And this (don’t judge me): I called up an angel and one appeared. She is Black. Called Deandra. Don’t you have little Black boys to protect? I mewled. She hushed me and stood by for the full hour.
UPDATE, next day
Omnipresent dark cloud gone! So much relief. I’m feeling the kind of relief that tells me anxiety was tagging along everywhere and all the time, whether I knew it or not.
Now get this — I will be goddamned if I didn’t come home and find the anti-anxiety pill sitting next to my glass of water. A little orange rebuke. Or better yet, a prankster in the annals of developing trust. How did it happen? Was it under the glass somehow? Befuddling for sure. Perhaps I need to add this to my Losing things and finding them post.
Pastamaking Mania in Florence
Never mind! Today will be ravioli-making day! I ordered cutters and have 00 flour. I have ricotta and even, truffle oil (just for a few. I don’t like it all that much). Can’t wait.
It was too shaggy. It barely held together when being shaped into disks for the fridge. Rolling the dough out later was tricky and getting in into the pie pan, trickier still. It was friable, cohering with mashing and not finesse.
And yet. And yet! It turned out to be delicious, making for one marvelous quiche and one delicious apple pie.
What’s the lesson here? Something about the perils of relying on the standards of previous efforts, perhaps. Something about holding low expectations…
I know I’m home because I’m typing to jackhammering.
I know I’m home because I didn’t sleep well two nights last week.
I know I’m home because the garden calls like a Siren.
I know I’m home because I’m looking forward to writing with my Tuesday writers this morning.
Back to dog walks. Back to really tasty salads.
One male. One female. Posse of five
My son returned to Colorado with Covid. If biting your tongue made a sound (regarding masks, which he not once wore), he would hear it from Massachusetts. How hard is it? I truly don’t understand. It wasn’t just him — in almost every mode of transport and crowded venue, I was the only person masked.
Too much?
Lest you think me extreme, a woman coughed (goopy, wet) for all six hours of this flight. About five rows back. It did not sound like she was even bothering to cover her mouth.
Washed, pressed, ready to cut for sachets!
PS. Flight was a red-eye and the coverup helped me sleep too.
