April, come she will

Hello, April! We finally had some winter weather this week, now that it's spring (although it all melted right away yesterday morning). This is normal for Boulder in April. What wasn't normal was having no snow at all in March. Scary.

I felt gloomy this week, in part because of the political situation, but also because I felt sick all the time. It's taking me a while to get used to the new dose of Mounjaro. I didn't start feeling better until maybe Friday, and even last night I felt really sick again (probably because of what I had for dinner, a tuna melt, too greasy). Today, finally, I feel good, lol (I take my shot again tonight).

This is probably the place for the Mounjaro report, which I haven't done since March 9th, roughly a month ago.

• Weight the morning I took my first shot: 254.6
• Weight on March 9th (4 weeks ago): 222.8
• Weight this morning (after 41+ weeks on Mounjaro): 222.0

So, in 4 weeks I lost .8 lb, lol. Of course, what I really did during that time was go up and then down again. Our trip to Big Bend was in there, not much exercise, a week when I went up to the 10 mg dose, a week when I went back down to the 7.5 mg dose, etc. I feel ready now to get back on track, make an effort to lose some more weight. I thought I'd try to lose a pound a week for the next two months, i.e., by the end of May be down 7 more pounds. Hey, it's good to have a goal, right? We'll see.

I'm trying to get back to my schedule, my special tasks each morning and writing each afternoon. It is not going particularly well, but that's OK, just keep trying. I'm continuing to try to do a political task every weekday too -- again, it's a struggle, but I try.

Political tasks:

Monday: I sent a postcard to Dr. Peter Marks, the director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, who resigned recently on account of RFK Jr.'s nonsense. In the postcard I thanked him for his work and said I hope certain people come to their senses and we can have vaccines again. His last day at work was supposed to be yesterday, and I imagine he wasn't in the office much last week, but I took a chance. Someone will read the postcard, and maybe it will be forwarded to him at home.

Tuesday: It had been a month since my last letter to the Daily Camera was published, so I wrote another. I didn't have a particular topic I wanted to address -- there are so many! -- so I wrote about the ridiculous Fox News broadcast we were forced to watch at the hotel breakfast in Moriarty on our way home. My letter hasn't been published yet. I'll give it a couple weeks and then if it hasn't shown up, I'll try again. We're in an interesting situation with our subscription to the paper: I got a letter from them telling me it had run out and I needed to subscribe again, at twice the previous price. I still had four months left on my subscription, but they're claiming I didn't opt out of the "special issues" they send you now and then (basically just a bunch of ads), which shortened my subscription by four months. I wrote them a letter telling them this was nonsense, and if they didn't agree, to cancel my subscription. It's been a week and a half, and the paper is still coming. We shall see.

Wednesday: I subscribed to the Atlantic! This was in honor of Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor on the Signal chat. Just a digital subscription -- I have so many partially-read New Yorkers around the house, I didn't think I could handle another physical magazine. I know we have no money, but I thought this was worthwhile. I also gave $10 to a nice person who came to the door for CoPIRG, and wrote a BlueSky post about my "five things a week" goal.

Thursday: I wasn't feeling creative this day, but I watched an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg about the Signal group chat fiasco -- access to it was a perk, related to my new subscription. It was interesting and actually made me cry at the end. I wrote a BlueSky post about it.

Friday: I made my sign for the protest. I also made some smaller signs and put one in my window (though it's extremely hard for anyone to see).

Saturday: Went to the protest! Two hours standing on Broadway holding up a sign (here's Rocket Boy holding it). Most of the thousands of protesters were up at the intersection of Broadway and Table Mesa, but we held our own at the intersection of Broadway and Dartmouth. Lots of people honked and waved, so it was cheering. There was one big macho truck with a huge American flag that intentionally drove by and revved its engine at us (the sign of disagreement), but I thought it was interesting that they made the effort. It gave the sense of, "Look at my big penis, all you libs that I've just owned." In other words, pathetic.

The best part of the protest was that Rocket Boy managed to get Teen B to come out and watch some of it. First I texted Teen B a couple of times, sent him a photo. He texted back and actually asked where we were, i.e., showing a bit of interest. So Rocket Boy went home and got him (we were protesting half a block from our house). He expressed disapproval of all the people waving their signs, "So dumb," but he didn't leave. And then today he asked me when the next protest would be (April 19th). So I'm happy about that.

Teen A, on the other hand, was so horribly embarrassed by the whole thing that he wouldn't even talk about it, much less attend it. Later, after the protest, we decided to have an early dinner at Aunt Alice's in Longmont, and Teen A drove us there. As we approached the intersection of Broadway and Table Mesa, we realized there were still protesters! (this was an hour after it was supposed to have ended). We tried to get Teen A to honk, but OMG, he would NOT do such an embarrassing thing. So Rocket Boy reached over and honked for him, and I rolled down my window and waved at the protesters. 

***

So now we have the lovely month of April. It's supposed to get quite hot this week, which isn't good, it's just weird. I know, I'll wear capri pants and sandals and enjoy it, but at the same time, it doesn't feel good to have it be so warm and springlike, so early in the year. On a Zoom call yesterday, one of my old friends was showing us her yard full of flowers, and she said something about how it was at its best right now. I looked out at our snow-covered yard and laughed. I wouldn't dare plant anything until May. But maybe this year will be different. I just don't know.

We have a lot going on this month. Dentist appointments for everyone! And the boys have their yearly physicals. I'm taking my car in this week to get a new timing belt. Later in the week I have my yearly mammogram. Rocket Boy will have various appointments, as usual, including one this week as a follow-up since he had another bout of cellulitis this past week, sigh. The week after this one, the boys take the SAT and the CMAS test, and otherwise have the week off. After that comes Easter, and the Friday after that we'll go see our next-door neighbor in Macbeth, the other high school's spring play. And so on, and so on.

We should also do something about our finances, i.e., start to tap another source of income. Rocket Boy was turned down for unemployment, so he's appealing, but obviously there's no money coming in from that yet. We should start taking distributions from at least his retirement account, but we're not sure how much to take. In the meantime, we have these big bills coming in. The timing belt will cost about $1200. In May our house insurance payment is due ($3585) and in June there's the second half of our property taxes ($2016). To pay all that, we have Rocket Boy's social security ($2481/month). Yeah, have to do something else. Lol.

So I don't know if it's also the right time to make a lot of plans. But I will. I'll plan to keep trying to do all my morning activities, and my afternoon writing, and my daily political tasks. I should also start working in the yard. Even though it's too early to plant, I can dig up all the old dead plants from last year and get ready for May planting.

Spring is coming. Or maybe it is already here.