Typing with my teeth

I woke up when D came to bed, went for a pee, and then lay there in the dark realizing that it was probably about time for the first game of the World Series to start.

I can't watch playoff games like I do regular-season ones, despite the exorbitant amounts of money the MLB TV subscription still costs. But I could look up what local radio stations carried the broadcasts and pray that one would work for me online. Luckily, it did. I went with the Milwaukee broadcast, because
a) I want the Brewers to win
and
b) the commercials on the radio make me feel at home. Kwik Trip! Now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time...

The game got exciting very quickly with the Brewers taking a lead to give their crowd some reason to scream so loud I couldn't hear what the announcers were saying any time one of their bats touched the ball, even if it was on its way to a routine out.

I got tired and tried turning the radio off and going back to sleep, but I just lay there and wondered what was happening. It was no use. I'm too excited about this World Series, with its "small markets" (i.e. not New York or L.A.), and its teams misunderstood as "old-school" or "small-ball" but which aren't full of big-name players who get famous fans in the stands.

I think I dozed off in the middle innings (around 3:30 or 4 am), but I was locked back in by the time Trevor Megill was trying to get those last few outs. I heard that double-play call that would've ended the game and it was all I could do not to scream and flail in bed -- I consider it a sign of my devotion to D that I managed to avoid this; it really did seem like a close call -- and then with the agonizing challenge. When the Rays wrenched that last out back, I thought the funniest possible thing would be for them to piss it away again, and they did, and it was just the most delightful outcome for the first game.

And then I did fall back asleep, and slept until 11 -- a total of nine or ten hours of sleep last night overall! just which this baseball intermission. I felt pretty shitty when I woke up -- like a little hungover -- but this was elating in its own way because it was just a reminder of how much fun I'd had. I'll do it again: what's the point of having this upcoming week off work if I can't get excited about baseball in the middle of the night?

D asked me "So what are the implications of this game?" and I think it took me fifteen or twenty minutes to stop talking. Baseball has the most narrativium this side of the Discworld.

Pre-op appointment today went fine. The surgeon I've got continues to be very cheerful and smiley, despite also being very German. I continue to surprise myself by not feeling very anxious about this.

There's nothing like a private clinic to give you a measure of reassurance that you're in good hands, and they're handing me back to D who is lovely, and then we'll go home to V who does so much support, and who now is being supported by angelofthenorth while we're away, and so on and so forth.

I am at the center of this network of care, and I'm well aware of my role in it. Soon that will be to not get impatient to do too much. For now, it's to pack the things I need for an overnight stay and try to get some sleep.

I have done this before, as one of the support people, and I've had this central role when I broke my ankle. This feels straightforward to me.

Having been so stressed about earlier stages of this process that I literally wouldn't have persisted without help from D and others, having always had a lot of medical trauma and triggers, I can't say why I've been so calm ever since I got the surgery date, a couple of months ago. I assumed I was just dissociating, my brain trying to protect me from this, but my counselor said I didn't sound like it when I speculated thusly. I said then is it possible that I've just used up all my intense emotion on this in the first, oh, two years of trying to get this far, and I just don't have any left? It was a joke and not a real question, I know that's not how emotions work, but also I don't have any other theories.

I am not in need of any, though. My lack of perseverative anxiety on this topic might be an anomaly but it's a welcome one!

By the time I was asked if I had questions, I had very few (I thought of a few later, of course, but nothing too consequential). I did end up asking one that D had asked me, which can be boiled down to

And in other TMI news:

I won't get another shower for a week now, and I'm really going to miss them!

I learned how to use the pourover and made coffee this morning! (I had a rough idea of how they worked but was still experimenting a bit, and this one makes the coffee in a little carafe where what a friend has made me before is just a filter that you put over a single mug.) And I made croissants; I couldn't resist them after I spotted that here you can get the kind in a tube that you pop open. I was so excited to see them in Lidl last night, it was practically a religious experience.

Sonntagsbrötchen, the package called them: little breads for Sundays.

It happened to be Sunday, which is nice, but I'd have made them even if it weren't. We're on vacation!

After my terribly civilized breakfast, we had a very vacation-y day; going to the Rheinturm (Rhine Tower), which reminded me a little of the Space Needle. After tea (for me, who'd had museli and fruit as well as my croissants, before D woke up) and lunch (for him), we found ourselves with some time to kill before the next boat tour that we got a discount on with our Rheinturm tickets, so we went up to the Gehry Bauten (Gehry Buildings), which are a) made by a famous architect that I hadn't heard of even though I've seen one of his buildings a bunch of times, b) has a name that sounds like "Gary" (the way we say it anyway) and c) one of which is actually home to the clinic I'll be in! There's a white one, a brick one, and a shiny steel one, and I'm going to the shiny steel one which is also my favorite of them!

The river tour was fun (if chilly for someone whose nice warm hoodie doesn't zip up! I wore my medium-weight one today and it was mostly okay but let me down here!). It's nice to see how a city that clearly grew up around water makes so much more sense from the water.

We left the boat near the Altstadt (old city) which is also home to one of the things we were enthusiastically told to visit: a brewery that serves altbier (old beer) in small glasses and just tots up the total on your beer mat. The beer was nice but we couldn't quite see our friend's devotion to it, but the "bar snacks" we eventually hung around long enough to order definitely made a difference: I had bread with a cheese like Edam or something, and I added lots of the mustard we were offered along with the salt and pepper. D had raw pork mince and raw onions, and really enjoyed it.

We staggered home for a rest, no need for dinner now as such, and did some laundry. D had a nap and I read a book. It's been a nice chill evening after another busy but great day.

I slept appallingly last night -- nothing special except maybe overtiredness after a long day, and my usual chronic insomnia.

But everything else about today has been pretty great.

We strolled around in nice sunny weather and found a nearby cafe for lunch (after a somewhat lackluster breakfast of "things we could find in the corner shop last night": nutella on toast, and potato chips) where we could sit outside. I had a lovely veggie sandwich on a bagel (accustomed to protein for breakfast instead of sugar, I have rarely been so glad to see a hard-boiled egg in my life!) and we even had a G&T with it so diffrentcolours could say it's Gin & Teutonic.

After a little bit of rain and the dismaying realization that, having brought all my zip-up hoodies with me so that they'd still be usable post-surgery, the zipper pull on the one I was wearing has somehow gone missing since the last time I wore it and it was fine. It's my heaviest and most water-resistant of the three hoodies I brought with me, so a real pain as it's much less water-resistant if I have to try to hold it closed by crossing my arms in front of me!

But luckily the rain didn't last for long. And after some more walking around, including a nice park and admiring many Good Dogs, we met up with an internet friend of mine who's one of my favorite people on fedi where we know each other. We had coffee and she played her shinobue, a Japanese flute for me. Then we had dinner at her favorite vegan Japanese place (she's a longtime vegan who used to live in Japan so she knows what she's talking about there!).

And after saying goodbye to her at the Hbf, we came back to our Wohnung via Lidl, where I pushed the shopping cart and threw into it anything that I thought I might like to eat and especially things that are very easy to prepare: a little pizza, falafel, pesto, gnocchi... We can have mueli or yogurt for breakfast tomorrow! And after I refused to have anything to do with the nespresso pod machine which is the only way our Airbnb provided us to make coffee with, D found and talked me into allowing us to get a little pourover thing. He really wanted to be able to make me coffee, bless him.

A very good first day: I know now how the shower works, I've unpacked my stuff, I've met a friend who's even more fun offline than they are online, we have easy food. I even bought myself a new book as a treat: when I realized that my current library books are about things like Nazis and psychological warfare, I got a book about baseball that I read most of as a library e-book and adored but then it disappeared! Can't be borrowed any more! (The rules about e-books in libraries are heinous.) But I could buy it from the Kobo store for £8, so I did that.

The first thing I tried to do once we got our suitcase was go to the toilet.

D found me a disabled one with a weird door: it slid open when you pressed a button (like the ones I'm used to on trains). But when I walked in, the door didn't close! There was no similar button. Nor could I see any other way to activate it. It was a pocket door, it'd disappeared entirely so there was no way to pull it closed or interact with it.

I just stood there in this open room, feeling like there were cartoon question marks above my head.

A nice lady happening by (this door was opposite the entrance to the ladies') helped me out. First she asked me something that I didn't understand of course, which made me feel even more helpless. Then she said "You want to close?" Yes! Why could I remember the word for open right now and not close??

She pointed out a weird switch, like a German light switch which I find confusing anyway...

I pressed it, a red light came on but the door didn't move. I reset it, tried again, said something stupid and obvious like "It doesn't work," she came in and tried it, she went outside and tried the button that is there right under the perfectly functioning one I'd used to open the door. I was a little worried about that one because I didn't want to be stuck in there if I couldn't operate the door from the inside! But it didn't matter because nothing happened. Nothing continued to happen.

"This is Germany," she said to me finally, in an inscrutable tone of voice. And we went our separate ways.

(I had to use the regular men's room, which stank of stale piss even through my Flo mask, had tiny indicators on the cubicle doors of whether they were vacant or occupied that I had to just push on all the doors anyway, and was as quiet as the grave despite how crowded it was, because no one washed their hands apparently.)

In the next half hour or so, D had to carry our suitcase up a non-working escalator, the transport app didn't have signal in the station so we couldn't use it, the correct train we eventually got on was 15 minutes late, and it was almost impossible to both find and then open the door to the apartment that we've booked.

We finally got in but after a very cursory look at the place because it was almost 9pm, we got some food from a nearby Greek takeaway, walked around a little to see what's nearby, and had a drink outside a bar. D called my gin-based cocktail a Gin & Teutonic.

We're here! We've got plans to see friends of mine from the internet the next few days, before my pre-op appointment Tuesday. Turns out I know a few people who live in the vicinity of Düsseldorf.

I'm in this uncomfortable liminal place now: done with work (feeling good about how I wrapped things up! which no doubt is hubris over something I've forgotten but never mind, it feels good for now), trying to pack.

I've packed for lots of vacations and I've packed for hospital stays, but I've never had to pack for both at once.

And especially when I don't know what if anything I will be able to hold or carry or manage on the way back. That isn't something I'm used to. So we've only paid for one checked bag (on our budget airline we've never heard of, I'm amazed we're even being seated together without having to pay extra for that) because D will have to be responsible for it all on the return trip.

I think I've got my stuff all packed, and my tummy is playing up, no doubt due to the stress and the relative lateness; 11pm is past my bedtime.

We leave about lunchtime tomorrow, so there's time for a little bit of sleeping in and also all the last-minute flailing.

Now I just need my stomach to stop hurting so I can sleep!

I had such a ridiculously busy day today.

I started with knocking over a plant next to my desk so the time I intended to spend on making coffee and breakfast I instead spent trying to sweep up the dirt, grit, and actual rocks (for drainage) and getting them back into the pot -- luckily the plant, a big old yucca, is fine. But the floor was gritty under my shoes and my chair wheels for the whole day and I didn't have time to do anything about it.

Because, after a brief team meeting finalizing the details, my team went into a big Teams meeting where we were showcasing policy to our whole directorate (which is over a hundred people, though they didn't all turn up of course).

It's a big deal ( work stuff )

I'd not long since eaten my breakfast!

I did take advantage of a chance to just stare into space and play on my phone a little though, which was soon interrupted by ( surgery logistics [brief mention of weight] )

So it was nice to get that out of the way! Handily I'd been sitting right near D's laptop when the call came, so he could not only look up how much I weighed but make notes while I talked on speakerphone. But my goodness, how exhausting.

I really did go and have some lunch after that.

And before too long it was time to start getting ready to go out to an in-person meeting this afternoon, just in town again. I was tagging along with a colleague to a pan-disability forum which like all the other ones I've been part of lately was accommodating of the loudest and most demonstrative people's access needs, so I had to sit in the dark which was especially hard on my eyes considering how bad they've been lately (I don't know if the stress is "going to my eyes," the way my mom used to say colds did when I was little, or if it's just a coincidence but my god has my nystagmus been flaring lately), and usually more than one person was talking at the same time so I stayed quiet. Luckily the person who said green light was the worst color for them and blue was best was sitting across from someone who was the opposite, so I didn't have to try so hard to make my There Is No Correct Color to Make Everything point quite as strongly as I usually do as they'd already done that for me.

This evening I've started packing the things I won't need beforehand into the one suitcase we get to check. And I've made a list of the other stuff. Because we fly to Düsseldorf the day after tomorrow! Wild.

Whenever I get asked what kind of work I do, I kinda dread answering because I work in policy.

I love it, but most people don't really know what it is, or maybe they have a feeling that it's something boring or abstract or remote from their lives.

I'm met with a lot of "Oh..." and similar reactions. Real conversation killer.

But in one of those books I now have from the library, Stories Are Weapons, Annalee Newitz has paid my line of work a great compliment (transcribed from the audiobook as I was getting off the bus, so it might not be exact):

I would argue that policy is a type of applied science fiction. Policies are visions of possible futures.

I'm gonna start telling people I work in Applied Science Fiction.