Scary September

Three posts in one week! My vacation post, the reading post, and now it's Sunday. It's also the first day of September. The NY Times this week had an article about the "September Scaries," which I guess are people's anxieties about summer ending and regular life getting started again. Wow, I don't feel that way at all. I'm so glad summer is over. I've never been a huge fan of the season, and now more than ever I don't like it, because of the oppressive heat. September is a fairly hot month too, but in Colorado you can feel things cooling down, even this year. This past week and this coming week, highs are/were/will be in the 80s, not the 90s, and lows in the 50s. It gets dark earlier. Mornings are cool. 

The biggest difference is that the house doesn't get hot. All day long it's pretty cool inside, whether or not I close the windows and doors. At night I'm still running the fan, on low speed, but that will end soon. It's mostly just to move the air through the house. In a few weeks it'll be too cold even for that. The hummingbirds are leaving soon, maybe have already gone, some of them.

***

The kids have now been back in school for two and a half weeks, and things are going pretty well. Teen A really likes his afternoon class at Boulder TEC and I think finds his three morning classes at Boulder High SUPER boring and pointless. But he's doing the homework, sort of. Actually, I discovered one evening this week that he hadn't been doing his math homework because he thought it was too easy. I nipped that in the bud. 

He and Teen B have the same social studies class, and their homework mainly consists of reading, which means that I can read it to both of them at the same time. (They each have a gigantic textbook.) I know, I know, I shouldn't be doing their reading for them. But this way they actually do get something out of it. I read it with a lot of emotion, and I pause to comment on what I've just read, ask them questions, etc. Social studies this year is US History, with the interesting twist that it's mostly about the Civil War to the present, plus a quick review of the older stuff to start. They're supposed to have learned the earlier stuff in 8th grade. Only problem is, Teen B didn't take social studies in 8th grade. He was failing and his counselor pulled him out and gave him a job delivering notes for the front office. Teen A took social studies that year, but in January his teacher fell on a patch of ice and got a serious concussion and was basically out for the rest of the year, so that was a wash. Anyway, neither of them knows anything about early US History, so the review that we're doing right now is important.

An aside: during Back to School night I asked their teacher when this change had taken place, because I certainly learned early American history in 11th grade. Oh, about 10 years ago, he said. It works pretty well. Some years I get as far as Reagan. Well, we certainly didn't get that far in my American history class, I said. Then I remembered: Reagan hadn't happened yet. I graduated from high school in 1978 and Reagan was elected President in 1980. 

I'm so old.

The kids have different English classes, but they'll be reading some of the same things, like last year. The focus this year is on American literature. Teen A's class started with some (modern) American Indian poetry. He had to choose two poems to respond to and I helped him choose poems by Joy Harjo and Sherman Alexie, both of which (entirely coincidentally) mentioned birds. He was displeased by that ("Mom and her birds!"), but he wrote about the poems mostly on his own. Now his class is moving on to The Crucible, which apparently counts as Early American literature, even though it was written by Arthur Miller in the 1950s. Teen B's class is reading random short stories right now, I think because his teacher has been mostly out for the past two weeks (family stuff, a wedding, etc.). 

Teen B is very cross that Teen A only has three classes and he has seven, but one is his special ed class and one is band, so he really only has five: math, science, English, social studies, and foreign language. When he doesn't want to do his homework, I remind him that in college, people do their homework. "Well, maybe I don't want to go to college!" "That's fine, but then you'll have to get a job." Mmmm. He does his homework.

At the moment we're not doing much because both kids are sick with a cold. Teen A has had it almost since school started, and Teen B came down with it this weekend. I can feel it around the edges, attempting to strike me down too. I might have to stop writing this and go take a nap. I'm actually very interested in how this illness will go, because they say people on Mounjaro and Ozempic don't get as sick, or at least they don't die of Covid as often as other people. I'm wondering whether Mounjaro will have any effect on a cold.

This seems like a good place to give my weekly report. I didn't weigh myself last Sunday because I was in Seattle, but I do think I lost a little weight on the trip, probably due to all the walking.

•     Weight the morning I took my first shot: 254.6
•     Weight two Sundays ago: 242.8
•     Weight this morning (after 11+ weeks on Mounjaro): 239

So that's 15.6 lbs down in a little over 11 weeks. I have to go in for bloodwork this week, and then I see my doctor on September 9th. I hope she's pleased with my progress. It's interesting -- on my trip to Seattle, after I settled down, I felt pretty good the whole time. Since getting back, and especially since taking my shot Monday night, I've felt awful. No energy, no motivation to do anything. I didn't cook all week. I guess my Mounjaro-related misery is also related to the fact that my life isn't super fun. If I were living in a hotel room, not having to take care of twins or cats, and going to baseball games every day, maybe I would feel better, lol.

I'm currently reading a book about modern medicine, Telltale Hearts: A Public Health Doctor, His Patients, and the Power of Story by Dean-David Schillinger. I read a review of it in the NY Times a few weeks ago, it sounded interesting, so I requested it from the library (which had it on order). It's always interesting to read about medical stuff, but this book has an agenda: pointing out how poor, nonwhite people are so much sicker than wealthier white people, and how they do so much worse with (roughly) the same sort of treatment. I knew about this, of course, but the book is still eye-opening. One way in which it's made me sit up and take notice is its description of all Dr. Schillinger's diabetic patients and their complications.

I know I have diabetes, and I know that's not a good thing to have, but I don't spend much time worrying about it. I go in for my yearly eye exams (feeling silly when I do), I take my Metformin (and now Mounjaro) and my statin even though my cholesterol is fine, and I try (not very hard) to eat a healthy diet and exercise. Occasionally I'll have some pain in my feet and I'll think, oh no, neuropathy. But it always goes away. I haven't had any foot pain in months. I go barefoot most of the time.

But reading about Dr. Schillinger's diabetic patients -- wow. Their kidneys are failing and their eyes are in trouble. One patient who's lost all feeling in her feet goes to a water park on a hot day, gets serious burns on her feet (because she can't feel that they're hot), ends up having to have one foot amputated, gets gangrene in the other, goes septic, and dies, just like that. 

I thought, that won't happen to me. And it won't, probably, because I'm white and middle class and I have good medical care. But hmm, it could, if I weren't. Diabetes is a controllable disease, but it is a serious disease, and a lot of people who have it don't do very well at all.

***

So Rocket Boy got the new hot water heater going (leaving the enormous box on our front porch for me to deal with), and now he is back in St. Louis, but he's getting ready to finish that phase of his life. Yesterday we filled out his application for social security online, since he's turning 70 in two weeks. The first check should arrive in October, and it will be about as large as a social security check can be.

But that's not the big news. He's planning to quit his job at the end of September, finish packing up his apartment, and drive home. He may or may not have a new job here in Colorado -- we'll see how that goes. But regardless, he's going to come home, bringing all his stuff.

This will be quite an adjustment for our little family.

A few days ago I had to take our cat Sillers to the vet, because she wasn't eating. This has happened before and was nothing, but it's also happened and been an indication that her digestive tract is all blocked up, so I had to take her in. For $100 I learned that she's probably fine (and I have to bring her back this week for vaccinations which they didn't want to give her if she was sick). Sure enough, within a day she was eating normally again. I think she may have stopped eating because of two things: (1) Rocket Boy arrived, making it impossible for her to sleep all curled up next to me on the bed at night, and (2) I went to Seattle for a few days. 

What is she going to do when Rocket Boy is here all the time? I started thinking maybe I should get a little co-sleeper to attach to my side of the bed, and the cat could sleep in that. Of course, Baby Kitty would probably want to sleep there too. Hmm.

Plus, if by any chance he gets the job he just interviewed for, he will be working mainly at home, in our crowded little desk room, where the kids and I also like to hang out. The desk room that I was meaning to clean out, to make room for another desk. The desk room that now looks worse than it did a year ago, if that's possible.

Since it's a new month, I thought I should make some serious plans for it. More than just "read a million books" and all that. I know I don't have much energy, I know it's hard to add MORE tasks to the current few I manage to perform most days. But Rocket Boy is planning to make TWO trips to Colorado with all his stuff. Where are we going to put that stuff? Especially since the house is a crowded, cluttered nightmare already! Talk about a Scary September!

Plus, he doesn't like to throw anything away. If I'm going to get rid of anything, I need to do it now, before he shows up. I've actually already started, because it was up to me to put the hallway closet back together after RB finally got the water heater working. I threw out a LOT of stuff the last few days. Towels that were so ratty they were disintegrating. Old medicines -- from 10 years ago, even 30 years ago. Things I couldn't even identify. Into the trash it all went.

Therefore, don't panic. We have plans for the month.  

Every day, do the following:

• My usual tasks: cat care, teen care, laundry, dishes, cooking, errands
  
• 15 minutes on the room of the week, with a focus on getting rid of things, rather than cleaning them. Note: for this 4-week month, Week 1 is the front porch, entryway, and dining room; Week 2 is the bedrooms; Week 3 is the bathroom and the living room; Week 4 is the kitchen.
  
• 15 minutes on the files and piles in the desk room, with an emphasis on recycling.
  
• 15 minutes on the yard. This is of least importance, and can be skipped if I run out of time or get tired.
  

Every week, do the following:

• Fill the trash, recycling, and compost bins to overflowing and don't forget to put them out (this week I forgot to put out the compost and oh man, the smell, the maggots. Oh well).
• Make a trip to Goodwill.
  

That's it. That's my plan for the month. Will it work? I suspect that I'll do some of this, not enough, and I will feel frustrated and panicky, and -- it'll be OK. Whatever I end up with, it'll be OK. Because in the end, it's really nice that Rocket Boy is coming home. After five years! Who'd a thunk it would be that long?