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I think I'm going to try to cram everything into one big post, since I haven't posted for a while.
Surgery did not happen on May 27th as originally planned. My paperwork needed to be turned in at work on the 26th and the surgeon's office didn't get it done. On the 26th I spent hours on the phone roaming around the cemetary nearly crying, calling people and going back and forth. My manager said she couldn't gaurantee me any time off without "medical documentation", and I ended up canceling the surgery. THEN I talked to my union rep and he was like "If this had been a surgery you needed to have because of a car accident you wouldn't have to worry about it - you have two weeks to turn in medical documentation." Grrrr... well, why could my manager not have SAID that? But whatever. I then spent the next couple of days spinning around trying to get things restarted again, and am now rescheduled for June 24th. Almost everything is in place, because they snapped to it a LOT faster the second time around. One outstanding piece of paper, and that is still the "medical documentation," which is like a doctor's note, basically. Should have been done today, but I heard nothing. The next possible time I could hear something is late Thursday or early Friday, I guess, because I think the surgeon is only in the office on Tu&Th.
Over the past few days the garden has been shaping up a bit - the beans have sprouted, we planted out the pepper seedlings, and today it was more lettuce seedlings and the tomatoes. The other day we noticed my rhubarb had started to bolt (it's down on the terrace, kind of out of sight out of mind) so I cut the flower and two gallons worth of stalks. I planted it maybe four years ago and this is the first time I've harvested any. I have two plants, both descended from a root that belonged to my great-grandfather, which I got from my cousin, and initially they both were about the same size, but it's like one is somehow getting all the nutrients, or maybe all the sun, because the one on the east is monsterous and the one on the west is wimpy. I made some compote the first day, with one stalk, a nectarine, two dried apricots and some sugared ginger. I should really be cooking down another compote right now.
I started reading "Twelve Years A Slave" a week or so ago, and while mowing the lawn or doing other things was using the Text To Speech function on the e-reader (Moon+ Reader) I have on my phone, mainly because that's just such a cool thing. But halfway through I started thinking it might be nicer to just get a regular audiobook version, so I bought one on Audible. Well, that was better, but I don't think I agree with the choices that the reader made about voice characterization. I can't think of his name at the moment, but he's another Ghanian-British actor, and I somehow thought the might just read in a British accent that that would have worked fine for me. I mean, the author, Solomon Northup, was from New York State and his father had been from Rhode Island, and I don't know what the accent would have sounded like, but it felt to me as though this guy who read it chose to make him sound like what he thinks a black American sounds like. So... kind of sounds like a rapper. Reading dialogue from over a hundred years ago. However, the story is so very well written, and the background so nicely detailed, that it was easy to listen to the whole thing over again from the beginning. If every historical memoir could be this good I would be a huge fan. It was as good as reading a good sci-fi novel with the world-building. :) Also, harrowing, because so much of it is so horrible and you know it's real.
Just before finishing that I picked up "Coot Club," the fifth in Arthur Ransome's "Swallows and Amazons" series, which is also excellent, but calming. The drama is low-key, the action is started by a kid being a bit of an eco-terrorist and setting a boat adrift because it was moored in front of a coot's nest, and the mother coot was seperated from her eggs. It's ugly-ass tourists from away vs. year-round residents, a theme close to any Mainer's heart. :) It really is, as Eor says, "a sure cure for the news."
Okay, well, I should either cook some rhubarb compote or just go to bed. :)
Surgery did not happen on May 27th as originally planned. My paperwork needed to be turned in at work on the 26th and the surgeon's office didn't get it done. On the 26th I spent hours on the phone roaming around the cemetary nearly crying, calling people and going back and forth. My manager said she couldn't gaurantee me any time off without "medical documentation", and I ended up canceling the surgery. THEN I talked to my union rep and he was like "If this had been a surgery you needed to have because of a car accident you wouldn't have to worry about it - you have two weeks to turn in medical documentation." Grrrr... well, why could my manager not have SAID that? But whatever. I then spent the next couple of days spinning around trying to get things restarted again, and am now rescheduled for June 24th. Almost everything is in place, because they snapped to it a LOT faster the second time around. One outstanding piece of paper, and that is still the "medical documentation," which is like a doctor's note, basically. Should have been done today, but I heard nothing. The next possible time I could hear something is late Thursday or early Friday, I guess, because I think the surgeon is only in the office on Tu&Th.
Over the past few days the garden has been shaping up a bit - the beans have sprouted, we planted out the pepper seedlings, and today it was more lettuce seedlings and the tomatoes. The other day we noticed my rhubarb had started to bolt (it's down on the terrace, kind of out of sight out of mind) so I cut the flower and two gallons worth of stalks. I planted it maybe four years ago and this is the first time I've harvested any. I have two plants, both descended from a root that belonged to my great-grandfather, which I got from my cousin, and initially they both were about the same size, but it's like one is somehow getting all the nutrients, or maybe all the sun, because the one on the east is monsterous and the one on the west is wimpy. I made some compote the first day, with one stalk, a nectarine, two dried apricots and some sugared ginger. I should really be cooking down another compote right now.
I started reading "Twelve Years A Slave" a week or so ago, and while mowing the lawn or doing other things was using the Text To Speech function on the e-reader (Moon+ Reader) I have on my phone, mainly because that's just such a cool thing. But halfway through I started thinking it might be nicer to just get a regular audiobook version, so I bought one on Audible. Well, that was better, but I don't think I agree with the choices that the reader made about voice characterization. I can't think of his name at the moment, but he's another Ghanian-British actor, and I somehow thought the might just read in a British accent that that would have worked fine for me. I mean, the author, Solomon Northup, was from New York State and his father had been from Rhode Island, and I don't know what the accent would have sounded like, but it felt to me as though this guy who read it chose to make him sound like what he thinks a black American sounds like. So... kind of sounds like a rapper. Reading dialogue from over a hundred years ago. However, the story is so very well written, and the background so nicely detailed, that it was easy to listen to the whole thing over again from the beginning. If every historical memoir could be this good I would be a huge fan. It was as good as reading a good sci-fi novel with the world-building. :) Also, harrowing, because so much of it is so horrible and you know it's real.
Just before finishing that I picked up "Coot Club," the fifth in Arthur Ransome's "Swallows and Amazons" series, which is also excellent, but calming. The drama is low-key, the action is started by a kid being a bit of an eco-terrorist and setting a boat adrift because it was moored in front of a coot's nest, and the mother coot was seperated from her eggs. It's ugly-ass tourists from away vs. year-round residents, a theme close to any Mainer's heart. :) It really is, as Eor says, "a sure cure for the news."
Okay, well, I should either cook some rhubarb compote or just go to bed. :)
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