Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

As of yesterday, I am declaring myself retired, rather than semi-retired and doing a bit of freelance work while not seeking out new clients.

That remaining bit of freelance work stopped being valuable, mentally, and had started being more of a burden.

I sent my one on-going freelance client email telling him I'm retiring. I'm giving him lots of notice, because why not? I'm not planning any major changes in my lifestyle that proofreading one more issue of queue would interfere with.

What started as a sore throat two days ago has turned into a bad cough--bad enough that it woke both me and cattitude more than once last night. If I'm not feeling better tomorrow morning, I'm calling my doctor. I'd not running a fever, and it doesn't seem worth a trip to Urgent Care on a Sunday with a heat advisory. [ETA: I'm pretty sure it's not COVID, but that leaves a lot of other respiratory viruses. Assuming it's not the flu, if it is viral all they can do is treat the symptoms. *goes off to look up pertussis symptoms* Addendum the second, my 2019 tetatus booster was TDaP, reassuring right now)

I skipped the high school reunion Zoom on Friday, because I didn't feel up to talking, literally, and didn't want to sit there with an ID tag explaining why I wasn't talking.

I did, however, finish the small freelance editorial job, and sent it back before the deadline.

adrian_turtle, cattitude, and I had lunch at (outside) a barbecue place today. I had hopes of sushi, but the tables I thought I'd seen in front of the sushi place turned out to belong to the restaurant next door.

I spent a couple of hours proofreading a client's statements in support of her application for tenure. This is someone whose book I edited last year; she emailed last week to ask if I was available this week, and I said yes.

I felt oddly sleepy after the first piece of proofreading, so I took a break. Cattitude and I played Scrabble, after which I started feeling more focused, and went back to work.

My peacock hoodie arrived today: this was a custom order, from the person who made my moon-and-cats hoodie, which I've been practically living in for the past several months. This one is bright and colorful and gorgeous. Having two will also be useful, so I have something to wear while one is in the wash.

One of the buses we rode this afternoon was crowded enough (by current ideas of crowded) that I thought I was going to stand. A woman offered me the seat next to her, and I thanked her, adding that this feels a little weird even though I'm vaccinated; she assured me that she is too. I wonder how long it will take until sitting down next to a stranger on the bus feels normal again.

After a bit of yak shaving, I sat down at my computer, did a copyediting test, and sent it back.

The publisher puts out books on computing, and their test is a sample chapter from one of those. From 2013, which is a long time in that field. Nonetheless, I included a query as "AU:" because if this were a real project I would have sent that to the author to clarify. (The options for queries are AU, for the author, and PE, for the production editor.)

I also walked as far as the nearest mailbox, to drop in a postcard. (It was much prettier than the ones Canada Post is giving out free to everyone in Canada, because I selected these cards for appearance rather than, oh, maximizing the letter-writing area.

That felt like enough for one day. I'd originally been planning to cook diinner, but cattitude kindly offered to make dinner instead. I had a fallback plan, which was "open package of fish, slice bread, and put bread, butter, and fish on the table," but this way we had a hot meal and a salad.

I'm doing well on yesterday's priority list:

I spoke to my psychiatrist, and told her that everything is going well, considering. In particular, I'm dealing with my freelance stuff, though it's heavier than it would be in normal times, and am glad to be situated where I can get outside without worrying about interactions with lots of people. In answer to more specific questions, yes I'm sleeping well, and no I have no medication side-effects to report.

I have now done four exercises, 3 of them shoulder-related, and one balance exercise, and might get around to more later.

An hour of proofreading got me to the end of the appendices; what's left is the references, index, and any other back matter I don't remember offhand.

cattitude slept very badly last night, so I'm making our meals today. Lunch was matzo meal latkes (easy, nourish, and we have more than two dozen eggs) and dinner will be a green salad with a bit of broiled tuna that's left over from last night. We got a cucumber yesterday, and a lettuce; the lettuce looked basically okay but a little floppy, so I want to use it now, and maybe I'll put in some scallion and/or bell pepper. Pecans?

I got quite enough done today, and I hope avoided overdoing things. I was balancing this with making sure cattitude didn't strain himself, because he's feeling unwell.

I am slightly ahead of schedule on my proofreading job--I spent a couple of hours working on it this morning, sent back that tranche of the project, and did another chunk this afternoon.

Between the work, I went for enough of a walk to count as exercise: the outings that are "just" for light and air are also valuable, but it's good for me to walk more than moving around the apartment and taking the trash out.

I got in touch with my psychiatrist and told her I can't download Zoom and the MyChart app to the same device, and suggested doing our next appointment as a voice call, since that worked last month. She replied and said that's fine. There are kinds of medical appointment where being able to see each other would make a difference, even if it wasn't in person; this isn't one of them. (I may yet ask Carmen whether we should do that, or whether she'd need to actually hold and feel my wrist and arm to diagnose and give me something to take to a physical therapist. But PT is only available as telemedicine right now, and I think I'd want the first visit (for a given reason) to be in person.

Rather than defrost tuna steaks in the microwave, I had a frozen Indian meal for supper, and Cattitude had a peanut butter sandwich.

I did a batch of proofreading today. A chunk of this was due back to the client by this evening, and I sent that at about 10:30 a.m., then did another piece after lunch. Copy-and-paste plus spellcheck means that I have now found and marked two places where "compromise" should be "comprise."

It was sunny and pleasant this afternoon, so cattitude and I tied bandannas over our noses and mouths before heading outside. The Belmont rules (which are basically the same thing that the state is requiring starting Wednesday) require a mask or other face covering when in any sort of business, or anywhere else where you might have trouble keeping a six-foot distance from other people. I figure that means I don't need a mask to take the trash out, just to look through the window and make sure our neighbors aren't on the porch or stairs before opening the door. I have also been going for un-masked walks in less congenial weather, or at times when fewer people are likely to be outside. We did in fact see a fair number of people; mostly we avoided them by crossing the street if they didn't do so first, and once I stepped into a convenient driveway to get out of a cyclist's way.

I have lots of ice cream, having had Lizzy's deliver four containers (chocolate, strawberry, black raspberry, and chocolate chocolate chip), which arrived about twenty minutes ago.

Last night I joined cattitude in a Zoom game session with quility and a few other people. I left after about an hour of Boggle and chat, because I could feel myself getting tense even from that level of competition (nobody was keeping score); Cattitude played for I think another hour and a half, and then told the other people he'd have to leave now, because it's an hour later here than in Minnesota.

And I just remembered I meant to call my mother; the time difference means she'll be asleep by now, and there's nothing that can't wait until morning.

So far today, I have

• exchanged email with a professor who is going to be my next proofreading client


• sent my pilaf recipe to someone who asked for recipes for leftover chicken


• cleaned the stovetop (after putting the crumb trays and the iron frameworks that go over the burners when the stove is on)

In the process of sending out the pilaf recipe, I realized that I've been using significantly less butter/margarine than it calls for, and that this may be why it hasn't always been coming out right. I also rewrote the recipe to reflect changes I had made on purpose, and to list the ingredients in the order that they're used in.

This feels like enough for the morning, if not the whole day. And I haven't even showered yet, despite having been up for a couple of hours.

I let JM, the guy whose book I edited last summer, talk me into indexing it, even though I was fairly sure that a professional indexer would do a better job, and probably for less money. I asked why he wanted me to do this, and he said it was partly because I knew the book, after editing it (fair) and partly because he trusted me to do the job carefully and on time. (I accepted on the basis of an hourly rate, and that he understood he was paying me for the time I spent figuring out how to do this.)

I finished the index and sent it back to him yesterday afternoon, and am now going *thud*. That was on time--the deadline wound up being end-of-day today, defined as "it will be there by the time he wakes up Sunday morning." I am more drained than I expected, I think partly because I was doing this while dealing with significant hand pain.

I don't know whether I did a good job. I'm fairly sure that I don't want to add "indexing" to my set of editorial skills/work that I'm willing to do, both because I found it tedious and because if i did a good job on this index, that's significantly because I was already quite familiar with this book, in a way that indexers generally aren't before starting.

Today, I will stretch and exercise, and I'm not sure what else.

No, I haven't been incredibly busy today; this post combines stuff from the last week or more.

This afternoon I went to a low-key party at my friend Lori's house, where I talked to her, adrian_turtle, and a variety of people I didn't know, or knew vaguely but couldn't remember their names. In and around the conversation, I ate grilled corn, mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, pineapple, rutabaga, and a bit of steak. (The party is outdoors, and I had RSVP'd as "weather allowing," not expecting that it would, but we lucked out, this being one cool-enough day in a string of hot to very hot ones.)

Yesterday I finished editing another chapter of the book I'm working on, and sent it to the client (who thinks I'm great). The day before, I started on a different (small) editorial project. I'm doing two passes on each book chapter, and wanted to take a couple of days between them, hence interleaving this. The other project is going more slowly, in part because it's proofreading as well as copyeditingg, and the document is already in PDF format. This is my second project for this client; having clients want to hire me again feels good, whatever the size of the job. This one is small, or I wouldn't have taken it on while preparing to move.

I called both Belmont Light and National Grid to put the apartment utilities in our name about a week ago. both were straightforward until the end of the call, at which point the Belmont Light person told me that I need to come to their office in person within ten business days to show her photo ID. And they're open 8-4 weekdays, except they close at 11 a.m. on Friday in the summer. If I had any sort of job with regular hours, this would be annoying if not worse; as it is, I expect it to be a minor nuisance, and in return I don't have to deal with Eversource, and National Grid only for natural gas (for the stove). So that's what I'm doing tomorrow morning.

Meanwhile, cattitude spent a bunch at the new apartment, measuring the rooms in detail so we can figure out how we want to arrange the apartment. He did this for the last two moves, and we still have the little bits of paper that represent our desks, couch, bed, table, chairs.... He's going to measure the basement, and make more detailed measurements of the windows that we want to put air conditioners in, while I'm talking to Belmont Light.

About an hour ago I filed my first change of address, with the post office. After I post this I will check it off the (electronic) list.

(We hired a moving company last month, and the friend who was so helpful when I was having the cataract surgery has agreed to drive the cats, and probably one of us, from Arlington to Belmont on the day.)