Category: Adulting

Game-fying chores

I’ve said it before, nobody likes chores. There may be a specific one you enjoy (hanging laundry on a nice day, for example), but overall, they’re something that just needs to get done. And then there’s the matter of distributing chores evenly among household members. I had looked at chore apps before and hadn’t found one that was customizable enough to suit our chore list and that seemed fun.

That all changed this week, when someone mentioned Chore Wars on a group chat. The basic premise is that each household or party member creates a profile, and the Dungeon Master sets up the “Adventures,” allocating experience points (XP), chances of finding treasure or a wandering monster, as well as setting the relevant stats (standard gaming attributes based on Dungeons & Dragons or similar games). The gold pieces accrued for each chore are between a range of numbers, also customizable. There’s even a quick start for the Adventures that will create a set of common chores pre-loaded with all of that information.

I used the quick start for our initial set of Adventures, removing the irrelevant ones (ironing?) and replacing them with house-specific items like cleaning the litter boxes, taking out the compost, and refilling the bird feeder. And, after finding one the hard way this morning, cleaning up hairballs.

Our adventure has just started, so we’re still figuring out the website and haven’t decided if we’re going to exchange gold for real life rewards. Maybe once we reach a certain number of gold pieces between us, we’ll cash that in for a nice dinner.

Will you join me in donating to support trans rights in exchange for RPGs?

I have a few things I want to post about – a fabulous movie we watched this week, a book or three I want to share – but this seems more important at the moment. Several states, including Florida, have recently passed bills targeting trans and queer people, including removing books from schools that mention LGBTQIA+ topics. Florida in particular is actively removing topics from their public universities, hampering the education students selected when they chose to pursue a degree there.

I don’t know if the politicians making these decisions honestly believe the bullshit they’re spouting, or if they’re just trying to rile up voters leading into the next (painfully long) presidential election cycle. What really matters is that they are hurting people in the process: LGBTQ youth who are unsupported by family or community as they figure out who they are in life have higher suicide rates.

Back to RPGs, or Role-Playing Games (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, Dungeons & Dragons is probably the most famous of those)… for a $5 (or more) donation, you can buy this bundle with 505 TTRPG-related items. (The TT stands for Table Top, as RPGs are traditionally played sitting around a table.) If you donate $10 or more, there’s an added supplement available to you (woot! 506 items!).

What are you waiting for? The offer is only good through the next 22 days.

A medically-oriented first quarter

I’ve had ongoing pain in one hip (and sometimes leg) for a while now, and finally made it into the Orthopedics office at the beginning of the year to address the issue. Noting that I highly recommend against dealing with pain for “a while”; I should have gone in sooner, so I won’t bother listing excuses.

After eight weekly visits for physical therapy (PT), there was some improvement, but also ongoing stiffness and pain, so my doctor sent me for an MRI. That was an interesting experience in several ways, starting with how I arrived twenty minutes early but checked in fifteen minutes late. (Someone forgot to unlock the main door.)

MRI stands for Magnetic Resonance Imaging, and there’s a fascinating explanation on Wikipedia about how it uses magnetic fields and radio waves to map out soft tissues. I was warned that it’s noisy… a “cacophony” of sound. The office fortunately provided both ear plugs (standard) and a headset (apparently this varies); the operator was able to talk to me via the headset.

I was concerned that I would get bored; I was told walking in that I needed to try to lay still for thirty-five minutes (without a book or cat!). Instead, I found the process interesting. Before each scan, the automated system told me the expected duration, and I almost immediately noticed that the sounds for each scan, and even within some of the scans, were different, and the direction the sound came from varied. After some thumps and murs and hums, I was released back into the world to await my results.

The scan results were sent to me online, followed fairly quickly by my doctor’s assessment, translating medical-ese into, well, slightly less medical-ese: “chronic degenerative changes to your labrum and hip impingement”. That’s about what it sounds like… I scheduled a follow-up appointment for today, and she clarified that it’s essentially wear and tear on my hip joint. We rolled straight into the possibility she had mentioned before scheduling the MRI: a cortisone shot.

Alas, it will be a couple weeks before I really know the impact of the shot, it takes the steroids a bit of time to do their magic to reduce the inflammation in the area. I was impressed with my doctor’s bedside manner, she talked through each part of the injection process as she approached it, from the pinch of the needle going in, to the sensations I’d feel as the different numbing agents were released into my system.

Now I wait and see.

Chores as self-care for future me

From dishes to sweeping to cleaning windows, nobody that I know really likes chores. These daily, weekly, or even intermittent tasks are things we do because they need to get done, not because we enjoy them.

I had a revelation the other night as I was preparing for bed. As I approached the end of a toilet paper roll – you know, that single sheet or two left that have you wondering whether you should finish it – I realized that I would either be changing the roll in the low light of bed time prep or no light in the middle of the night. Changing it in that moment was looking after future me.

I thought about other chores that I do and how I space them out, realizing that I frequently look out for my future self. I start most mornings by emptying the dish drainer (after feeding the cats, of course), so that I have space after breakfast when I wash dishes. I wash some dishes as I’m cooking, reducing the clutter on the counter and in the sink. Since we have a policy that the person who didn’t cook washes dishes at shared meals, this also lightens the other cook’s workload.

I still don’t really like chores, but future me always appreciates the effort when she finds only one chore to do instead of two. Or toilet paper that doesn’t need changing in the middle of the night.

Inventing Spanglish terminology

We have a strangely multilingual household, since Cassandra and I both speak English (obviously) and Spanish (at different levels) and are both using Duolingo to pick up at least tidbits of other languages. When she tells a cat to get off the counter, she usually says it in Hawaiian; I frequently say it in Spanish. If I’m trying to say something in German (which is not the language I’m currently focused on) and don’t know a word, I’m more likely to fill in with the Spanish equivalent instead of the English.

It’s probably not surprising that sometimes we invent words to fill in some of the gaps. Having spent a decent amount of time in fandom, I’ve been familiar with the term “glomp” for well over a decade, but Dictionary.com and Google Translate don’t recognize the word. Since cats are frequently glomped (carefully) in this house, knowing the Spanish equivalent seemed useful. So Cassandra invented one when she said “estoy glompeando a Zuko.” Or was it “estoy glompando a Zuko“?

After some consideration, I believe the root verb should be glompear, and it’s treated as a regular verb for conjugation: yo glompeo, tu glompeas, nosotros glompeamos, etc. But it could also be a root verb of glompar, conjugated to yo glompo, tu glompas, nosotros glompamos, etc. Which do you think is the most appropriate translation?

If you don’t like it, que-ever, don’t use it. For my part, necesito glompear un gato antes de trabajar.

Normalize discussing health with your family

Earlier this year, I reached out to my mother asking her to document any health issues she or my father had experienced over the years. I probably should have asked for that information half a lifetime ago, when I moved out on my own, but as I age, it seems more relevant to know what I might be dealing with in the future. We already knew that my maternal grandmother had Alzheimer’s and my father had multiple strokes near the end of his life, but I wanted to know if there were other things we should watch out for (or should have, in some cases).

For example, my parents both developed different shellfish allergies as they aged, with different effects; I knew that already when I reacted badly to crayfish a couple years ago. I didn’t realize that my mother has high cholesterol, though I’m sure my doctor would have liked to know that. (Those medical office intake questionnaires need to add “not that anybody’s told me” as an answer on the family history questions.)

I didn’t learn until this year that my mother had “very heavy long periods” before having a hysterectomy when I was rather young. I did point out that it would have been useful to know that before we hit puberty, or before our girls did. Then I found out she defined “long” as a week, which prompted a discussion with some female friends as to what is considered normal, since before perimenopause, when I wasn’t on birth control, my periods ran a full seven days like clockwork.

Of greater concern is the question of whether my father had memory issues as he aged, or whether he was just not listening. Unfortunately, that doesn’t appear to have been documented or addressed with a doctor, so I’m not sure whether it’s something I have to watch out for. Or have somebody else watch out for, since I’d likely forget in that case.

A tale of Christmas Adam

Twas the day before the night before Christmas (also known as “Christmas Adam”), when all through the house, not a creature was stirring… probably because the furnace wasn’t keeping up with the sudden temperature drop, so all the cats were curled up with me on my bed. I would love to have called our HVAC company that morning, but we had tickets to see Dear Evan Hansen in downtown Chicago, and I was rapidly adjusting our plan because of the weather.

Typically, when we see a show in Chicago, we take the Metra in and walk from the train station to the theatre. It’s usually a comfortable walk of about a mile, though the last show we saw (The Twenty-Sided Tavern) was just over two. But that temperature drop had the forecasted high of 2 degrees Fahrenheit, and the wind chills were pushing it into the negative thirties.

We had already tentatively selected a sushi restaurant a couple blocks away from the theatre, and Google showed a parking option in the same block, so I decided we would drive into Chicago instead. If you’ve ever driven in downtown Chicago, you understand that this is not a decision I made lightly: the roads tend to be crowded with drivers who have no objection to darting across multiple lanes to turn at the next light or stop suddenly to let their passengers out. The Chicago taxi drivers mock the Uber drivers as poor drivers, and I suspect the reverse is also true.

Nevertheless, the roads near me looked almost clear of the snow that had fallen the previous afternoon and overnight, so we bundled up with multiple layers and ventured into the city. Between the weather and the holidays, the Chicago roads were the emptiest I have ever seen them. Though we couldn’t spot it at the time, Google’s directions to the sushi restaurant were accurate; it was buried in a food court with just a sign on the window along with several other restaurants. Unfortunately, there was nothing even vaguely resembling the entrance to a parking garage that we could see. We looped the block a couple of times, then headed towards the theatre to find their parking lot instead.

Successfully parked, we trudged through the slushy sidewalks and bitter winds to find that the sushi restaurant – and the rest of the food court – had a sign on the door saying they were closed through the weekend because of the winter storm and holidays. We huddled in their doorway briefly scoping out other nearby restaurants, deciding that the Mediterranean place we had just passed was our top choice… mainly because having walked past it already, we knew it was open.

After a tasty lunch and entrancing show, we reached home to find out that the house was still cold, and cold water was not running from our kitchen sink. After a brief panic, I realized that only the kitchen sink had an issue, and we directed a space heater towards its pipes, which sit against an exterior wall. On Christmas Eve, targeted space heater use brought the house up to a reasonable temperature until our HVAC company could come out.

All’s well that ends well.

Happy Holidays!

We’re in the midst of Chanukah, the Winter Solstice has passed, and Christmas is right around the corner. Whatever you choose to celebrate – or not, as the case may be – have a safe and enjoyable time.

Here in the Chicago area, we’re experiencing our first winter storm, topping off the bare sprinkles of snow with the potential for several inches, followed by a temperature drop that will make clearing the snow unpleasant. It’s the price we pay for wanting a white Christmas, I suppose.

2022 is going out with a bang!

This year has certainly had its ups and downs. I had my first short story published in an anthology (and my second one, which I’ll tell you about soon), we returned to attending Capricon in person (though I apparently didn’t blog about it), we’ve continued attending live shows, and we even went to Florida where we stayed in neat places, did some touristy stuff, ate amazing food, and most importantly, saw friends.

We went to our first WorldCon! But caught Covid. And to DorkStock and WindyCon (sorry, didn’t blog about those either… suffice to say, they were fun). But WindyCon coincided with finding out the old fridge was dying, and the day the new fridge was delivered coincided with discovering that the slow decline of my tires was accelerated by a nail in one of them. (Oddly, this is the second nail in a tire I’ve had this year, since our rental car in Florida picked one up.) Not, fortunately, the type that causes a bang and sudden accident… the “bang” in this title is metaphorical.

With other stuff going on, we’ve been a bit busy, so I apologize… my holiday cards are going to be late.

Coming soon: a functional fridge/freezer

My first clue something was wrong was the milk that started smelling sour on its purchase by date. I noted it, but sometimes that’s a fluke, a single bottle that progresses faster than normal.

My second clue was less subtle: a sticky spot by a cat food bowl and a gooey puddle nearby, on the freezer side of our old (still current) fridge/freezer. I opened the freezer and tracked the slimy substance upwards to a middle shelf, where a Ziploc bag of overripe bananas lay careless flung at an angle – apparently not properly sealed – and clearly defrosted. I bemoaned the loss of the future banana bread and composted them, then scurried to move whatever was salvageable to the garage’s full-size freezer that came with the house, wiping off banana goo as I found it.

We had plans, so I postponed shopping for a replacement to the following day, exploring several well-known companies that could potentially provide a replacement. I measured the space, multiple times. Then I measured the doors – the front door is slightly wider than the door to the garage, so we’ll plan on the fridge going in and out that way. We discussed styles and narrowed our options down before placing an order.

And now we wait, fortunately with a semi-functional fridge that looks surprisingly bare, stripped of all its magnets and decorations on the outside, and down to the bare minimum foodstuff that we haven’t finished on the inside. The new fridge/freezer (top/bottom this time), originally estimated to arrive the day before Thanksgiving, was delayed and shipped that day instead.

And we’re grateful to the helpers… the family member who offered to loan us a mini-fridge, and the neighbor who asked if we needed space in his. If the fridge had died completely, we certainly would have availed ourselves of the offered assistance.