Wednesday, October 22

I woke at 6:15AM, went to the bathroom, and went back to bed. I read for 15 or 20 minutes, then fell back to sleep. I semi-woke a few times in the 100 minutes and remembered Veo was streaming. Veo wasn't streaming anything I was particularly keen to watch, though, so I prioritized sleep over it. Around 9:15, though, I couldn't get back to sleep, so I got up. I said hi to Veo -- they were playing Peak -- then went downstairs to get granola & yogurt for breakfast. I said hi to Dad and Sue while I was down there, and told Sue about not noticing her note until a day after I noticed the laundry, because I thought it was funny.

While Veo streamed, I watched, ate breakfast, and played some Race for the Galaxy and Time Princess. At 11:15, I remembered Joseph was coming at noon, so I went downstairs to give Mom an ondansetron beforehand.

I returned upstairs, contemplating a nap, but didn't take one. At 11:55, I realized I hadn't told Mom to put on pants, so I went downstairs to do that. Marcia helped her get the pants on. I waited in the living room for Joseph to arrive, which he did a few minutes after noon.

I watched him work with Mom for 10 minutes, then excused myself. I still wanted a nap, but I went upstairs to work on my Olive fan art instead. I'd only been working on it for fifteen minutes when Joseph asked me to come back down. Marcia and Mom had not gotten the pants pulled up in back, so Joseph wanted me to help with that when he got Mom standing at the kitchen sink. 

Joseph then proceeded to get the pants pulled up without my help and without Mom standing, so that was kind of amusing. Mom commented, "Rowyn is my security blanket."

"Am I your emotional support human?" I asked. "I'll stick around."

Joseph wanted Mom to try standing three times. By the third time, Mom was saying, "I can't" repeatedly, but he still coaxed her into the final try. 

Then she had to stand a fourth time because that's how he transferred her back into bed. Joseph did more of the work for that one, though. Also, it's Mom's preferred bed-to-wheelchair transfer method. She didn't complain about having to do it, though she did wail while it happened. 

The ondansetron worked and she didn't throw up at all, but she was dizzy a lot. 

Before Joseph got her back into bed, I remembered to change the sheets, so that was convenient. 

After Joseph left, I got her room rearranged, refilled her water, and brought her a cold Ensure. She hardly drank at all today, either water or Ensure. Almost every time I checked on her, she was dozing. She didn't even have the TV on.

Dad hadn't eaten his saag lamb leftovers -- I think it didn't occur to him to check what was in the container or that it might be ready-to-reheat food? -- so I reheated some for lunch. After eating, I checked on Mom, then lay down to nap around 2PM.

I woke around 3PM, checked on Mom again, then sat down. I wanted to work on my Olive fanart, but I made myself call Pruitt Home Health first because Mom needs a blood draw before next doctor's appointment on the 30th. Sterling, the receptionist at Pruitt, said they'd just discharged Mom. So she would try to find out if they could re-up Mom so they could send a nurse fo the blood draw. 

"When will you know?" I asked.

"I don't know," Sterling said. "I'll try to find out by the end of today but it'll probably be tomorrow."

"Okay. We don't need the results until next Thursday, so we need the blood draw done on Monday or Tuesday. So I just need to know before then if you can do it or if we need to do this some other way." I am not enthusiastic about convincing Mom to go in person, although -- on the bright side -- Kaki and Joseph have been getting her into the wheelchair every time they're here for the last several visits, so she's hopefully getting more accustomed to being in the wheelchair and to getting in and out of it.

After that, I spent a couple of hours painting Olive. I'm drawing her in one of her canon outfits. Her coat has so much detail on it. o_o You can hardly tell the difference between progress shots before and after today because it's just little fiddly bits. I know why I'm putting so much work into it -- because I'm enjoying it -- but I don't know why I'm enjoying it. Or why I don't do this sort of thing for my original characters. (Okay, part of why I don't do it for my original characters is that I don't have lots of detailed references already available for them. Still. I don't think that's all of it.)

Around 5:30, I realized I had to go swimming around now if I planned to swim at all. So I collected my headset, phone, and drink, and went downstairs. Mom was asleep, so I retrieved my swimming stuff from the bathroom, let Dad know where I was going, and headed out. 

I swam for 84 laps in 61 minutes, so slower today than Monday, but not bad. Most importantly, I went swimming at all. 

When I started my car to drive back, the steering wheel felt like the power steering wasn't working correctly: I could turn it, but it was much harder than usual. Perplexed, I attempted my default technical fix: turn it off and then try to turn it back on.

But when I tried turning it back on, the car wouldn't start at all. It made a weird little clicking noise? Not really the "trying to turn over but failing" noise. At the time, I didn't think it could be the battery, but what do I know? Maybe it's the battery. 

I returned to the community center and asked the receptionist if it'd be okay for me to leave the car overnight, and I'd call to have it towed in the morning. She sympathized and gave me a hang tag to fill out, so that my car has official authorization to be there through the end of tomorrow. It's parked a little weirdly, because I drove it forward like 3 feet into the next space before I realized something was wrong and turned it off. So it's occupying two spaces instead of one. But at least it's not blocking traffic or anything. 

I figure tomorrow, I'll drive Mom's car over to it and try jumpstarting it. (Since Mom's car has a new battery now, I don't think there'll be any trouble with this.) If that doesn't work, I can call the local Toyota dealership about having it towed to them. On the bright side, I have plenty of money to fix whatever went wrong with it, and I can drive Dad's car while I wait for mine to be repaired. 

After walking home, I checked on Mom: she was dozing, but woke when I entered to hang up my swim stuff in her bathroom. She asked me to turn off the overhead light: I was briefly perplexed why it was on at all. "Oh, Dad must have turned it on."

"Mm-hmm," she said.

She took her meds. I asked if she wanted me to change her now and she shook her head. "Okay, I'll come back in an hour to get you changed for the night."

I played Time Princess upstairs until 9, then said hi to Coffee and returned downstairs. Mom had the light and the TV off, but she was still awake, so I didn't have to wake her for the final change of the night. After going back upstairs, I had a hard time focusing. Even though I didn't have any reason to be worried about the car trouble, it was one more thing I had to deal with, and an extra source of stress. Plus, I always have a harder time dealing with rare problems, when I don't already know "do X, call Y, then do Z" or whatever the usual order of operations is. Sure, I knew the general shape of what to do, but not the specifics.

Around 9:40, I called Eliyahu, since I'd meant to do that today or tomorrow anyway. 

Calling Canada is wonky. I don't know if this is specific to TIng or something else. The first time I called, I got the usual "Please wait while we connect your call" message, but instead of being followed by a brief silence, then ringing, it was just silence. After 30 seconds, I hung up. A minute later, Eliyahu called back, so I gathered the attempted call had shown up on their side. They couldn't talk right away and asked me to call back in 30 or 40 minutes.

I went back to writing about my day, then tried again 40 minutes. Same thing as before: "please wait", 30+ seconds of dead air. I said "Hello?" into the phone, but the line was still silent. I hung up again, and tried again in a few minutes. This time, it connected to Eliyahu! Who was free to talk now! Victory at last.

It turned out that the two "dead air" calls from my side had been normal on Eliyahu's: they'd heard the phone ring, answered, and even heard my "hello?" They'd replied normally, but nothing was relayed to me. Well, we got it sorted eventually.

We talked for about an hour. I relayed my car woes story, and told them, "I figured I'd call my emotional support human to feel better. Look, it's working already."

"Aww, thank you for giving me a chance to feel useful," Eliyahu said, touched. 

"You know, it's funny how the moment an smart electronics device -- computer, TV streaming, phone, whatever -- starts misbehaving, I completely lose my temper and start screaming at it. But when the car wouldn't start, I was just 'Oh well,' and moved on," I said. "I don't know why computers are so infuriating but this wasn't."

Eliyahu commented on appreciating my glacial but methodological approach to car registration. (Where my August goal was 'find out how to register' and my September goal was 'get the paperwork completed and printed' and my October goal is 'actually register it.') "I get the feeling that while computer technology may be your biggest source of stress, bureaucracy is a close runner-up."

"Oh yes," I said. "If you combine computers with bureaucracy: inferno time. Doing my taxes? Watch out."

Eliyahu was glad for my call on Sunday because it'd given them the little extra push to do all their daily prayers, so that was nice to hear. 

After the call, I wrote up a bit more of Wednesday, then played Time Princess and went to bed around 1:15, going to sleep around 2:15.

Thursday, October 23

I woke around 7AM, thought about getting over to the community center early before anyone parked next to my car, and decided "eh, it doesn't matter that much." I read for a bit and went back to sleep around 7:30. 

I woke again around 10AM, and lay in bed playing Time Princess until 10:45 or so. New Story Kingdom is a timesink, but I'm still enjoying it so I haven't backed off from it. They made a few changes overnight that make it less of a timesink for me, though, so I haven't played as much overall today.

When I got up and went downstairs, Sue asked where my car was, so I explained the story. I had breakfast first, then came back down around 11:30 to check on Mom and let her know that PT should be here at 2PM, so I'd be in around 1PM to give her ondansetron. Then I checked where Sue's car was: behind Mom's. So I asked her to move it. "I feel silly asking you to move when you're leaving in 20 minutes anyway," I said.

She pshawed at me. "What, you don't want to wiggle your way out past it?" she joked, referencing Alltoseek's suggestion that I could the Dad's car out by "going around" Sue's, with Mom's car parked beside Dad's in the garage and Sue's directly behind it in the driveway. I'm not saying it was impossible, but it was impossible for me. Sue moved her car to the street.

I got dressed, grabbed the jumper cables, and took Mom's car to the community center. The community center lot was almost empty: just a handful of cars, including one parked directly next to mine. Ah well. I tried parking Mom's car behind that one, and draped the jumper cables between the two to see if it'd work. Maybe? I wasn't suffiently confident to try. With a mental shrug, I moved Mom's car to park nose-to-nose with mine, with Mom's car partly blocking the access lane. The lot was mostly empty; there was plenty of room to maneuver around it. I got out of Mom's car, popped the hood, fumbled with the latch to lift the hood, then got into my car.

Before I actually connect all the cables and try jumping it, I should make sure it still won't start on it's own, I thought. I turned the key.

The engine clicked a few times, made a strained effort to turn over, and then engaged. 

"...really?" I said to it. "The threat of being jumpstarted was enough to do it?"

Car: *purrs*

"...okay then." I left the engine running, just in case, and moved Mom's car to park it properly. My car drove fine, with none of the power steering issues I'd had on the abortive attempt to drive it last night. I thought about driving my car for a while, to give the battery time to charge if it was a battery issue. Except if the battery was the problem, why would it start at all without a jumpstart first? I took it home and parked it in the driveway behind Dad's car. Inside, I related the tale to Sue, and then a second time in more detail to Dad because he hadn't gotten auto-transcribe up in time to catch it and wanted to hear it. I concluded by anthropomorphizing my car as saying, "I'll be good! I don't need a jumpstart! Oh god please don't abandon me overnight in the parking lot again it's terrifying here after midnight."

Next, I walked back to the community center to get Mom's car. Since I was dressed and outside anyway, I decided to get a bubble tea. I tried ordering on the website, but the mobile website demands that you install an app and ugh why. I felt like it'd take longer to install an app than to order in person, especially since I don't know the password I use on the website because it's stored in Firefox.  I thought about going home to order, but this also seemed silly. I drove to the bubble tea shop.

I waited 15 minutes in the shop to get my bubble tea, which suggests that it's generally worth ordering ahead. Not that it was a big hardship to play with my phone for 15 minutes. I got a honeydew milk tea: pretty good. Kind of enjoying not having a hands-down favorite that I always order.

At home, I gave Mom her ondansetron and helped her get her pants on, then went upstairs. I wrote up more of yesterday, then remembered that M had sent me an email about the switch from Comfort Keepers to Always Best Care that I'd never replied to. So I spent some time answering that.

Kaki texted that she was running late, so I went downstairs around 2:10 to let Mom know. I hung out downstairs, using my Chromebook, until Kaki arrived. I hadn't planned to stay for the entire session, but wound up doing so. I encouraged Kaki to get Mom out of bed, because I'd noticed when getting her pants on that the sheets kinda needed to be changed again. Kaki used a kind of sliding transfer to get Mom into the wheelchair, but with a bolster to cover the bed/wheelchair seat gap instead of a transfer board. Kaki says other patients find the transfer boards hard to use, too, so it's not just Mom. They did some exercises in the wheelchair while I got the sheets changed. Dad came in to join us after a while, as did Lyric, since we'd left the door open. 

At length, Kaki got Mom back into bed. Mom still requires a lot of assistance for this. I'm not sure I could do it, partly because of technical skill but also because the PTs are better at getting Mom to do things even when she says, "I can't."

After Kaki left, it was almost 4PM. I got a cookie and went upstairs. I wanted to do enough drawing to have some visible change to show Maria while she was still awake, so I worked on my Olive fan art until 5PM, posted the WIP, and then went downstairs. I swapped Mom's Ensure (she was asleep), then made pancakes for Dad and myself. Dad wanted two pancakes. I took four, and left the last two on the counter to cool before putting them in the fridge. Then I was still hungry after finishing my four, so I ate the last two either.

After dinner, I took a shower, then kept working on the Olive pic because painting fan art is fun. Around 8PM, I switched to writing about my day. At 8:48, I went downstairs to give Mom her meds and get her changed for the night. When I came back upstairs, I tuned to Ong's channel to wait for stream to start, and resumed writing about my day.

It's now 9:51PM and I'm watching the Ongrise on the stream, so it'll be starting properly soon (He plays a handful of short, silly videos as 'starting screens' while he gets the stream set up.) I am current on my day, so it's time to do Another Thing. The next thing will be "find my formatting checklist" so I can run through that checklist on A Wolf-Shifter's Pack and maybe actually get it published this month.

I found the fomatting checklist, ran through it, and uploaded the draft to Atticus. Atticus choked to death on it as soon as I tried to review it, though. It slowed the rest of my computer to a crawl, too. After a few tries, I decided to wait until I wouldn't be using my computer for a while, and then load it. I didn't do this overnight, because I use my computer to play lo-fi sleep music before and while I sleep (it's soothing and helps keep sounds from downstairs from keeping me awake in the morning). Instead, I watched Ong stream and played Time Princess until I went to bed around 1:30AM. I fell asleep about 2:15AM.

Friday, October 24

It’s Saturday as I write this, and I write these entries by remembering my day in order, which means if I can’t remember how I woke up, I have a hard time getting started. Sometimes I have to start writing out of order and then go backwards or forwards as I get a thread to follow. For example, now I can remember that I was up in time for V’s stream, which means I woke before 9. I think it was pretty early when I woke, like 7:30 or so, and I tried to go back to sleep but couldn’t, so eventually I got up, got breakfast, and put on V’s stream.

V was streaming Spyro: Reignited, which they’ve streamed before. I don’t find Spyro particularly interesting to watch (which is no reflection on how fun it is to play or, for that matter, how fun it is for other people to watch). Jonathan Ong was also still streaming, so I muted V’s stream after a bit and turned the sound on for Ong’s to listen to him make music.

I spent most of the morning wanting to nap but not napping. Mom wanted to get to her office in the morning, and I spent an hour or so with Nae, assisting Mom as she alternated between sitting up and lying down. She tried using the transfer board, and actually managed to scoot herself several inches along it, before she declared herself too tired to do more.

"Do you want to rest in the wheelchair or in the bed?" I asked Mom. "You're almost halfway between the two now."

"Bed," she said, and flopped backwards to lie with her torso perpendicular to the bed, at its foot, and her legs and part of her hips still dangling off it. 

Mom was too tired to reposition herself at this point, so Nae and I had to wrangle her back into bed properly, but we managed this without too much trouble. 

I called Pruitt, since I hadn’t heard back from them since Wednesday. They now said that I needed to call her PCP and get a new referral for home health. “Can we just pay you cash to do this if we can’t get all the bureaucracy out of the way first?” I asked, “We need the blood draw done by Monday or Tuesday.”

Pruitt: “No.”

So I called her doctor and relayed this message to the nurse, who said Dr. Chenna would probably be able to get the referral called in around lunch.

After Nae left, I had lunch, then finally napped for an hour or so. Around 2:15, I woke up and played some Time Princess, until Joseph called up the stairs for me.

"Would you like me to come down?" I yelled back.

"Yes. Your mom wants you for moral support."

So I came downstairs to watch Mom make four attempts to stand at the sink. Mom has not yet managed to stand properly -- "stacked", the PTs call it, with head-shoulders-hips-knees-feet all in a vertical line. She doesn't get her legs fully straightened and she doesn't lean forward, so she's in this very unstable posture with her torso above air instead of over her knees/feet. She's supported mostly by Joseph and by her hands holding onto the sink. But she got closer by the fourth time standing, despite her protests that she couldn't make a fourth attempt. 

Even though she's not drinking or eating enough, her physical condition is visibly improving. It's kind of amazing, given that her blood test numbers only get worse every time she's tested. If she could get her total consumption up by like 50%, I'd feel pretty confident that she could return to something akin to her April baseline. As it is, I feel like the PTs are in a race to see if they can get her legs working before her kidneys and/or liver and/or other organs fail her. :/

After Joseph left, Mom wanted her Google TV remote. 

We could not find it anywhere. It wasn't under either bed, or on any surface. I sorted through the miscellaneous items piled on the unused king-size bed: nothing. I checked the bathroom. Dad and I checked the living room and the kitchen. After an hour of fruitless searching, I ordered a new remote for delivery tomorrow morning, and texted the PTs' coordinator to ask her to ask Joseph if it had somehow snuck into his bag. 

Sophrani offered us three dinner options -- Thai, Chinese, and Italian -- which all sounded great to me. No one else had a preference either, so Sophrani drew Chinese from a hat. I sent my order to Kage so he could put it in, and Envoy picked it up. We planned to eat around 7PM. 

In the late afternoon, I got a call from a PT with Pruitt. Pruitt had gotten the referral so we could get onboarded again. “That’s great and we’ll be very happy to have more physical therapy but we really need a nurse to do a blood draw on Monday or Tuesday.”

PT: “Oh, yeah, that should be fine. I’ll let them know.”

At 5:45PM, I set my computer to grinding at the book file. My guess was that it ran into a problem with the chapters and was trying to put the entire book in one chapter instead, and that Atticus hated this. 

I don't know why so many modern word processors don't want to load large chunks of text at once. Like, yes, it's a book, but still, it's all text. My drawing software can handle 5 million pixels. Why do word processors struggle with 500,000 ASCII characters?

I went downstairs to get Mom changed before I headed out to see my friends. I took care of a few other chores post-changing, and got into Mom's car to head for Wyndsong. Since I was taking my car for maintenance on Monday anyway, I figured I wouldn't drive it any further than the community center until then. It'd be a lot more annoying to have it refuse to start at Wyndsong at 11PM, or in the parking lot for the smoothie place.

I left at 6:15, which was later than I'd intended. Google Maps said it was only 43 minutes to their house this time, but in the time I'd been living in the area so far, I'd never made it to Wyndsong within the time estimate.

Until tonight! When I parked at 6:56. Amazing. 

Sophrani has been working further on the Halloween decorations, with some help from Kage (he's been engraving labels and things for her, because when you have an engraving machine you just want to Engrave All The Things). She created a witch's potion station on their dining room table, with a light-up cauldron and an array of reagents. Winner for best/worst reagent name: "zombie zest". 

We'd talked about that name last week, and how it's so much worse than, say, "zombie dander" or "zombie skin" or even "powdered zombie".

The potion station is delightful.

I drew a movie from the bowl o' film names again, and got "Indiana Jones and the Fifth Movie". I only vaguely remember hearing about the fifth movie and even though I saw the title yesterday, I can't remember now what it was. Kage and Envoy had seen it before, and were fine with seeing it again -- Kage said it was fun. I am unenthusiastic about the franchise, which has not aged well IMO. I was willing to give it a try, but drew another film title anyway, just to see. The next film was "Amelie", a French movie from the late 90s that only Sophrani had seen.

Sophrani was very enthusiastic about it, commenting on how much she'd enjoyed it and that she thought we'd like it too. 

"I'm leaning towards 'Amelie' on the grounds that Sophrani is way more positive about it than either of you are about the new Indiana Jones," I said.

Kage and Envoy accepted this plan, and we watched "Amelie." 

The DVD had several previews for other movies at the start, which we watched. None of the previews looked like anything we'd want to see them: some were grim and depressing, while one was a rom-com with an appalling premise. "If these are the kinds of films they think 'Amelie' viewers will enjoy, I'm starting to worry about this movie," I said.

But "Amelie" was entertaining and fun. It was mostly a lighthearted movie, with a few dark notes, and a few touches of the fantastic that struck me as metaphorical rather than literal, and a certain surreal tenor -- nothing impossible, just some improbable events and a cast full of weird quirks. Sophrani described it as "weird and yet charming", which is accurate. I thought it weird in a way the films we watch normally aren't: a literary weirdness instead of the sff/anime/mystery weirdness that we lean towards. I enjoyed it. My favorite bits were Amelie's subtle ways of getting revenge. Tiny things that did no real harm but yet were devious and incredibly frustrating for the target.

Kage had been talking about an anime called "Necronomico and the Cosmic Horror Show", with a premise something like 'Cthuthlu-inspired cosmic horrors livestreaming to gain the energy to start the apocalypse." He and Envoy had already watched it (it was only one season). I was curious about it and it was only 10:30, so we watched the first episode. It was weird and entertaining, but weird in an sff/anime way, so much more familiar ground than Amelie.

When I went to go home, I got my keys and leftovers out of the fridge, carefully got my mother's car key in hand to unlock the car, then tried to start the car. The steering wheel was locked in place, barely wiggling, and I couldn't turn the ignition key. I have had this problem with Toyotas before -- it happened maybe two weeks ago with my own car, when Alltoseek and I were coming back from the gym. Usually I can wiggle the steering wheel and the column gets into a position where the key can turn. But I didn't have any luck. I got out and walked back to the house. Envoy was in his car but hadn't left yet. I explained the issue to him. "I think I just need someone else to watch or wiggle it for me and then it'll work just to embarrass me."

But it didn't work for Envoy, either. I got Kage next, and Sophrani followed out of curiosity. As Kage got out and handed me the keys (one of which had been in the ignition the whole time), I went, "Wait! Have I been trying the wrong key this whole time?" I knew I'd had the right key in hand to unlock it, but I wasn't positive whether I'd juggled the keys when getting in and maybe put my car's key into the ignition: I had both on the same caribiner at the moment. I got Mom's key carefully in hand and tried it.

It turned and started the car with no issues. So apparently that was it. *facepalm*

Mom was still awake when I got home. I'd forgotten to give her pills to her before I left, so I gave them to her now. Then I got changed and went upstairs. I played Time Princess until bed time, and went to sleep around 2AM.

Saturday, October 25

As is becoming too common, I woke early and didn't go back to sleep. I'd planned to, but I'd left my browser pointed at Ong's stream last night, so I heard the stream music start around 8:15AM, overlaying and clashing with the lo-fi Spotify was already playing. Instead of muting the stream and sleeping some more, I got up, got breakfast, and came back to watch the stream. I considered bidding on a livelearn, but restrained myself. I had a song in mind to request, but it was less "this is my favorite song" and more "this is a good song and I think Ong would do a fun cover of it."

Around 9:30, I returned downstairs to say good morning to Mom. I noticed an Amazon package on the kitchen counter (Nae had brought it in). I briefly wondered what it was, then realized it had to be the replacement Google TV remote. I unboxed it, wrangled with it for a bit to get it open, and got new batteries into it. The instructions for pairing it with the Google TV box were "press and hold the Google TV button until it tells you to pair the remote, then hold the home and return buttons on the remote simultaneously."

So I pressed and held the button, got the TV message, released it, and started to press and hold the home and return buttons, wondering if I was supposed to somehow hold all three buttons on two different devices at once.

Then the Google TV device reported it was factory resetting.

...

What?

I do not know why it decided to factory reset at this moment. At first, I assumed it was some bizarre security feature from replacing the remote. But it hadn't actually paired the new remote first. You can factory reset the device by holding down the same single button for 10-12 seconds, so maybe I held it down for too long? Except that I don't think I held it for much longer than it took to get up the pairing screen.

Having two different press-and-hold functions for the exact same button is Not Great Design. Why is modern technology like this.

Factory resetting the Google TV meant that I had to repeat the entire "set up Google TV" nightmare.

Me: (okay, I can handle this, I have the WiFi password handy and all the streaming service passwords are in my Chromebook password manager. It'll be tedious but fine.)

Me: *logs Google TV into wifi*

Google TV: "Downloading updates."

Google TV, a minute later: "Installing updates step 1 of 2"

Google TV progress bar: *tiny sliver filled*

Google TV progress bar, 10 minutes later: *tiny sliver filled*

Me: "..."

Me: "Nae, will you come in here? Please just let me know when it's done installing updates."

I went upstairs and worked on laying out the cover for A Wolf-Shifter's Pack.

Me: "Since it's in the same setting as A Dragonling's Family, I'll use the same font for the title text. Just gotta reopen the original file and see what that was."

Me: *searches for original file*

Me: *does not find original file*

Me: ...

I deleted all my old .ptgs from my Surface earlier this year, because it was critically low on free space. I left only the files for incomplete works or ones to be used for yet-unpublished books. Before I deleted them, I'd made copies on Google Drive.

Except that Google Drive didn't have copies of them.

I don't know what went wrong there, but I no longer have the original .ptg file for either A Dragonling's Family or Alien Peacelords. I have them for my older book covers, which did get successfully backed up from my previous Surface (now dead of swollen battery) to Google Drive. But not the two ones I did on the current Surface.

It's not really disastrous: I have flat images of the covers without text, and I have the Clip Studio layout for Alien Peacelords for some reason even though I don't have the final ArtRage version. (Sometimes I use Clip Studio to do layout because ArtRage's handling of fancy fonts can be wonky). And I only need the original file if I want to change the text layout or adjust the art. Which isn't really a thing I do after publication. I think I've once had to fix a typo in the back cover blurb?

Still, it's annoying.

I went to What the Font and uploaded Dragonling to ask it what font I'd used. Engraver MT. Yay. I began the tedious process of laying out the text. Just like "A Dragonling's Family", "A Wolf-Shifter's Pack" has a middle word that is too long to layout well as a title. I need to stop doing this to myself. At least "A Dragon's Secret" has a shorter middle word.

After a while, Nae called up that the device had finished updating. I came downstairs.

Google TV: “Do you want to use the Home app it’ll make things simpler!”

Me: *vaguely recalls trying to use the Home app and going in circles for ten minutes before giving up* “Pass.”

Google TV: “Your funeral. Please log into your Google account.”

Mom has a Google account, but she doesn't remember the password.

I called M -- he has a spreadsheet of all Dad's passwords, so it wasn't impossible that he had Mom's password. And somehow I'd gotten it last time?

M did not have the password. "You can get it off Mom's computer," he said. "It'll be in Chrome."

I booted up Mom's computer and logged her in. The screen turned black.

I waited.

The screen stayed black.

I looked at the computer: still on. I pressed ctrl-alt-del. The task manager came up. I tried to get it to show me something other than the task manager. The screen went black. I tried to reboot the computer and misclicked on the sleep button. The screen went black.

I screamed, "JUST STOP!" and unplugged the entire computer.

It just stopped.

I plugged it back in and rebooted. This time it logged in to a normal desktop. Yay. I fired up Chrome and went into the password manager.

It did not store the Google password.

...

I burst into hysterical tears.

"I can't, I can't, I can't," I repeated, staring at the computer helplessly. "I can't do this anymore."

Except that my mother is bedbound and watching TV is one of the few things she can do and so I have to get this thing working. Somehow.

I struggled to get myself somewhat calm so that I wouldn't sound like a total lunatic on the phone, then called M again.

"You could log in your own account," M pointed out.

"Yeah, but I feel like that's gonna cause other problems," I said.

"Try looking at the password manager for Edge?" M suggested. "Or whatever Microsoft is calling their browser these days."

Why would Edge store the Google password when Chrome doesn't? Well, Chrome uses it as a browser login and Edge would use the Microsoft account so...sure, why not. I fired up Edge. "Oh thank goodness, it's here. Thank you."

M and I talked a bit longer while I wrote down the password. I got Mom's Google TV logged in to her Google Account.

Google TV: "Which apps do you want installed?"

Me: *looks at list, selects Youtube, Peacock, Prime, and Sling. The shortlist doesn't offer the other four apps Mom sometimes uses*

Google TV: "Downloading. This may take a few minutes"

Google TV, ten minutes later: "Yeah still downloading."

Google TV, a minute later: "Still downloading! Estimated 13 minutes remaining."

Google TV, for the next twenty minutes: "Still downloading! Estimated 13 minutes remaining."

Google TV: "Here's the home screen!"

Google TV: "No wait, there's no wifi connected. I haven't downloaded any apps. Except Netflix for some reason."

Me: “...then what were you doing for the last 30 minutes?”

Google TV: “Iunno. No wifi. Check settings.”

Me: *checks settings* “It says you’re connected.”

Google TV: “No I’m not.”

Me: *tries reconnecting, re-enters password, double-checks*

Google TV: “Invalid password.”

Me: *triple-checks password, fixes error*

Google TV: *connects*

Google TV: “Here’s your home screen! I did download all those apps, there you go.”

Mom: “Just get Peacock logged in, I hardly watch anything else.”

Me: *goes to Peacock*

Peacock: “Want to log in using the website on your tablet or laptop?”

Me: “Yes pls.”

Peacock website: “haha j/k I’m not working now.”

Me: *painfully spells out email address and password using remote*

Peacock: *logs in*

Me: “Yay one down.”

Mom: “I don’t want TV anymore. I want to get out of bed and go to my office.”

Me: “You remember your recliner is broken, right?”

Mom: “That’s fine, I’ll sit in the wheelchair.”

So I took a break from the Google TV nightmare to try to get Mom up. She didn’t try for very long, although she actually made pretty good progress at the various steps. She often struggles to scoot at all, but she scooted to the edge of the bed promptly this time, for instance.

Mom: “Who knew watching my daughter break my TV would be this exhausting?”

Me: *stares at Mom*

Me: “Unless you want to be doing your own tech support from here on, now is NOT THE TIME, MOM.”

Mom: *gets settled back into bed, wants to get her pants off, ends up almost removing her brief at the same time*

Me: “Guess you’d better get a brief change.”

It was 11:55 now and Nae was supposed to leave in five minutes, but she bustled about to do the brief change in good humor anyway.

Mom: “Don’t take this the wrong way, Nae, you’re great and all, but that was a terrible brief change. Rowyn is much better at it.”

Me: *laughs* “Don’t worry about it, Nae, you go on and get out of here on time. I’ll take care of Mom.”

Nae: “Are you sure? Do you want me to fight with Google TV for you?”

Me: *touched* “Nah, it’s pretty much all entering passwords from here and I probably shouldn’t have you look at all our passwords.”

After I got the brief changed, Mom looked at the TV services. “Where’s Paramount+?”

Me: *downloads Paramount+ app, opens it*

Paramount+: “Do you want to log in here using our website on your computer?”

Me: “I would really like that, yeah.”

Paramount+ website: “Okay, you’re logged in on your Google TV now.”

Me: “God bless you, Paramount+.”

Me: *downloads Acorn, PBS, and Britbox*

Me: “Do you want me to get anything else logged in or do you just want to nap?”

Mom: “Nap.”

Me: *tucks Mom in*

I reheated my leftovers from Friday night, and went upstairs to eat lunch while watching Ong’s stream. Bids opened for the second set of live learns shortly afterwards. The “retail therapy” concept of buying objects to make oneself feel better has never been my thing, but buying experiences is much more like me. So I bid an excessive amount for a livelearn. This was partly to ensure I got the first slot and the learn would (hopefully) be complete before I left to pick up my brother-in-law from the airport, and partly because Ong performs my favorite alert if you donate $100+ at once. The alert is a parody of “O Fortuna”, with the first part in English and then switching to Latin -- actual Latin; the translation may be iffy but Ong tried to get it authentic. He recorded an entire choir of himself performing it for the vocals, and AFAICT he plays the piano part live. It’s epic.

But Ong was in the middle of a live learn when I won the auction and paid for the live learn, so he postponed the alert until finishing that performance.

By now, I had two songs in mind: Jonathan Young’s “Storm the Castle”, and Devin Townsend Project’s “Grace”. “Grace” is a long-time favorite song. “Storm the Castle” is a solid song from the Starship Velociraptor album (which I love as a whole), and I thought it was solidly in Ong’s wheelhouse. Jonathan Ong has a PhD in classical music and performs a huge range of music extremely well. The joy of his live learns is that he does these elaborate layered arrangements on the fly. Most of my favorite performances by him are “like the original song, but epic and orchestral as well as rock/metal.”

All my favorite songs have lyrics, though. Ong has a good singing voice, but getting lyrics to sound right on a song he just learned is its own challenge. My sense is that he does best with songs that are in his vocal range (obviously), are not dependent on emotional overtones from the singer, and where the lyrics flow naturally with the music. Many of my favorite songs fall into the last two categories; I love the lyrics but they only work with the music because the singer knows exactly how to cram the lines in or stretch them out or whatever gyrations are needed.

I consulted with Alinsa, who understands both music and Ong’s live learn style much better than I do. “Grace” doesn’t loop, which is a downside (Ong uses a looper to build the layers of his performances), and there were some other elements that would make it more challenging. “Storm the Castle” would be less difficult. She thought the variance would be higher on “Grace”: might be awesome, might not. 

I opted for "Storm the Castle." This was a good choice: Ong did an epic cover of it. I bought a big pile of bits so I could cheer him on with the various little dancing alerts the stream has. Alinsa and I did most of the paid cheers, but other folks from the stream joined in and lots of people were rocking along in chat. Ong even ran through the lyrics a second time because he was having fun with it. Such a good time. Salvaged the whole day for me.

It was 3:35 when the live learn ended. I'd texted Alltoseek earlier to ask for her husband's flight number/airline, because he hadn't sent it to me when we talked about the trip. She didn't have it either, but knew his airline and connecting city, which let her guess the flight would be the one arriving at 3:43. So I went downstairs now to dress while I waited for his text. He texted that he'd landed, but had a bag to retrieve from baggage claim, as I finished dressing. I checked on Mom and helped her get pants on, then headed for the airport about six minutes after his text. 

E (my brother-in-law) texted that he was at baggage claim but still waiting for his bag as I pulled up to his terminal. I circled back to the cell lot, which was open this time, yay, and parked just in time for him to text that he was waiting for pickup now. Circled back to the terminal and got him. Terminal 2 wasn't nearly as much of a zoo as when Alltoseek had flown in and the cell lot was closed for construction, but it was still pretty busy. Terminal 1 was far quieter both times. I don't know what's up with that.

E and I chatted about various things on the ride back. Alltoseek caught a cold on her flight home (almost two weeks ago) and is still getting over it, oof. She'd also gotten some vaccinations recently.

When we got back to the house, Mom wanted to try getting into the wheelchair so she could sit at the table for dinner. She didn't succeed, but again made pretty quick work out of sitting up and getting to the edge of the bed.

E offered to make dinner for us. We talked over options with Mom and Dad, and settled on nachos with chicken, cheese, and salsa, plus spinach salad. E headed off to the store to buy ingredients for tonight's meal. 

I went upstairs and listened to the tail end of Ong's stream. He ended stream "early", meaning after 10.5 hours (his "normal" stream length is 12 hours; it's wild). He tried to end at 10 hours, but the big spenders in his chat moved into goblin mode and kept buying long alerts and adding to a hype train so he couldn't end stream and go to bed. I think the big spenders like to start hype trains at the beginning and end of the stream, because it's so disruptive and doing it when you won't disrupt a live learn is more polite.

When E called me down for dinner, he, Dad and I ate at the table. I ate vegetables! Also nachos. :9 Mom had a few nibbles of nacho. Lately, she's been drinking Ensure faster when she drinks it at all -- so she still only has one or two Ensures on most days, but she'll drink them in an hour instead of four hours. I don't know if that means eventually she'll be willing to have more, though, because no real progress on total consumption per day.

It's Monday night as I'm writing this, because I have been completely failing to keep current on my journal. So I'm not sure what I was doing on Saturday night. I hung out with E and Dad for an hour or two after dinner. I made some progress with the layout and cover art for A Wolf-Shifter's Pack. I'd stopped working on the cover art back in March, and I thought I had finished it. But when I looked at it to do the layout, it was still sketchy in places. So I spent some time cleaning it up.

Sunday, October 26

I don't remember what I was up to on Sunday morning. At some point, E, Dad and I discussed what E would be cooking today. He'd offered to cook lots of food for us, and then we could freeze it and thaw as necessary. The initial plan was for beef stew (a favorite of Dad's) with egg noodles and chicken noodle casserole. Then I remembered that he'd mentioned lasagna last night, but hadn't brought it up this morning -- that was because he'd printed recipes for his other ideas but had lasagna memorized. So we substituted that for the chicken noodle casserole. E left around 10:30 or 11 to see his local friend for lunch and to pick up more groceries. When he got back, he started cooking.

I think I worked on yesterday's entry some, and spent more time fiddling with the layout for A Wolf-Shifter's Pack, mostly working on the cover. Around 3:30PM, I decided I had some energy. I checked with E that food would not be ready until dinner, and headed off for a swim. 

I put the latest Freakonomics episode on my MP3 player, along with an MP3 of Jonathan Ong's "Demons" cover (song is by Elvie, another music streamer). The EconTalk website is kind of clunky for getting to the archives, so it's been more inconvenient to dig down to an episode I haven't heard. I think I will keep trying, though, because EconTalk is commercial-free and Freakonomics is not. Commercials in podcasts don't bother me when I'm driving, but I've been spoiled by only listening to commercial-free stuff when swimming. Having them play now just seems wrong.

But I listened to the episode, which was otherwise interesting, and then "Demons" once in the pool and once in the shower, to round out the time. I swam 82 laps in 60.5 minutes: could not quite get up to my top speed so far.

When I got home, E was still cooking. I checked on Mom (I promise I've been checking on Mom, I just haven't been writing down when because I don't remember now). I asked if there was anything I could do to help, so he had me cook the mushrooms. After getting them on the stove and simmering, I had to let them simmer covered for 15 minutes. So I took a break from the kitchen to scoop the litterboxes and put the trash outside, then washed my hands and returned to the kitchen for the frying stage of the mushrooms. E was layering the lasagna when the water for the beef stew noodles started to boil, so I cooked the noodles, too. This was pretty much an imperceptible contribution given how much cooking E did. :D At least we have a ginormous kitchen to cook in. E ended up buying extra cookware for the house, too, to fill in gaps. My parents have lots of accumulated cooking supplies from when Mom used to cook, but since she hasn’t in several years, there’re some things you’d expect them to have that they don’t for whatever reason.

We ate the beef stew for dinner, then cleaned up the kitchen and put the leftovers in the fridge. The extra lasagnas (E layered two big pans and one little one) and extra beef stew were to cool off in the fridge and then get transferred to the freezer tomorrow.

I felt especially exhausted after my swim today, and thought about going to sleep early. But I stayed up to my usual time anyway. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get to sleep or stay asleep if I went to bed hours ahead of time, and I got more awake as the evening progressed. I worked on A Wolf-Shifter's Pack some. 

I keep feeling like I haven't spent very much time on A Wolf-Shifter's Pack and also like there are blocks of time where I did nothing but work on it. I'm not sure how that makes sense.

I went to sleep around 1:30AM, so a little bit early.

Monday, October 27

I woke early and went back to sleep, then woke against 8:43AM when E called my name. I dragged myself out of bed and came downstairs, where Dad told me E had just left, and told us to text if we needed anything. I put on my slippers and went to the driveway, where E was just pulling out of the garage. He stopped the car and got out to give me a hug and so we could say goodbye properly. 

The service appointment for my car was at 10:15AM, so I had to be up around now anyway. I got breakfast and went upstairs to eat. When I checked Fediverse, I saw V's stream announcement to start in an hour, which somehow surprised me even though I'd heard them announce during the streams on last Wednesday and Friday that they would be streaming all of Halloweek. I'd also seen multiple toots from them in the last several days discussing what games they'd be streaming. But here I was: "Gosh, what a surprise, Veo's streaming on Monday."

Also, I'd forgotten about Europe going off DST before the USA, so the stream was at 10AM my time instead of 9AM. Which is generally great -- I am much more likely to want to be awake at 10AM -- but less great today in particular, when I had to take the car to the shop.

At 9:50, I went downstairs to dress and got in the car. It was not thrilled about starting today, either, struggling to turn over for a few seconds, but it managed. I drove to the Toyota dealership, using the address from their appointment confirmation email to make sure I went to the right dealership at the right time. 

While I was driving over, Sterling from Pruitt called to say they’d send a nurse to onboard Mom on Thursday.

Me: “Can we do that sooner? Mom has a doctor’s appointment on Thursday so we really need the labs done on Monday or Tuesday.”

Sterling: “We can’t do today.”

Sterling: *searches* “Or tomorrow.”

Me: “...Wednesday?” It’s cutting it close, but Pruitt drops the samples at the lab in Dr. Chenna’s building, and she’s gotten results next-day each time so far.

Sterling: “...We can do Wednesday.”

Me: “Morning, preferably.”

Sterling: “...all right, I’ll relay that to the nurse. You’ll hear from her Tuesday to let you know when she’ll be out on Wednesday.”

Google Maps navigated me to the entrance of a gigantic dealership complex. It was not obvious where "service" was in the gigantic complex: I spotted signs for "Kia", "Toyota", "Nissan", and "pre-owned." I stopped at "Toyota" even though I was sure this was a sales building and not a service center. A salesman stepped outside as I parked to greet me.

"Hi! I'm at the wrong place," I said to him. "I'm looking for the service center?"

"Alas, you are. Unless you want to trade in that car for a new one?"

I considered this. "If they can't fix it, sure."

"All right, well, come back and ask for David, in that case." He gave me directions to the service doors. I almost managed to get it wrong this time, too, but realized that the three garage-style doors on a small building that  looked more like an overgrown shed were probably not the ones for the service center. (The service center's bank of three "garage doors" were ginormous and led into a section of the main building.

I arrived around 10:15 or 10:20. A young black man, Emmanuel, greeted me as I pulled in. I explained the car's starter/battery/whatever issue, plus needing routine maintenance. I left the engine running so they wouldn't have to jump it to get to the service area if it chose now to stop working entirely.

He poked at his computer for a while, then gave me the estimate for maintenance plus diagnostics for the car-starting problem. "We should have it in about ninety minutes."

"All right, I'm gonna go home to wait," I said.

"Okay. Someone picking you up?"

"No, I'm just taking a Lyft." I waved and headed out to the sidewalk, summoning a ride on my phone. I'd considered waiting at the service center -- my old dealership had a reasonably comfortable waiting area -- but I much prefer my own home. 

"We'll text you with updates," Emmanuel said. "It's our preferred communication method." Hatred of phone calls has penetrated even to professional settings now; truly one of the few good things about the present timeline.

Emmanuel texted me a few minutes after I left, at 10:28, just to confirm what he'd said in person about texting. My Lyft driver, Kindeya, arrived at 10:30. I remember his name because I asked him how to pronounce it, and he went, "Give it a try!"

I had to look it up on my phone to see what it was again, because all I’d remembered was ‘not a common American name.’ "Kin-day-uh?"

"Perfect."

I love those sorts of names, where they're unusual but you can spell them in English in a way that looks just like it sounds. 

I got home at 10:39 (I only know these times because they left an electronic trail). At 10:45, I got a text from the dealership, asking if I wanted to sell my car.

I have thought that it’s silly to have multiple cars when I’m the only one driving. But Mom and Dad want to keep their own car and I like having my own car. Having a backup is convenient anyway, especially when we have visitors. I texted STOP in response.

At 11AM, the service center sent me a video walkthrough on my car. This was surprisingly cool? The tech showed the battery tester running its “fail” message on my car battery: “REPLACE BATTERY”. It also showed the tech measuring the depth of my tires (marginal) and looked at various things underneath the car, like the brake pads. Everything else was fine.

At the same time, I got another text from the dealership, this one asking if I wanted to trade in my car. “We’ll cover your service bill for today if you do!”

Me: STOP.

I let Emmanuel upsell me on a more expensive battery with a lifetime warranty and replacing the tires now instead of waiting. Given how long I put off this visit, getting as much done as possible and postponing the need for future visits seemed like a reasonable choice.

I checked on Mom and puttered online: reading Fedi and Discord, poking at A Wolf-Shifter’s Pack, working on journal entries. Also spent a chunk of time on Time Princess. Traveller’s Sprint started today, so I’d crafted gifts for Companion Day on Wednesday, and spent stamina to  stock up on more gift mats. I meant to spend 75k stamina, but miscalculated somewhere and spent 91k instead. Oh well. My section has some hardcore spenders, so I’m doing my usual plan of “finish 2-5th in the daily rankings a few time, and 4th-10th overall.”

At 1:49, Emmanuel texted that my car was ready for pickup, and I felt justified in my decision to go home instead of waiting at the service center. I summoned a Lyft, opting for the “longer wait at a discount” since I wasn’t ready to go yet. I checked on Mom, got dressed, and waited in the living room at my laptop for the ride to arrive. The arrival times were all over the place: “driver will be there in 10, no he cancelled, new driver will be there in 25, no we found a closer one, new driver will be there in 15”. I got picked up at 2:15, ultimately. Paid for my car and went home, where I parked inside the garage. 

After 8+ years, my car finally gets to live in a garage.

I had a garage at my old house, but I didn’t have a remote for the garage door and it was a detached garage, which defeats at least half the point of having a garage anyway. This is an attached garage: much better.

I took a nap when I got home, then had leftover beef stew for dinner. At 7PM, I checked on Mom, then took a shower at 7:30PM. After the shower, I checked on Mom again. She exclaimed, “There you are!” I hadn’t told her I was taking a shower, and she’d tried to call me 4 times while I was in the shower. She wanted to get changed, so we took care of that and I gave her pills to her. 

Coffee Quills wasn’t feeling well and cancelled their stream. But Ong’s stream starts at 9:30 on Monday night, just 30 minutes after Coffee’s usual start time. So I’d planned to mostly listen to Ong anyway.

I worked on my journal a bit during Ong’s stream, but mostly I just listened and read chat. When bids opened, I considered not bidding since I’d just won a live learn on Saturday. I bid anyway, though: I wanted to hear Ong’s take on “Away With Your Fairies” by Two Steps From Hell.

It turned out Ong had learned this piece already and remembered it. I’d linked to a different version so he took new inspiration from that, and added some rock/metal elements. Listening to it build was fantastic. Ong signaled he was nearing the end by turning off the looper and letting a piano solo carry the piece, then put the full loop back on for the glorious finale. InTheShad0ws (one of the mods) remarked around this point that this song shouldn’t have an end. After the song finished, some raiders came in and asked about the stream, so Ong played the last loop again a
nd accompanied it on the piano by way of demonstration. 

Ong: *at conclusion of loop* “So the stream is like that.”

InTheShad0ws: *disappointed* “Oh. It ended again.”

It’s very satisfying to pick a song for a live learn that not only turns out well, but where other people in the stream are also having a great time listening.

I didn’t get through writing up Sunday. Around midnight, I started playing Time Princess, finishing dailies on my main. At 12:30, I tried to get enough stamina spent on my alt to get the Traveler’s Sprint bonuses. Which would not have worked out anyway, but also the app slowed to a crawl and then stopped about 10 minutes to reset, so I made even less progress than I’d hoped for. I was glad I’d already done all my planned spending on my main. I went to bed at 1:15, when it was clear Time Princess wasn’t coming back up any time soon, and fell asleep around 2AM. I read through some of A Wolf-Shifter’s Pack while I was in bed, so that was good.