What I have done today...

 ... At this moment, I'm standing at the kitchen counter waiting for my Instant Pot to come up to pressure. Because I'm boiling water! Yay! We're under a boil water notice! Freezes in a small town with old water infrastructure are SO MUCH FUN.

At least it's pretty out there!

This morning, I got up and got some breakfast for James so he could take his meds, then was headed out for a walk when I realized that both D's and James's cars were undriveable due to ice on the windshields. I came back in, got the keys, and went to work on both. D and James both worked today, but while I was scraping, D messaged me that their blood draw had been postponed as the lab was delaying opening for a few hours. 

I concentrated on James's vehicle, then moved it to the street so he could go down our walkway instead of having to walk all the way around the house. Problem there is that the walkway had refrozen overnight, but I did not have time to deal with it before James had to go, and told him to use his crutches in the grass. He made it!

D's car was stuck in the ice, a problem for later.

I managed to get in a pretty good walk. I had wanted to go down to the lake because there was a lot of steam rising off of the water, but I couldn't get down the hill safely. I did a big loop of the neighborhood, saw that D's work parking lot was like a skating rink, and came back home.

I made myself some breakfast and was finishing up when D was ready to go to work. I helped rock the car out of the rut and D was on their way.

We were running out of food and Mal was up and hungry, so I started using the three potatoes we had left to make him some oven fries. In the meantime, I used two heels of bread (the only white bread we had left) to make him some cinnamon toast.

D got off of work and headed into town to do labs, and I went outside to try to clear the walkway. Most of the ice was slushy, though some of it still needed a shovel to help it calve off. I spent about an hour banging ice with a shovel, getting up under large pieces and prying them up, and then using a push broom to move it into the grass. Good exercise, and I wasn't even a little bit cold!

The group that usually meets at the library on Tuesdays decided to have a virtual meetup because 1) the library was closed and 2) at least one person couldn't get out of their driveway yet because it's steep. Mal, Canyon, Blake, Kona, and Alota had a nice couple of hours hanging out online!

Leading up to this, Kona had quite the adventure: She'd gone to a friend's house for a sleepover Saturday night and couldn't leave Sunday because of the roads. Things thawed a bit yesterday afternoon, but her parents still couldn't come get her: parents live at the bottom of a big icy hill and friend lives at the top of a big, icy hill. This morning, everything had refrozen and the overnighter had turned into a three-nighter.

Fortunately, Kona's sister has a friend whose dad had realized that by letting some air out of the tires, he could get around in his big truck pretty well. He drove out to Kona's friend's house and waited for Kona at the bottom of the icy hill. Kona packed up her stuff and sledded down to him! 

Back to my day: it was time to start on dinner and, like I said, we had little food. I googled "pantry-friendly pasta sauce" and found this. As I was making it and had decided to do the whole "cook the pasta in the sauce" thing, I received the aforementioned boil water notice, so I spent about an hour boiling 6 gallons of water I had hoarded when I heard our water might be turned off completely. I used the induction burner and the Instant Pot, and can report that the burner wins the speed test on boiling a gallon of water by about 4 minutes.

Good news for Mal is that the boil order means no bath for him tonight (he likes to play in the tub, and I don't want him accidentally ingesting bacteria that might make him sick). They said not to even brush teeth with the tap water until further notice.

Mal spent a good deal of time today walking around the neighborhood, enjoying the last of the frozen stuff. He walked for quite a long time Sunday, to the point that I got in the car to go get him at one point, because he'd been out for almost an hour without checking in, when he'd been sure to pop in every half hour or so before that.

Yesterday, we'd tried to walk and realized it was a LOT worse, having melted and refrozen, so he had to stay in the yard all day Monday.

Today, he got to walk a bit more, and he wore his AirTag this time, in case I needed to verify his general vicinity.

James got home and had dinner, then we watched "Stumble" and are winding down. I'm hoping Mal's gym is open Thursday, because we're at risk of catching cabin fever over here.

Caretaking

You guys. I'm tired!

Want to hear something I don't like doing? Talking on the phone! 

Want to hear what I did most of this morning? NOT talk on the phone, but wait on hold. 

And also, talk on the phone.

First, I need to let you know that for the first time in more than 8 years, James has come down with a case of gout. His right knee is so swollen, the doctor measured it at 1.5 inches wider around than his normal knee!

He just started his new job at Home Depot on January 1, and of course it involves a lot of walking around and standing at a register... and he's on crutches.

If I could have blurred this until you clicked on it, I would have.

So. Today.

First, I got a phone call a bit after 9 from my eye doctor. Last week, I'd ordered contacts from them and had gotten a whole year's worth because there was a pretty substantial rebate in that case. I had tried to file the rebate, but it said that my purchase wasn't eligible as the paperwork the office had given me was for last year. I'd left a message asking them to get back with me with the correct code, and they did! Yay! So I talked to their office first.

Then I called my doctor's office because I'm out of a medication I reordered on January 2, knowing I'd run out this past weekend. I realized on Sunday morning that I was out and hadn't even thought to follow up; they were just supposed to be delivered. Walgreens had in their records that they'd ordered the refill on January 5; my doctor said they don't show anything for months (I get a 3-month supply at a time). My doctor's office said they'd send in a new prescription.

I had to call Walgreen's, too, because I had put the order as delivery and now I need them to keep it so I can go in and pick it up ASAP. I've missed 2 days already. Fortunately, this isn't the thyroid meds or I'd be very ill by now! I don't sleep on that one.

NEXT, I got a message from D, who is in Minneapolis right now, asking if I could call their doctor to reschedule an appointment that got auto-scheduled for when they'll be on the plane home. They were out and about and didn't want to have to give personal information out in public. I called their doctor's office but then they couldn't help because D's an adult and I'm not on any authorization list. I tried.

But THAT reminded me that I haven't gotten the ID card for D's new Marketplace insurance, and they're going to need it. Allegedly, I can get it online, but that hasn't worked because they want me to set up a new profile for the plan, but D already has a profile with the provider because that's their existing doctor. 

So I called, and was able to order the ID cards. Again. But I wanted to talk to someone about how to print out a card in the meantime. I was on hold for more than half an hour. Mal showed me some videos, I did some stuff online, and after nearly one full hour... I somehow hung up when I moved my phone! 

Despondently, I called back. This time, I got routed somewhere that an automated voice gave me a group number and an ID, which I've never heard before. I tried adding that to the existing profile and... we wait.

Then I tried to call the VA to see if there were any way that I could come pick up the sleep study that James was supposed to go get today since he can barely walk. But infamously, the local VA clinic does not answer the phones. I still did wait on hold after they tried to patch me through. 

I drove James to the VA, but surprise, his appointment wasn't at our local one. He knew this back when he made the appointment, but he'd forgotten and I didn't even check. We weren't going to drive into far east Austin after all of that, so we just came home and the doctor called him.

After that, the doctor wanted James's old sleep study. He hasn't been to a regular doctor in years, since his primary care physician moved to another practice, so we decided we'd get in touch with their office to have them send EVERYTHING to the VA. I called them, and that didn't work. They had an option to chat online, so I tried that.

They asked me the practice name, so I guess it's a medical group? But then it turns out that since James went there, it's gone through two takeovers and is now managed by a huge hospital group in Austin. I have no idea who to contact or how to get his records now, but I did spend some time this afternoon trying to figure that out.

In the meantime, I made James a crunchwrap for breakfast. Mal just had leftover pizza. 

I had to water all of my outdoor trees and plants because it hasn't rained appreciably since the beginning of November. Mal played outside for a bit while I was out there. We also worked on a diorama of a level of Super Mario U based on Stone Eye Habitat. And played Uno. 

Mal is in a stage of wanting me to get and bring him all of his food, which he had gotten away from and I have to say it's stressing me out. I tell him to take care of himself quite often, but still just being on the receiving end of the constant asking takes some of my energy. 

I'm cleaning out the litter boxes while James is unable to access them. I did them exclusively for a long time, but a year or so ago, James offered to take over. Weirdly, I don't miss it.

I made James a big salad for dinner, and he's up and rattling around now (literally: the crutches). 

Mal really wants me to go look at D's hamster with him. 

We need to listen to a Spanish podcast.

I'm just tired and I want to do nothing/whatever I want to do the rest of the day. But that's not how it's going to go, so it's time to woman up and do all of the things before bedtime.