Peeking into the rock

Using Plan F or G or something because the USB adapter for the tablet keyboard gave out and while there are USB to micro-USB adapters in Prague, they are for cell phones and don't work on the tablet even though they do fit(no, really: what the hell does the "universal" in USB actually mean?) -- I really should have just gotten a dog-damned laptop, and since the money has come from the tax return I might, once I figure out how much I need for other things. Anyway, what I'm doing now is sneaking my son's laptop when he is asleep or out with Hana waiting around in various embassies and passport offices (the things they have to do to keep their options open as they hunt for jobs anywhere but here are pretty arcane), or else, as now, off doing things for the English-language magazine they write for (something involving a recording studio and suffering in the heat, I understand).

So naturally, I'm working online, directly into Google Drive, which has its amusing moments. "Naturally" because I'm not junking up my son's computer with almost two hundred thousand words of files.

So, here's a known bug. If you zoom in or out on the text in Google Drive, the cursor becomes irretrievably misaligned with the text. Your solutions are: learn to assess where you really are in the text (which is not the same from event to event, but stays the same during each event), or close the file and reopen it. And guess what! The particulars of the way this laptop's touch pad is calibrated, combined with my clumsy hands that are used to three entirely different other machines, means that accidental zooms happen all the time.

Fortunately, nothing is lost but time, as Google Drive saves constantly and at light speed.

But what's really amusing? The spell check fussed at me for the word "fatherly." I clicked on it to find what it didn't like: I could not see any misspelling there. Alas, the problem was that Drive spell check was sure I had really meant "motherly." Really. The dictionary compiler apparently believes that we are a parthenogenic species.

On another front, I didn't go out for almost two days to give my knee a rest, and then when I went out it was still not perfect but I was able to crawl around at museum-gawking speed for like two and a half hours without deal-breaking pain, which indicates to me that I will be able to do some more sightseeing, research and shopping before I go home next week. This is good. I didn't travel nine thousand miles to sit around a small apartment, no matter how lovely the light is here.

This note is just for my records: this is two weeks off simvastatin and there's been no muscle pain and very little swelling. All this pain at the moment is bone on bone pain right in the knee. Also no marble-statue phenomenon, all soft flesh, and only a little localized tenderness over the ligaments in the thigh.

No, not healthcare related things at the moment.
( TMI to follow: trying an lj-cut in rich text editor because I fail at it in html )

1) My doctor's office called me today to tell me that the FDA has cut the recommended dose for Simvastatin in half, because the old dose was causing muscle deterioration.  I've been on the standard dose for years and years and years. I asked "how would you know if you were getting this muscle deterioration?"

Muscle pain and weakness, she said.

So, I had thought that I was experiencing the various weird muscle cramps and not being as strong as I used to be because of sedentary habits and possibly insufficient potassium (being on diuretics raises your need for potassium).  Of course, I actually still could be, and honestly I've had less of the pain since I started making sure I get more high-potassium foods, and I have had less of the pain since I have been making sure I walk the dogs and work in the garden and stuff.  But, well, it could be part of the picture.  So I'm cutting my pills in half.  The bonus is that I just filled my prescription, so a month's supply of simvastatin will actually be two months' supply this time.  Too bad I can't keep getting the 80s -- next time I buy the drug it will be a 40.

2) Yesterday I had a coughing relapse.  At first I thought it was another wave of the bad cold I had last week.  It probably was, partly, because my nose has never stopped being weird. But I realized part way through the day that I was also having especially bad coughinf fits soon after I ate, and I've been aware that I had drifted into eating way more starchy food and sweets and dairy than I ought to but I was just too lazy to work out what to eat instead (that's why the irreproducible recipes posts last week).  So I figured that at least some of the relapse is due to bad diet.
Then this morning I discovered that (a) I had forgotten and left accessible food on the counter overnight for the first time in a long time and (b) the rat that I thought had left because there was no obvious sign of its presence had not gone, and in fact had gnawed a hole a bit bigger than a ping-pong ball in the hunk of parmesan cheese.  As the day progressed I became convinced that part of my relapse is in fact due to the fact that I have had a rat for two months and I am intensely allergic to rats (and no other thing, though I have some non-allergy sensitivities, obviously).  And I don't know if it's the power of suggestion but my skin is prickling like it always used to when we had pet rats and I keep getting that horrible unsatisfying cough that goes on and on and doesn't dislodge the thickness back there.

Why have I had a rat for two months?  Because I am a wuss.  First I tried to sic the dog and the extra dog on the rat.  Unfortunately, both of them lived in households with pet rodents in their youth, and while Truffle will in fact kill a couple of gophers, voles or wild rats in the field every spring, they both seem to think that a rodent in the house is a scary authority figure they dare not even bark at.  Then I had to go all the way to Capitola to buy a rat trap because where do you buy one in Santa Cruz? (I just thought of a place I will go to tomorrow)  Then I had to work up my courage to set up the rat trap.  And it was even harder because Zack said to put it into a paper bag so I wouldn't have to touch the rat.  And then I got desperate and I finally tried to set the trap and it sprung immediately and then wouldn't reset again for drugs or money.  So no rat trap anymore.

Tomorrow I buy several rat traps of different designs (all in the spring type: no bait, no glue: I want the thing to die as quickly and painlessly as possible.  No catch and release because what would that accomplish?  We're talking about a serious threat to my health here) and I will set them carefully with no extra flourishes but just yummy bait, one at a time.

This condition threatens more than my daily health.  I can't do anything really vigorous while it's in sway because the slightest movement causes a coughing fit and urinary disaster (no, dears, kegels have kept this manageable when I'm not having overwhelming coughing fits, but they don't cure it, and nothing seems to help when I am having these coughing fits except to sit on many layers of folded towels and do lots of laundry).  I can make it through a day of work by spending a lot of time in the bathroom and taking a wide variety of drugs (antihistamine, antacid for the acid reflux component which is there even with the right diet and acid-reducing drugs during the periods when coughing fits are likely to happen, and demulcent/menthol cough drops -- Hall's or Luden's or Ricola, like that).  But I can't dance or run or be embarrassed (yes, dogdamn it, being embarrassed or otherwise emotionally stressed overpowers both my cough control and my bladder when I am in this kind of cycle).

The good thing about this noise is that there appears to be some reason to think I can get back on track, health and activity wise.

(tell me if I managed to get an lj-cut to work?  I had given up on using them because they never seemed to work)