Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

No, I did not spend all the money in my wallet on chocolate*, but I treated us to a box of chocolates from Serenade, the chocolatier in Brookline with a wide selection of vegan chocolates.

I took the bus to Brookline Village, walked a little extra because I was wrong about which bus stop to use, walked into the shop, and asked for a one-pound box.

I bought two vegan caramels, which Adrian had asked for; I'd have gotten more, but I wasn't sure what she or Cattitude think of sea salt caramel. Just for myself, I got six dairy truffles, three lemon and three lime. The rest was a few (vegan) chocolate creams, and a lot of chocolate-dipped fruit and nuts, including several of their excellent chocolate covered plums, a candy I haven't seen anywhere else.

I came home via Trader Joe's, where I bought fruit, a bell pepper, hummus, pre-cooked chicken sausages, a carton of chocolate ice cream, and a box of frozen vanilla and chocolate macarons.

Even counting the chocolate part of the groceries, I would have had money left from the $79 that happens to be how much cash is in my wallet right now. That's a pretty arbitrary metric, since I don't always have the same amount of cash (I do make a point of having some, because cash still comes in handy sometimes).

*see yesterday's post

I had to call the management company about the heat again today. I and I think at least one other neighbor called in a problem Monday, and they sent someone who made a fix that he said might be temporary, but also said he had ordered parts for a longer-term solution. Tuesday was OK, but by the time I got up this morning [Thursday] the heat clearly wasn't working again.

The management company sent someone over fairly quickly. He first knocked to let me know they were here and thank me for reporting the problem, then came back to tell me they had to look at a sensor in Adrian’s room. So she hurriedly put on her bathrobe, the three of us masked, and I invited them in, with a warning about not letting the cats in. They looked at it, and came back a while later to replace it—apparently there was something wrong with the thermostat, and they replaced the sensors in each apartment, because they couldn’t be sure of which one was the problem. The heat came back on within the hour, and we’re OK for now.

Adrian and Cattitude both thanked me for being Speaker to Landlord on this one.

For reasons, I ran some errands today so Adrian and Cattitude could stay home.

The main goal was to take a bathrobe to the Zipper Hospital, and ask them to replace the damaged zipper. So I did that, and was surprised by the sign saying they took cash and checks. Cash only would have surprised me less; in practice, I doubt they're being given many checks these days. They want payment in advance, but I had enough cash to cover it, so I didn't need to ask them for the location of the nearest ATM.

I then went to LA Burdick's, for a cup of hot chocolate, and a bag of chocolate-covered orange and lemon peel. The hot chocolate was good, but I spilled some on myself when I opened the takeout cup. So, I drank the hot chocolate, carefully; went to Trader Joe's; and then took the trolley home.

The trip wasn't a huge amount of walking, but it's the most I've done in the last couple of weeks. I did a little PT this afternoon as well; I've been keeping up with that pretty well.

I came home yesterday afternoon, and spent yesterday enjoying the air conditioning and catching up on some PT that requires equipment I didn't take with me to Montreal, like a foam roller.

I woke up in time to get outside before it got too hot; conveniently, Adrian came back from a walk when I was about ready to leave, and decided to come to the store with me. I enjoyed the company, and two people can carry more groceries than one, so we now have a small watermelon, a box of lettuce, blueberries, tahini, blackberry jam, and non-dairy ice cream.

cattitude and I played Scrabble yesterday, and I've been doing other ordinary things like combing the long-haired cat and taking out recycling.

It's hot outside today (still), but the kitchen was cool enough at noon for me to make oatmeal for lunch. Adrian made a frittata when we got back from the store this morning, for tonight's supper.

We had a *weird* power outage today: most but not all of the apartment lost power. Mercifully, we did not lose power to the study, where I've been sitting quietly in the air conditioning all day (the high was 35C/95F). Our first thought was that something weird had happened to our apartment's power. Cattitude spent some time on the phone with the management company, which sent a technician. The technician looked things over and told us to call Eversource.

Some piece of their equipment broke, leaving 37 customers without power, according to the outage map, including us and our upstairs neighbors who also had power in part of each apartment. It took them several hours to fix, but fortunately we got our lights back before it was entirely dark out. The oddest-feeling bit of this was realizing that I could plug my phone in to charge, in the middle of a power outage.

I have been doing almost nothing today, to avoid straining my knee*. It's feel better now than last night, but still not great, and I'm having trouble using the quad cane correctly: even moving slowly, my foot and the cane are landing with one an inch or so ahead of the other (sometimes the foot is forward, sometimes it's behind). Tomorrow is supposed to be a lot cooler, but I'm still planning to stay home, and hopefully do some stretching.

* Yes, I buried the lede in yesterday's post, because the googly-eyed train was more interesting.

I took the bus to Cambridge today to visit some lilacs near Harvard Square. These lilacs are in the front yards of several houses near Mount Auburn Street (on Ash Street and Story Road), not the impressive collection at the Arnold Arboretum, but they're much closer to transit. There was enough rain yesterday and today to wash away some of the pleasant lilac scent, but there was enough to enjoy when I leaned over to smell the flowers. Most of the flowers on those lilac bushes were already open this afternoon, and they're forecasting more rain for each of the next several days, so this may have been my best chance (especially given my upcoming medical appointments), though I may look for more lilacs near my apartment tomorrow or Tuesday.

I stopped on my way home at Lizzy's to replenish my supply of ice cream. I wasn't thinking about ice cream until Adrian reminded me this morning to take the insulated bag with me, so I'm glad she mentioned it. (Ice cream without nuts, seeds, or pieces of fruit is on the list of things I can have as part of the pre-colonoscopy low-fiber diet tomorrow and Tuesday.) or I might have bought a pint of strawberry or ginger.)

I have done several useful things this afternoon, including two of the three things from today's list. Unfortunately, the one remaining is the one I'm least looking forward to.

I don't usually have a to-do list anymore, but enough things had piled up that I grabbed some scrap paper and wrote a reminder that I would definitely see when I sat down at my desk this morning.

The two list items were to make appointments for the cats to have their annual veterinary exams, and to get an itemized bill for my last couple of dental appointments. The appointments are made, using the veterinarian's app; it's part of a small chain, so the first question was which office I wanted appointments at.

I called the dentist's office this afternoon and explained what I wanted (itemized bills for the last couple of visits, for insurance purposes), and the receptionist said they'd send me the bills. I actually had an itemized bill for one of these, but didn't keep it, because I didn't expect to need it. But Aetna has sent me a patient reimbursement form, and it asks for the date of the visit, what they did, and the amount, which has to match the itemized bill. So, I need an itemized bill, not just "on X date they cleaned my teeth and charged me Y dollars."

After talking to the vet's office, I paused and did some useful things that are routine enough they weren't on the list: taking out trash and recycling, and a little PT.

The remaining item is calling Aetna yo ask about colonoscopy coverage, since Mt. Auburn doesn't appear to be in-network for this. Whether or not it's in-network, I am hoping for some idea of how much I'll be charged. I don't expect to like the answer, but that's partly because the answer may be "we don't know," and is more likely to be that they pay X percent of total, which the hospital won't tell me in advance.

A couple of hours after I posted yesterday, the building fire alarms went off. They are very loud and bright, designed to be sure that you notice them and go outside.

This time, there was actual smoke in the back stairs, and I believe a bit of fire in one of the laundry machines. The firefighters came in good time and did a thorough job, but I unexpectedly spent half an hour or so outdoors, in lightweight pants, at about 38F/3C. It wouldn't have been that long, except that the firefighters didn't have the code to turn the alarm off, and had to get someone from building management to come over and deal with it.

Once we got the all-clear, we could only find one of the cats. This looked like a problem, because Cattitude had led a firefighter through our apartment to the back stairway, and the door was open for a bit. We looked around, worriedly, including me climbing the stairs to the fourth floor looking for Molly. I came back, and soon after she emerged from hiding. She'd been under a dresser, which is not one of her usual hiding places.

After all that, nobody was up for cooking, and our usual pizza/Indian food delivery place is closed Mondays, so we pulled the lentil-and-walnut pasta sauce out of the freezer.

I am feeling basically calm today, but when I went for a walk, my quadriceps were reminding me that I don't climb a lot of stairs these days, because they can be hard on my knees. I've also been more distractable than usual today, but nothing seriously bad has happened, and I remembered my pills and to use the flutter valve to clear my lungs.

Adrian continues to soothe herself with the useful task of not just loading books into bookcases, but sorting as she goes. Cattitude and i haven't bothered with much sorting of our books, figuring that we had too few shelves and still a lot of boxes to unpack, but I am quite happy to have it done. One of the bookcases they brought over yesterday is now in the kitchen, with the cookbooks arranged so the ones we use most often are visible and also in easy reach for me.

Cattitude went downstairs today, to see if he could do laundry (no), and thus discovered that the firefighters had broken the lock on the back door of the building, and also the locks on all the small storage units, presumably checking to make sure nothing was smoldering. He went looking for a new lock today, but what we want is a padlock with keys, and the nearby CVS only had combination locks. So we will look elsewhere tomorrow, and not worry about it for a day or two.

This was, necessarily, an in-person appointment. Carmen listened to my heart and lungs, did a breast exam, examined my back for moles, and looked at the back of my throat. (She asked if I was willing to take my mask down for a moment so she could do that, and I said yes.) Carmen also had me leave a urine sample, but didn't ask for blood, since they'd done some blood tests last month.

Today is warm and clear, so I had lunch at Mr. Crepe in Davis Square before my appointment, stopped at McKinnon's market for (frozen) ground lamb, and got a small serving of sweet cream ice cream at JP Licks. Sweet cream is one of the November special flavors; I was hoping for a last serving of October's caramel apple. JP Licks' sweet cream isn't as good as Tosci's, but it's good.

Cattitude came to Somerville with me, and joined me for lunch, before I went to the doctor's office.

I forgot to mention: I asked about timing for mammograms, and she said every two years, even though Mt Auburn MyChart is still sending reminders after one year. And I asked if I should get the new pneumococcal pneumonia vaccine, having had an earlier version in 2015. Carmen said she is generally in favor of getting me vaccinated against everything, and I noted that I wasn't sure the vaccine would take in my case. So, not doing it at the moment, but if I want it I can have it. I don't know whether I could have that covered by Medicare if I did it at a pharmacy, or if I'd have to go to her office.

Adrian and I are planning to be seeing a friend of hers, outdoors in the friend's backyard, this afternoon. Crystal is even more covid-cautious than we are, so we both took covid tests this morning, which were negative, as expected.

The thing about having bronchiectasis is that yes, that cough isn't anything contagious, but also I might not notice if I was coughing for some other reason.

I'm going to use the iota carrageenan nasal spray before I leave, because it might help and won't do any harm.