Mental Checklist

Well, I say mental, but poor Robin has to hear me list things all the time. It's part of my compulsion, I am the girl of 100 lists. Finally succeeded in getting meetings scheduled for my newest partner assignment: check. Made lots of headway on annual meetings for another partner: check. Printed out my October financials and remembered to finally make out my rent check: check. I mean, done. Made my favorite salad (arugula, tomato, onion, cheddar cubes) and ate it in under an hour: yup! All packed up and ready for tomorrow... well, one never knows but at least I'm prepared!

AI-AI-AI

My foot feels well enough that I could walk around Manhattan (even the two avenues from the office to the subway in the afternoon) with no pain at all, which surprised me considering how long I've had issues with the left foot and my left side in general. Believe me, at my age I take nothing for granted any more! And I'm grateful as today was full of schleppage from floor to floor, as I attended two AI-related sessions with fellow exec assistants. The sessions were interesting but all in all not terribly relevant to the job I do. I increasingly feel as though my work experience makes AI redundant in my day-to-day, but we'll see. Things were a bit better on the new-partner front but I still have a bit of unease there. Deep breaths!

It's Always Something

Well, we have the apartment back to where we want it, box-free. The read comics and jackets were picked up this evening (by separate neighbors) and our couch is once again free of paper detritus. We deserve some down time now! Unfortunately I don't really get that too much with my new job assignments, particularly the most recent partner I am now supporting. I can't seem to do anything right with her. I'm still hoping I'll get the hang of supporting her, but if I can't count on my almost-half-century of administrative knowledge I'm not sure on what I can rely. Just time, I suppose. Time and the knowledge that I'm, as a former colleague put it, "looking for the off-ramp" and retiring within the next couple of years.

The Day My Music Died

White Rabbits! And things are looking up, and away. The foot is improving, Robin got my Yahoo mail working again on the default mail app on my mobile devices, the supermarket app is working correctly as well now, I finished my favorite game's weekend challenge, and thanks to that extra hour of sleep I was finally able to tackle two of the four boxes of stuff what I've saved from 25-50 years ago. All the songbooks I'd collected back when I played guitar, all the pages of meticulously-copied lyrics with their chords notated, all my stuff from my days in Rutgers' Queens Chorale, all gone now. I shall not be bringing my 50+ year old guitar with me to England, that's going to my musician friend Phyllis. I don't remember when I stopped playing, it was probably sometime during my first marriage, but in any case if I ever take it up again I will no longer need the paper I'd retained that was the main method of musical communication. Paper is heavy, and if something no longer sparks a memory (let alone joy) it doesn't need to come with me. I couldn't bring myself to look over the greeting cards I've kept (I now have four boxes worth), maybe I'll review them again post-retirement and pre-move. But the gist of it is, this long journey that got jump-started back in August when Robin moved the AC then had to empty the rafters and one non-stop bullet-dodging thing led to another... it's finally over. It's all put away or shredded or properly stored. Even the side quests like my latest batch of read comics and all those jackets we culled have now found new homes and will be picked up tomorrow. We are back to where we should have been months ago; even better actually, as we've cleared out stuff we hadn't intended on doing for at least another year. I applaud standard time!

Best Foot Forward

Happy Hallowe'en! And my biggest fear of the last week has now been allayed. My toe is not in fact broken, just badly bruised. The foot doc recommends thrice-daily soakings in warm water and epsom salts as well as careful monitoring. But what a relief! Psychologically my foot feels better already. Now if only I could fix tech that's gone awry. Apparently while trying to re-log into my grocery store's app which has been down for a couple weeks, I found out I hadn't been getting new email on my iPad or phone from my Yahoo account since Monday. Robin and I tried to fix both, and I wound up downloading the Yahoo mail app which is working at the moment but I still want my device's default email app fixed, and I still can't log into the supermarket app. On top of that, Liverpool lost. :( Ah well, tomorrow is another day. Too tired today to tackle the last of the "rafter boxes" so we can finally store them in the office closet, and thank goodness we get no trick-or-treaters as very few folks even know where this house is, so all I need is, say, an extra hour's sleep...

The Cramp Crows at 4 AM

OMG, that was bad. That was around the worst calf cramp I've ever had. Just when I thought it was fading it roared back again. So glad I ordered the heat packs, I don't want to go through that again. And it was happening in different spots, both the back and front of the calf. Glad my doctor recommended PT to strengthen my lower body, I really feel like I need it. The toe is improving, a large bruise has started to come out at the base which I hope means it's healing; I'm optimistic that it's just a bruise and not a break, but I'll find out for sure tomorrow. I conked right after I logged off at 5:30 today, and so I'm up a bit later than I want to be, but maybe I'll sleep through the night thanks to a shower and my gigantic leg warmers.

Hibernation Mode

So, so hard going into The City these days when I just want to curl up at home, but it's unfortunately mandated. And at least the trees are in full foliage at last in NYC! But it's exhausting anyway, particularly with the foot pain. The right calf is taking much more strain than it should as a result of the left toe pain, so I expect a cramp or two is in my near future. Glad I ordered the heat packs my new doc recommended, they'll be here Saturday so that's when the healing can start (as I'll have been to the foot doc early enough to do something about the toe as well). This is the rest of my life now, dealing with one pain after another...

Shredded and Wobbly

While I did job stuff from home, and a few personal things like sorting out my OMNY card wallet (I'm now fine with the commuter card, but I wanted to add a new payment method for my half-price senior card that I use when I'm not commuting and that's finally done; alas, they're unable to delete my old cards from my wallet which I think is ridiculous), Robin got busy shredding the last of our old finances. He's also done his two boxes from England, so all that's left of what used to be stored in the rafters is four boxes for me to go through, and the pain from my injured toe is preventing me from doing much else. My new (now local) primary care doctor was of no help there (although otherwise I thought my annual physical went well, and she did recommend I start exercising my lower body more at home which I do need to do), so I'll be returning to my podiatrist this Saturday to confirm the toe isn't broken, just bruised. I think I'd be in a lot more pain if there was a break, but with neuropathy you never know. In other news, I'm off to watch what I hope is the final game of the World Series so Milwaukee can go ahead and celebrate.

Stepping Lightly

The purple discoloration on the middle toe continues, and after being encased in a sneaker and being walked on in Manhattan during the day it does hurt a bit more than it did yesterday. The other frustrating thing about being a diabetic is how slowly we heal, so I'm putting arnica on it and waiting for the medical verdict. And since I work from home tomorrow I could afford to stay up a bit late this evening and watch the Brewers and Rays battle to a tie (at least as of this typing) so who knows if we'll go to a Game 5...

No Jacket Required

Today's big project was jackets. Robin accumulates them, and I think they're mostly wonderful, but we can't or don't want to take them all to England with us, and we needed the room in our coat closet and the "closet of boxes" where we were keeping the overflow jackets. Nobody really needs overflow jackets. I have so many KPMG ones, I suspect most of them will go after I retire, but for now at least I've put my Rothstein Kass ones into the recycle pile. Of greater concern is whatever the heck I did to my left middle toe yesterday, it's all bruised and battered. I don't think it's broken, even with my neuropathy I'd probably feel that, but the same numbness is actually a blessing in disguise as it's not really hurting me that much if I don't walk around on it. I hope my new doctor can shed some light on the subject when I go for my annual physical on Wednesday. Meanwhile I'm continuing to root for the Brewers to take it all in four games, but it probably won't happen, Tampa Bay isn't, well, the Yankees or anything...