The Build Team

Getting the newest Covid and flu shots on the same day certainly got them out of the way, but boy is my arm not up for doing much more than hanging limply. Or the rest of me.

That includes rummaging through my freezer for where the ice packs might be in the Tetris configuration it's got going on right now. That's the level I'm at.

Giving up all but trace caffeine left after the decaffeination process has me at the stage of it being bedtime all day: somewhat tense and irritable, and ready to leave and take a nap. I'm doing it ahead of the Yom Kippur fast, to avoid a headache, and it's one thing to be eager for some tea in my apartment by myself and another to feel restless and tired when I'm around a lot of other people. I know at dinner tonight, there were a couple of moments I wanted to say something, knew what I had to say, and pretty much steamrolled over someone else's interjection to finish my thought that I might not have done with more drugs in my system.

It's downright bizarre to me that people do that and then don't immediately follow it up with an apology for interrupting. I know I do. I'll say that reminded me of something but it can wait, sorry for interrupting, go on and I'll share in a moment - and that's only if I can't hold myself back until the end of the other person's sentence. It's things like this that have me getting short-tempered, no matter how much drugs I've done that day.

Last night, I decided to forgo the movie in favor of going to see a family friend who'd recently lost her mother. Of note: I went with my parents, and this friend's mother was one of my clients. For six months, I helped her organize decades of family photos and papers, and at the shiva, the photo albums we'd worked on were there. Everyone who came was flipping through them, noting who was how old and where in the world they were, telling stories about college and cello lessons. I felt proud, and beyond pride, I felt grateful I'd been able to give this to the friend.

I left, and took the elevator instead of the stairs up to my apartment. I waited for the elevator because the doorman had to call up the one which went to the penthouse level for two other people, and on our way up, I found they were going to an engagement party.

Sure, I could come.

I walked up the last flight of stairs to the roof with them on a lovely end-of-summer evening, everyone laughing and happy to be there with the bride-to-be in a big sash and balloons and flowers and plenty of bottles of wine. I drank some, I took a photo and got people to smile by asking them to think of penguins wearing sunglasses, and I chatted a bit before leaving ahead of anyone asking me who I was or what I was doing there. I waltzed in, drank some wine, and waltzed out.

It wasn't exactly crashing a party - I hadn't been invited by the host, but I'd been brought along by a guest. But I can say I did it, because it was more or less what happened.

It was two different parties in close proximity, one by deliberate effort and one by good timing. One for solace and one for celebration. It was more parties in one night than I usually manage in months. It was worth not going to the movies.

Halfway through one of the tracks on the Drive soundtrack, my MP3 player put on about four seconds of "Expo 86" by Death Cab For Cutie. It's not uploaded to my MP3 player, or any other Death Cab for Cutie songs, for that matter. If there was the song there, I could almost understand it. As it is, this makes things even more confusing. I've got no idea how it might've happened.

The track plays without interruptions or interjections just fine on my computer.

It's so baffling I'm going to roll with it and say that it's technology. There's no other explanation. Technology.

Redoing the blood tests after giving up taking the usual daily multivitamin brought everything to "healthy and normal" levels. UIBC goes from 98 to 209. Iron goes from 223 to 99. Iron saturation goes from 69 to 32. Mostly this tells me that it's likely the iron in the multivitamin, since there weren't any other major changes in diet, exercise, or anything else that'd cause that kind of fast shift.

It's a case of knowing what the problem is, identifying the cause, and knowing how to fix it, without fully knowing how or why there was a problem to begin with. It's not as pressing a concern as fixing the problem, but it'd still be nice to have that piece of data, too.

I made it to September without turning on my AC. This isn't to say I didn't use air conditioning this summer - movie theaters and libraries have it, as does my parents' gym, and museums - but to say, somewhat proudly, I managed to not use my own unit in my apartment. Some of it was inertia because it'd have been a fuss to clean the filter ahead of using it. That inertia took me to realizing I didn't need it with the fans I had, plus cold seltzer, keeping the curtains closed, and using plenty of extra towels to constantly dry my face and neck.

It's nice to know I can manage without it. At least, for the present moment. It certainly helped keep the electricity bills down a bit these last three months. Running a fan for upwards of ten hours still doesn't use as much power as an AC unit.