household

Thunder?

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I thought I heard thunder while I was working, but it could just as easily been a kaiju belching given how this year has been going. I think its marginally less hot and sticky tonight but I couldn’t swear to it.

Still, its been a long but productive week as we inch to the halfway point. I’m sure in a couple of days I’ll be blinking and wondering what happened to the week.

I am meant to be on leave from the end of this week, but things are happening with and for a member of Lady M’s staff that may necessitate her working anyway to cover for his imminent paternity leave. Given how tired from broken sleep I am, it is possible I’ll sleep through my whole leave. Unlikely, I’ll grant you, but possible.

Here’s hoping for more burping kaiju.

Lady M Endures

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Lady M has started to phase back to work this week, despite being in near constant pain. We’re waiting to hear back from an oncologist and hoping for an all clear. That would mean that the cysts are reducing on their own and won’t need surgery.

I’m pretty sure that the heat and stress aren’t helping with the pain, and we could have done without the gang that came round the estate in the early hours of the morning stealing catalytic converters off any Prius they could find. Its all go here.

Feeling hot, hot, hot…

What has been productive has of course been new additions to the redbubble site at https://ludd72.redbubble.com and helping myr s with graphics for their Twitch gaming setup. I’m particularly proud of myr s for managing to attain Twitch affiliate status so quickly under the name MorganRileyGaming. They’re working incredibly hard and making it look easy.

Catchups

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Everything has been a bit of a blur the last week or so with various things in the household. The leaks have been tracked down and dealt with, so that was a relief, but the biggest focus has been on addressing Lady M’s health. MRIs and blood tests have been done, and another chat with the specialist is lined up for next week, so we’re now just trying to get on with things for the time being.

Starting to reassemble the flat

We did manage to get some more time with myr s, even if only a flying visit to drop off meds left at ours the previous weekend, and then on Sunday we had a barbecue with the Charleesi, her boyfriend, and the ex-Lady M.

There may have been plenty of drink flowing, and a gorgeous pulled pork lovingly prepared and tended by the Charleesi. We ate well, and the conversations flowed. A lovely evening all round, and much needed.

Feeling Hot Hot Hot

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Well we won’t be going to Disney this year, but the heat today in the South of England is roughly comparable to the weather we’d have had out there anyway, so maybe this is nature’s way of apologising for coronavirus.

We were due to get the results back from Lady M’s MRI scan this morning, but the specialist got called in to perform emergency surgery first thing, so we’ll talk at some point this afternoon. Work sent me home so I can look after her, so it at least gives me a chance to catch up on work emails rather than be front of house. On the positive side, the leaks from upstairs have been fixed, so that’s a good thing.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m back to the fridge for cold water. Stay hydrated everyone!

Indoor Water Features

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Well, I was hoping to have a bit of a chilled weekend, given we’ve managed to finalise when Lady M is getting her MRI scans done.

No, instead we’ve had steady drips of water descending from the extractor fan which has then expanded to come out of a light fitting in the hallway, so I’ve turned off the light fuses while we wait for a plumber and swap out buckets as they fill.

On the plus side, while moving books and damageable items out of the way, we have been able to rationalise some of our old notebooks, and tidy the contents of the bureau. That’s been quite nice, to go through old journals and line up all the ones I haven’t used yet.

So, how’s your weekend going?

And still we wait…

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Something continues to be going very wrong in the arranging of MRIs for Lady M, which now leaves us in the position of feeling like Shrodinger’s patients twice over in terms of when a scan will take place and what is being scanned. If it wasn’t so serious, you could write a great farce out of it all.

As things stand I’m going to work tomorrow as usual and Lady M may or may not get an Uber to one of two hospitals for either one, two, or no scans. If that doesn’t happen then there may be an as yet to be determined number of MRIs on Monday.

No wonder we’re exhausted.

I’ll be working with the public as a rest from all this tomorrow. At least it will be a good distraction, whatever the day brings.

Morning all

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Writing is being perpetrated, the sun is shining, and I’ve had my diabetic blood tests done early today so the full morning is spread before me.

Not a bad start. I’ve had a coffee and some breakfast, can you tell?

Yes, those are masks on the sofa, why?

After a restless night its good to be using some of that energy productively.

The blood test went as quick and easily as you might hope, despite my stupidly forgetting my mask (they had spares). It’s the first time I’ve had one done at the GP rather than wandering down to the hospital – and I may take the booking approach more often given how stress-free it was.

That said i have just remembered I didn’t actually book the follow up appointment with the nurse for a couple of weeks time, so I had better sort that out next…

Designing and Updates

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We’ve got a cluster of family birthdays happening at the moment, and yesterday was a pre-birthday online gathering of the clan which generally turned into a catch up. I was pleasantly surprised to hear my parents praising the redbubble shop to everyone as part of the proceedings. I’m not sure why surprise is the reaction I’ve taken away from it, as proud parental statements are not exactly a scarce thing. At the same time, I can’t remember direct recommendations and praise of my stuff to my family happening recently in such a direct way before.

As a result I kind of feel even more embarrassed to talk about things I’m doing in front of people than usual. Its the sort of adaptive cringe I’ve adopted over the years and have been fiercely trying to overcome and mitigate in recent times.

So this evening, as everyone is generally feeling quite grim, I’ve just been doing some more designs and updates of existing ones while we chat away on Discord. The file sizes are huge so I’ll not be posting the originals here, but I will do a mini gallery at some point. For now, here’s a link to the most recent one:

https://www.redbubble.com/i/t-shirt/A-Flick-of-the-Tail-by-Ludd72/50585999.1YYVU?asc=u

Workspace Shenanigans

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I’ve been rearranging my home working space today to take advantage of Lady M getting a second screen from work so that I can reclaim my aging Xerox monitor (17 years and counting). I have daisy-chained screen adapters from digital to vga to hdmi to work with my very cut-down aging laptop, and have grabbed a spare stool in the spare room. I’m using one of the glass-topped desk units that came back from Switzerland with Lady M just tucked inside the room – so the real test will be tomorrow when it’s time for D&D.

Why all this effort? Well my leg is still spasming and generally hurting every time I’m sat for any length of time on our sofa, so I’m hoping that a slightly different seating arrangement will help my leg heal properly. We’ll see. In the meantime I’m carrying on with setting up items on the redbubble site and have finally managed to get Amazon to accept my financial and tax credentials so that I can sell Kindle writings and potentially more merchandise through them

Fingers crossed, and all that.

Quiet Sunday

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One of the first things Lady M said to me this morning was how tired she was and how she wanted to go back to sleep. Seven hours later, she just did. I did quip about it being a day of rest, which made her blink and say she thought that was the first theological comment I’d made in our time together. I’m pretty sure that’s not true, but there you go.

So we’ve mostly pootled around, played games, and made cuppas today. This evening’s DDC game is just going to be a general natter while I stream doing some art or we play some games or something. Everyone is just a bit tired – but at least Lady M got her signed Liverpool ball inflated at last, so she’s a happy bunny.

In other good news, myr s has got a job offer, the Charleesi has a new project to work on, and her boyfriend is moving in with her at her mum’s house while they job hunt and save to rent somewhere together.

Oh, and my parents have apparently bought a Roomba-style cleaning bot.