What went before: I think I may have wrassled a working book outta The System. I’ll check again when I get home after needlework.
In the meantime, the hospital decided it had been coy enough and decided to Reveal that it had the orders for the xray of my spine, which — three weeks in the making! — took 15 minutes.
It is, however, done, and I now have tomorrow, most of Thursday, all of Friday to do writing and other needed tasks here at the Confusion Factory. That is, of course, unless I decide that I really have to go to the ocean on Friday. Because a drive to the ocean is always in order.
It is very warm outside in the world. While I was out, I filled up the car and bought nine! dollars! worth of California grapes. I gotta start watching prices closer.
So, I’m checking out for the day.
Y’all stay safe. I’ll see you tomorrow.
#
And the work day commences. The goal is 1,000 words. My supervisor is skeptical:
#
Wednesday. Rainy, cool, and gloomy.
Had to frog a scene and rewrite. New material is up for this afternoon. Did a load of wash, because I could.
Taking a break now to make ham and bean soup for lunch — ref rainy, cool, gloomy — and glare at my email.
Got the results of my spine xray and my bloodwork back. I would like to talk to my doctor about what these things mean — remember when you could talk to your doctor on the phone? — but I guess I’ll wait until December.
In slightly better news, I do have a PT appointment in mid-November — in Oakland! (aka 3 miles from my house; 6 mile RT). I was pretty sure I was going to have to drive to Augusta (aka 40 miles RT) for PT, so that was a nice medical surprise. I’m hoping that the therapist and I can put her heads together and get a long-term fix that doesn’t require surgery, because we’re avoiding surgery, we are. With bells on.
The cats have each checked in with me this morning, and Rookie did an hour of supervision at the beginning of the shift, but apparently rewriting is boring.
It looks like, if I’m going to the ocean, Friday is my bet, before next week’s nor’easter. Friday drive to the ocean is therefore inked in for Friday.
So! For those reading along: How ’bout that Bubo? Pretty dern bold, I thought him. Or perhaps I mean foolhardy.
What’s the weather where you are?
I’m three computers along since I sent the shirt with your book titles on it so I lost your address. If you send it to me I would like to send you some non pharmacy help for your back. It helps many people and harms no one. Hope you think it’s worth trying
I don’t know if in your busy time at the keyboard you have had a chance to chat with one of the AIs that are freely available — hear me out, now, I would never suggest you use one for writing! — but I have found them very useful for decoding the jargon found in a typical “after-visit summary” from a provider such as a radiologist. You look up your after-visit summary on line, and copy the text. Then you open a web page to any of the AI critters — I prefer claude.ai but chatgpt.com or gemini.google.com will do fine — and you type in, “Please summarize and explain the following radiology report: ” after which you paste your radiologist’s ramblings, and hit enter. Instantly you will get back a readable, bullet-point breakdown of what the report says. You can continue to dialog, e.g. “explain the word stenosis” or “what are possible treatments for that” and so on. Thus enlightened you will be better prepared to brace your doctor when you finally get to them.
As far as I know, the “Goodreads blog” is a mirror of this one. Goodreads picks it up as part of something they do. However! I think I am no longer a “Goodreads Author,” so that may be why.