Of Moose And Men
The Best Laid Plans Of Both Often Go Astray

That’s pretty much what I did today – a whole lotta nuthin’. Which was what I needed. Slept in, lots of vegging out in front of the PS5. First day my body battery score has been above rock bottom at the end of the day in over a week. Not a whole lot planned for tomorrow, either, past getting to bed earlier.

Survived another week working for the chaos machine that is the US government these days. Go me.

Hopefully I’ll be able to catch up on some meaningful sleep this weekend. Because it sure wasn’t happening during the week. The Garmin watch I’ve been wearing since December gives you a “body battery” score based on how you’re recovering, sleep, dealing with stress, etc., and all this week it’s been in the low to mid 20s. Out of 100. Yikes.

Only plan I have for the weekend, other than sleep, is looking for some walking shoes at the local REI. And maybe some knitting.

I’m on my feet a lot more now that everyone is back in the office full time. I’m doing some very informal coordinating of some of our joint work, so I’m up and about a lot. I took the standing desk down once for a meeting that ended up over in a conference room instead of my office; otherwise it stayed up all day because I was bouncing in and out of the office all day.

For all that I am an attorney, I don’t have a lot to do with actual court cases. My role is typically to advise and let the program people run and do what they’re going to do (or help clean up after the fact). So having to even tangentially keep track of all of the cases in various courts and all of the sundry temporary restraining orders has been a hoot.

After this week I’m going to need to adjust my sleep & waking schedules to adjust to this new work schedule. I’m making it in, but without any time to exercise. And I know myself well enough to know that if I don’t exercise first thing it’s not going to happen. That’ll be next week’s adjustment, I think; this week has had enough to adjust to with the normal stuff, let along all of 47’s chaos.

Back in the office full time, that is. Lots of friendly grousing about spending 8.5 hours in the building. And of course we were all stressing over the fucking ‘5 things you did last week’ nonsense. There was a lot of inconsistent information around that one, with every agency directing different actions (ignore it; send it; send it only to your supervisor; send it if you choose to but we won’t make you, etc.). Chaos and cruelty, by design.

Unrelated, pooping in the office is officially the worst, since we’ve gotten used to the washlet attachments on all our home toilets. The. Worst.

But hey, no regular telework equals not hauling the work laptop back and forth, so I was able to to consolidate things down to a smaller commuting bag after I got home this evening. That’ll be easier to lug on Metro.

And I managed to get part of the way through one of the books I was supposed to be reading in class this week, Leadership on the Line. Interesting case for dealign with the ways that people may (deliberately or inadvertently) sabotage your efforts to lead change, and how to recognize and prepare for those efforts. Good read thus far, glad they gave it to me before we left in December.

‘Twas time for haircuts, which we’d (the husband and I) scheduled for first thing when they opened at 9. Up and at ’em, then to the local diner for breakfast. Eventually made it back home where I napped with my female cat for a couple of hours.

We decided to get the heck out of the house and went to see Monkey. It had good bones, and we ended up laughing a lot at the film, but it was definitely a stretch of the short story. We enjoyed it, but mostly because we needed the laugh of something silly. And in the middle of that the new came down that 47’s handler decided to send out emails telling all of us feds to justify our jobs by midnight Friday. Cue the rolling of the eyes. “Spitting nails” was the most polite way I could describe my reaction to that wanker’s horseshit. I know I can produce something (after we get guidance from our agency, which they already emailed to let us know would be forthcoming), but what happens to someone who’s on leave Monday, or who otherwise doesn’t have access to their work email to send something? Heaven forfend someone should go on vacation. What a shithead.

Monday is my agency’s return-to-office full time day, for those of us not in the union (which none of the attorneys are here, because we’re too small a shop to differentiate practice areas). That made today was the last full telework day for a while, so of course I stayed home. I do have some random leave scheduled for the end of the week after next, so I’ll get a partial break from eight and a half hours/five days a week, but this is the first time we’ve all been back in since March of 2020. And even then this agency had a fairly robust telework policy so it was normal for people to work from home a couple days a week.

The folks with kids or elder care stuff are the most stressed. I’m just concerned about how crowded Metro is going to get; I haven’t had to Metro this distance to work regularly in decades (I lived in walking distance of my last job). Fully plan to keep masking on Metro, too, because I don’t trust people not to head to work while sick. And the work computer stays in the office unless I arrange for the very limited situational telework that’s available, so I’ll get to go to a smaller commuting bag after Monday.

Otherwise there were no new directives from on high, so we actually got to catch up on odds and ends today.

So much chaos at work. Three attorneys, maybe four, of twenty, took the early out, including our deputy. That I know of so far. The deputy isn’t widely known in the office yet, but she told me this afternoon before we left work, and next week will be her last. Two support staff took it, of eight. So not quite a quarter of the office will be gone soon at this point.

Cancelled the travel authorization for the training, and the agency should get a partial refund of the costs.

And then last night 47 killed off a forty-five-ish year old program that is designed to attract people who are getting graduate degrees into federal service, with an eye toward training them for management. It’s the latest version of the program I came into the gubm’nt under back in the late nineties, and its dissolution is another ‘salt the earth’ tactic to poison the well of civil service so it’ll be that much harder for future administrations to put things back together.

First off, I’m fine. Don’t you love when an entry starts out that way?

Tuesday morning (December 5th, 2023) around 10:30 I was standing in my living room when I had a sudden bout of dizziness, followed by numbness in my right hand and some tingling on the fingertips. Almost felt like my blood sugar had dropped out (the dizziness) and like I’d pinched something so my hand fell asleep. Both passed very quickly, then the hand numbness came back less severely and stopped again. And then the inside of my mouth and tongue on the right side got numb, at which point I started googling stroke and heart attack symptoms, and drove myself over to the local urgent care center. The symptoms were all resolved at that point, in less than ten minutes, but I still wanted to get checked out. They took me back immediately and examined me, then advised me to go to an emergency room.

Drove home, grabbed some things in anticipation of a long wait, summoned an Uber ride, texted the husband to let him know what was up, and went to the ER at the hospital attached to the university he works at, even though it’s twice as far as the two closest. It also happens to be in the same network as the urgent care center, so they had all of my info from the earlier check in. The husband met me there, the team again jumped in on me pretty quickly – you say/describe “stroke symptoms” and medical professionals’ eyes get big and they immediately start doing things. CT scan that afternoon, then they checked me in that afternoon for an overnight stay for more tests and observation. The poor husband had to return home for the tools to get my piercings out so I could have an MRI, which happened around 12:30am (hospital corridors are much less busy at that hour). Echocardiogram with bubble contrast was late morning on Wednesday, plus constant EKG monitoring and more blood draws than I care to think about over the course of the day.

Tested, prodded, and evaluated, the verdict was that I probably had a “low-impact transient ischemic attack (TIA)”, a kind of stroke-like event that quickly resolved itself. No damage, tests all came back normal, not a stroke, but now I get some new medications (baby aspirin and a statin) and a longer discussion about all of this with my primary care physician at a pre-existing appointment on Monday, at which I was already going to be discussing slightly elevated blood pressure (which has not been helped by the lack of ability to do a lot of cardio because of my knee dislocation in September).

All-in-all I’m doing okay now. I feel fine, and other than needing some more sleep everything seems to have returned to status quo ante. I’m annoyed at the elevated blood pressure and adding yet another drug to the morning mix (I hate that I have to take pills to function), but the results came out well for what happened, and I’m glad I got it all checked out and will get an appropriate treatment plan. And maybe a new doctor to add to the deck? Because as you age doctors seem to be like Pokemon – gotta catch ’em all! Heh.

On Monday I was on a grocery run when I slipped on some oil in the parking lot and very badly wrenched my right knee. I didn’t feel anything pop, but I definitely went down and there was a lot of loud vocalizing about pain. On the upside, it’s a shopping center with an urgent care center, so after a bit of denial I leaned on a shopping cart and wheeled myself over to get checked out. I got a brace, crutches, instructions to go see an orthopedist.

Saw my old orthopedist’s office the next day (different doctor; the last guy specialized in shoulders, this one in knees). X-rays did not show anything broken, but did reveal that I have a bipartite patella on both knees, which is probably unrelated, but was an interesting conversation piece with the doc. Got a knee wrap and a stiffer, larger brace to hold things in place better (and boy have they improved since I last wore one back in 1986*). Instructions were to get an MRI and make a follow up appointment with the doc. First radiology place was going to take two weeks (!!!!) to get me in. I booked it, but then checked in with insurance to see where else was available and managed to get one a mere week later (this upcoming Wednesday the 13th, as opposed to the following Tuesday the 19th) a little further out. Definitely a sign that there’s too much demand and not enough supply in the DC radiology market.

In the meantime I’ve been sitting around playing lots of PS5, doing some reading, and a little bit of work. The collection of chargers next to the couch has slowly grown as I’ve needed to charge more devices like the kindle. The husband has been fantastic, fussing at me about letting him do more for me (I’m a terrible patient; I value my independence and hate asking for help). Thank heavens for the internet and videos for “best ways to get up and down stairs with crutches”, which we definitely did not have in 1986. Since this townhouse is a staircase with a couple rooms attached I’ve tried to minimize the amount of up and down each day to once each wherever possible. My neighbors have been good, too, with one graciously getting our car back from the parking lot to our garage, and another bringing a package in for me when the husband wasn’t going to be home until late. We have a slight problem with porch pirates, and I wanted to keep the cat food from disappearing, so I asked her to come drag it inside. The smart lock I installed a couple weeks back came in handy there, as I was able to unlock and lock the door from the couch so she could open the door.

And now I wait for appointments to see how badly I’ve messed this thing up. The swelling is down from the peak, but it’s still grapefruit sized and somewhat warm to the touch. Grateful we installed washlets on all the toilets, because when you only have one good leg to stand on wiping is not the easiest.

* Back in 1986 I was playing volleyball in gym class, went to hit the ball at the edge of the court, everyone yelled to let it go out as it was game point and we’d win, so I backed up quickly and in doing so chipped my thigh bone. I vaguely recalling yelling “shit” at the top of my lungs, and the whole gym was looking at me when I looked up. Teacher felt the knee, nothing broken, so ‘walk it off’ (Poor teacher; this was at the school where my mother was the librarian and I know she felt bad when it turned out to be worse than expected). Urgent care, orthopedist, arthroscopic surgery to remove the bone chips, and a massive leg brace to keep it all straight before and after surgery, which I recall being a pain in the ass to get on/off, with giant velcro tabs. This new one has velcro, but also has quick-release tabs that the velcro connects to, so is much, much easier to remove and put back on. Yay progress.

While I enjoyed seeing our guests over the weekend, I was also very glad to send them on their way back home this morning. Living with two other people in your apartment, which already feels cramped as it is, even when those two people are related to you, is draining as all fuck. Didn’t help when the 3.5 y/o would get cranky because her uncles wouldn’t put up with as much of her shit as her mother would.

Did get a little bit of sun out in a paddle boat in the Tidal Basin. That was fun, and it showed that the case of runner’s knee I developed back in March/April is finally well on the way to being healed (the boy and I were the paddlers). I’ve been taking it very easy the past few weeks, canceling this race season and letting the knee heal properly. Didn’t want to repeat 2008’s year of the plantar fasciitis goof but continuing to re-injure the knee again and again. While it’s definitely better, I’m still going to take this entire month off from swimming and running. I haven’t tried cycling yet, but I will do so soon on a trainer in the living room, to see how that does. In the meantime I’m doing weights and core strengthening to give myself a good base to come back to when I do start back up with tri training. It’s been annoying as all hell, and my hips are incredibly sore from the strengthening, but the knee’s healing, and that’s the important part.