The sun is out and I have one more day off. It’s Sunday.

Yesterday was stormy and it felt completely right to stay inside in front of the fire.

I accomplished nothing at all and I am torn about that.

I think I am moving into a phase of life where boredom is never an issue. I can sit on the couch with nothing going down and I am just fine with my own thoughts and my own lack of accomplishment.

Most weekends I am on clean-up duty. I enjoy cleaning – it’s a very active and creative process for me to arrange my little collection of things just so. I have paid my dues recently so this weekend I can say that cleaning up my space wasn’t a particularly dire or necessary activity. I earned the right to do whatever.

Yes, my bedroom could use a little work but I’m good with good enough and I’m not about to become obsessive about things. The clothes on the chair will not fold themselves, but they can wait.

I started a very low calorie diet before the holidays and while everyone else was packing on holiday fluff I shed a respectable eight pounds. I have a decent amount left to go and I have made a commitment to myself. I am striving to get myself to some place by the time I turn sixty but I am not defining where exactly.

I am committed to engaging and not checking out. I am not setting goals because goals are external and the process is to walk the walk and be happy, wherever it takes me.

If I eat well and move my body and I pursue my interests with some degree of gusto and energy then that’s enough.

I think too often we focus on the goal and not the process and without the process nothing is going to shift or change.

Last night I had to eat. For a week or so I have felt a drive to just stuff myself and I had more food than is on my plan. And that’s ok. It’s dry January and I am doing it despite not sleeping as well as I do with a bit of liquor in me and despite really liking to drink – it’s been hard for me but I am doing it.

I don’t like the inflammation and the heartburn that comes with drinking. If I am being honest, dry January probably needs to be a dry rest of my life because alcohol actually is poison and my aging body might prefer that I abstain.

Damn it to hell – the truth hurts.

The eating last night happened and my hands are stiff this morning. That’s my gauge of how things are going. I had three Trader Joe’s maple leaf cookies and my body is giving me hell about it today. My body has become an effing prima donna.

Gone are the days of cigarettes and gin.

Yesterday I decided that if I want to really tune myself up physically I will need to lift weights and I am a gym rat at heart. Home is not a place where I will ever work out. I made a workout room and I don’t touch it. I didn’t spend much money on it but there are mirrors and a ballet bar and some weights. Maybe once I get going the space will be useful but for now it’s useless to me and I have just had to shut the door to that room and forgive myself. It’s not my thing to workout at home.

Today I very clearly would like to go to Planet Fitness and also to make music. That’s all besides feeding the animals. Simple, yet I feel partially paralyzed.

This is when a person has to use all their oomph and just get going.

I am guessing that my day is going to need structuring differently if I want to achieve my most important goals this year: music, fitness and health, writing, hard work, outdoors and beach time, hiking and rest, a beautiful home that speaks to me, time with friends and family……..these are my goals and what I really am gunning for is enough focus, dedication, self-awareness and honest introspection to make and follow through on good habits and meaningful uses of my time outside of work.

Days like yesterday are necessary and/but it can’t be how I spend all my free time. The thing about being single is it’s very easy to stay in bed or on the couch and do nothing. There’s no one to throw shade or judge any of it except myself. Sometimes I relax and allow a lot of sloth and sometimes I crack the whip.

I’m searching for balance just like everyone else.

There is a Planet Fitness seven minutes away near Jack London Square. I am a member because it’s cheap and when I am on Maui I go with my daughter. Natalie has remade her body and it was fun to watch. She built muscle for around a year and added weight and then she cut and I really don’t know her exact process but it was slow and steady and she showed up and now she is strong and fit.

Meanwhile Covid took me down a notch or two fitness-wise. I was a person who did bar classes and hot yoga and it’s reasonable to say those days of sweat dripping on a mat next to another human who could take me out for ten days with a sneeze are over for the foreseeable future. I need my six feet.

Today it’s time to get going and show up and move forward and oy…….my brain is trying everything it knows to fight this but it’s time to just do it.

Wish me luck today. A lot rests on discipline and follow through – things I suck at. I am all inspiration and big dreams but there’s the back story to attend to…..the making things happen.

I am putting off finishing this post because then there will be nothing standing between me and this day that needs living.

oh, crap, it’s time…..

Prayer hands and off we go.

Yesterday I signed up for a medication service that collates your prescriptions and delivers them in little packets to your front door.

I am not usually one to splurge on fancy services like this, but it’s basically free.

I am on five medicines. At least three of them I consider essential, because it takes three anti-hypertensives to lower my blood pressure. The statin is icing on the longevity cake and my SSRI is just so I don’t cry all the time.

These five pills a day, sometimes six when I itch and need my Allegra, keep me humming along pretty nicely but as a person who rarely took medicine before turning fifty, I find the need for this many pills a little disconcerting.

More than needing the meds, the weird thing for me is the way that taking my meds every night makes me feel.

It feels like I blink and there I am, right back in front of the medicine cabinet – opening and closing all the bottles that are now my lifeline. Time is flying by as the nightly medicine-taking ceremony ticks off another day.

So it goes, over and over, day by day, and I don’t like it.

This small act of having someone else prepare my meds so all I have to do is keep the little packets and a glass of water by my bed – it’s huge.

The way it goes now is sometime in the evening, usually when I am in the bathroom, I say harumph I should take my pills and then I go bottle by bottle making a little mound of pills thinking the entire time – My God what has become of me?

There are some nights I don’t remember to take my pills until after I’m in bed. Good luck there because I have a very hard time moving once I’m settled in.

This medication service will give me back several minutes of time and a whole lot of consternation each and every day. It will put an end to the nightly fumbling around and the crazy-making experience of never being able to figure out how it is I always run out of one medicine before all the others. It will stop the frustration of showing up to Walgreens only to find out that their pharmacy closed early, or that they are open but only refilled the two medications that I no longer take.

The service lets you choose the cover of your packet dispenser. I wanted to choose the Nurse Ratched dispenser but one does not exist so I went with lavender.

For the win!

Another non-writing day so I will flip you my AI images. I fed in two random and not really very good photos into one of those new programs and for the price of two lattes got back these.

Kind of fun.

Makes me think of the Trump digital trading cards. Do you know that man sold out and raked in 4.5 million by selling individual digital cards for 99 bucks each???

Well, he did.

Some genius marketer tied the sale of each “card” to door prizes…each card is an entry. If you win you can have a Zoom meeting with The Donald or brunch at Mar-a-Lago.

I’m a way better person that Donald Trump and my cards would never generate diddly so if you want proof that life just isn’t fair, look no further.

Here are my images – for free!!

There are a bunch more but you get the idea.

It was fun and worth the price of admission and I can only imagine the let down when people see me IRL but it’s fun to be a mod fairy superhero from time to time.

And look at my abs!!!

Fantastic!

Deciding to journal/write every night has created a weird push-and-pull to my evenings.

I decided to set aside evenings to write, but writing takes away from living and doing actual evening things in real life. This is complicated by the fact that you need to do enough living to have things to say and things to write about.

It’s a lot to balance.

Adding to the equation is that the process of writing is excruciating. I have ideas I want to get down on paper that I have already had so there’s nothing new and exciting there’s just trying to make it all sound right. The writing is just grueling and mind-numbing and tedious especially when I would like to spend the evening binge-watching something sexy involving cowboys.

So every night now I have to decide between how badly I want to communicate thoughts I’ve already had versus how much I long for a little vicarious cowboy. I suppose the quality of my posts will be a clue as to which has won out. 🙂

Tonight is very, very windy. There’s wind and then there’s wind where you wonder which trees are coming down. This is a kind of wind even past that kind of wind. This is an aliens have landed kind of wind. This is the kind of wind that makes you want to yell WHOOPIE! with each big gust. It’s the kind of wind that blows planes clean out of the sky.

I just finished typing the last sentence when Rachel and I got to texting and I’m going to tell you – the woman makes me laugh harder and more consistently than just about anyone. Any time. All the time. Rome could be burning and she’ll just have to crack me up. I’m going to try and get her permission to reproduce a little of the banter in screenshots here but that will take a few days so stay tuned and if she says no, well – privacy.

So if she says no we’ll have to just paraphrase the exchange and change her name to Smaychel. J/k Rachel.

I think I am ready to be done writing about living for the night.

I’ll just dump the rest into one last paragraph before I sign off: voice lesson, played some fiddle, Gecko cage is getting insane, Blossom flipped, caloric restriction, not loving the dry in dry January, cute babies.

Now where are those cowboys?

I felt ready to return to work today. I woke up to the sound of dog retching but it did not deter me. I have come to expect that whenever I finish doing a deep clean on the house, the dogs will barf all over it. They aren’t sick. Typically they have eaten part of a tennis ball or something. But you never know.

The morning routine includes feeding the dogs and the pig, poop patrol inside and out (I have a couple little shits who like to leave me presents in the living room and it’s raining so good luck and lots of Nature’s Miracle to me). I have to soak Blossom my tortoise and check on Beanbag the gecko. Thank goodness geckos are nocturnal and get fed after dark because I could not possibly add another morning chore to my routine. Especially now that I have extensions and have to do my hair.

I am kind of bummed that I started growing my hair out because I think the very short hair was way more practical and I’m afraid once my hair grows out I will be too afraid to cut it. The extensions are cheating but I really hate in-between-length helmet hair on me.

I started with it really long but have had to cut it much shorter. The really long hair was a bit much and I had bangs to contend with. See for yourself. I keep catching myself in the mirror at weird angles and feeling like maybe I’m just too old for this look.

Whatever.

I have always thought I might do one face lift, perfectly timed. I think the time is now but I can’t afford it so that’s that. We all have our vanity. I am good with lots of wrinkles but I don’t like under eye bags and a floppy double chin. Those are my no’s. I’m gonna give it until I turn sixty this year to see how I feel. Here’s a pic so you understand my dilemma. LMAO, gravity.

*

Baby got neck!!!

Changing gears and moving away from the superficial, I got to work today and the place was dark. The parking lot was empty. It took me a minute…..I must have decided months ago to close the office!

Hell, yes!

I had a ton of charting to do (groan) and the office was a mess. My personal back office is an office slash storage space so when it gets out of hand it’s like a hamster cage full o’ crap. I have my patients donate their old toys and books for our toy basket and my office is always just overflowing. One of my patients donated most of her childhood books to me. Two big bins! I don’t like to take kids’ childhood books but these were spanking new sets I think she never cracked open.

So basically I was given a bonus day to get my act together. I charted and cleaned and somehow ended up feeling like the universe was on my side today. The phone didn’t ring at work and I got a lot done.

After work we had band practice and since it’s dry January there was no wine so it was all business. I realized after practice that I had been tense. I am kind of the manager and have to keep everyone on track in some way so we don’t just end up talking about other stuff like sports and current events. Or face lifts. For some reason in the middle of practice I told Monica that I need a face lift stat and she thwacked me like any good friend would.

She also wanted to thwack me when I said about forty times not to sing the high Emmylou harmony on Pilgrim because I don’t like it. I can be opinionated and annoying. I was annoying. I could tell by Monica’s face that I had annoyed her and I felt bad. I will text her today and she will forgive me. Note to self: know when to STFU.

The other band members have thrown out some songs I wouldn’t choose on account of their difficulty. I like little old time ditties with three chords. That’s all I need but now I am contending with Keb Mo’s “Life is Beautiful”, and “Cherry Bomb” by John Cougar Mellencamp (not the Runaways!). I also don’t like my voice on “Wildflowers” but I hope I can just get over myself.

The Band loved the idea of having musical dinner-house-concerts every six weeks or so. Six weeks will be Valentine’s Day and this house is finally ready for people. It looks nice and feels welcoming and if I compare where I am now to where I was a couple of years ago when I couldn’t get out of bed, I am doing an awesome job being a living, breathing, social creature again. I asked the band to mark their calendars for the Strawberry music festival in May. My dream is to go with a group and play music in camp, instead of going by myself and watching other people play music in camp.

I have paid my dues and solo-ed it up all I can stand. I need a little togetherness

So Day 2 of 2023 – thank you for easing me into this new year with a bonus day to get things straight. Thank you for my band and my animals and all the things that are getting me out of bed,

Tomorrow, I’ll try going to work again!

I decided not to write today because I didn’t want to. Instead I did a photo shoot. The purpose of my selfies is always to help me feel more beautiful and and to help me embrace more ugly.

There was once a dating site post and the guy said: “Show me your best photo. And then feel free to show me your worst.”

I liked that.

I show myself and the world (or the two people who read this) the worst of me because there is beauty in ugliness.

There is also ugliness in beauty.

So my best photos are perhaps not what you might imagine. And here we go.

My favorite is the first because it’s….a good photo!

This next one is me being extra sweet followed by a generic Facebook headshot and then a little attitude.

And this next one I just love. It’s like me and Jabba the Hutt had a baby…who aged! I just like the colors and the textures and the fearlessness in accepting all that neck flesh.

And finally this is just me.

End of photos. Good night. Write ya later.

And it’s a Sunday.

There was a little debate around here as to whether or not the new year starts officially today or tomorrow.

I decided to split the difference.

My favorite altered state is 5-10mgTHC and 1-2 glasses of Pinot. That’s over an entire evening and I am quite lucid and just kind of mellow and floaty and…..enough is enough. It’s time to dry out.

I still had a lot of cleaning left to do today because I did that thing where I started at the front of the house and worked my way to the rear. The living room looked great this morning but the dining room and kitchen looked like a cyclone hit. I had potted up a few plants in the kitchen – it was storming out yesterday – and I really got dirt everywhere.

I cleaned like mad and had my usual cleaning Zen thing. I love primping over my things and dusting stuff off and I also think it’s fun when I find something like these googly eyes. I have no idea who put them there.

*

We have a thing in this house where some things like hammers just disappear. I have been banging in nails with shoes, wrenches and my fist for several months and today, I found the hammer. So, I decided that it stays out where I can keep an eye on it. Behold:

*

I really like it when I style something in such a way as to make me feel uniquely brilliant. For example, I put hand sanitizer and hair ties on the ledge downstairs because someone always needs that at a party. I’ve been having people over now that we have Band practice at my house every Monday.

*

I finally got all the crap off the dining room table. It was momentous. Horns played and the angels sang Hallelujah. When I went to put the freshly laundered tablecloth on I noticed that the tablecloth had a lot of extra room so I put the leaves in my table and spent a long time just looking at it. A person’s old dining room table has a lot to say.

*

Cleaning took so long that I realized that the only people with enough time to make art are people who don’t work. That means that rich folks and poorer people make most of the art around town and people who sling beans for a living have less creative time. Cleaning feels creative to me but it isn’t music. I don’t know if I clean so that I won’t have to face the music (ha, ha) or if I really run out of time to play because I have to clean. I don’t know but a New Year goal of mine is to keep things tidy enough that I have time to do other things.

I am a drop and slinger. I come in the house after work and dump stuff down wherever I am standing and sling clothes over chairs. I am a controlled mess. I’d like to slow down a little and put things back where they belong more often.

I played some violin today but not in a good practice way. I just ran through some tunes. It’s fine, but it’s not really how you get better. Took me a long time to accept it but you have to play with drones and metronomes and do your exercises and focus on what you want to be different. It’s not like riding a bike.

Dylan came over to help trim Basil’s hooves and the pig got so pissed he skipped dinner. I had to keep checking on him and yep – still breathing.

I bailed on dry January last year but am doing it for reals this year. A little crabby but feeling pure and determined !

That’s my Jan 1. Owen came downstairs after a hard workout. That’s his New Year bump. Me, I’m a cleaner and a rearranger.

Ready, set…and off we go!

When I was younger I needed things to do. I remember thinking it would be fun to have kids because then I’d have something pressing to do every minute of the day and night.

Ha.

I did plenty of activities and eventually accomplished a lot, but back then when I had a sudden patch of time and energy and nothing to fill it with except old Bewitched re-runs it seemed like I could use a bit more in the way of hobbies, passions and worthwhile endeavors.

Now its just the opposite. My cup overflow-eth with all the people I want to see and songs I’d like to sing. My heart is full and all that but without structure I can still end up watching those Bewitched re-runs.

Or worse yet, scrolling.

That’s where discipline comes in, or so I used to think. I used to think if I wanted to learn Swahili or how to do a pull-up I just needed the discipline to get it done.

That could be true for some people but I only have enough discipline to get me through each day, one day at a time. It takes a decent amount of discipline just to do that but it doesn’t get me any closer to Swahili or that pull-up. For everything that isn’t essential (essentials are: work, watering the garden, animal care and husbandry, and my own most basic ADL’s -activities of daily living), I’m kind of all over the place or lying limp on the couch staring into the fire when it’s go-time. Sometimes I don’t wanna or I don’t remember to do such and such. Slips my mind that I am trying to play the banjo – that sort of thing.

A few self-help books and a bit of introspection later, I have figured out that I either need for it to be fun, or I need a really good plan if I’m going to do something outside of the basics of living. Doesn’t matter how much I want to throw pots or finish the three novels on my nightstand – without some compelling strategy besides discipline, it won’t happen.

Which brings me to writing.

I am not writing as much as I have ideas and thoughts for, and a lot is going to waste. I often jot down some brainstorm or funny anecdote (btw, I did the David Sedaris Masterclass and he was much nicer and much more supportive than I expected him to be). As I’m sure most of you (perhaps all ten of you?) know, he carries a pad and pencil with him at all times just for this purpose. The same way that I sometimes have to take a call from a patient during a conversation with family, David Sedaris similarly has to stop and scribble a note. It’s his job.

I am the best observer of life I know how to be but I suck at writing consistently. Writing consistently, at the same time every day, is something every author who teaches writing brings up in the very first lesson. The only time I wrote every morning is when I was dating and I woke up so appalled I had to vent.

I want to do it. I’m going to do it but I also am going to make it fun and easy by letting myself do a grab bag of whatever I feel like documenting every evening. I can’t always be expected to weave some kind of continuity through a piece the way I’d want to if I were say, David Sedaris, so I am just going to take that pressure off and let 2023 be the year of daily posts where anyone who wants to can jump into my head for ten or fifteen minutes a day.

Like right now.

It’s December 31. I just fed the animals and took my evening meds so my work is done for the year. Earlier though, I was deep-cleaning and purging and rearranging the house and I took some photos of cute areas and things I am proud of. I am going to upload these photos and what I want to say is that it has taken me years to discover my style (layers of cool shit, a.k.a Boho/Hippie). My 116 year-old home has also taken quite a bit of practice, and patience to master.

The house has good bones but it has been known to make me feel crazy, like I might need to just give up and set it ablaze. Don’t worry because I can never seem to find any matches around here so it’s un likely I will torch the place.

It’s always a little bit dirty, the wiring is sketch and some of the weird aluminum single pain windows have lost parts of their hardware. (Yes, they replaced the original windows in the 70’s or something hideous). The wood floors have seen much better days. Oh and my pink enamel Dream Queen kitchen is rusting. I can’t afford to fix up this house but I did finally get a new roof which is good because it hasn’t stopped raining.

This is my puppy Rayna staring at the cricket cage wondering if it’s ever going to quit raining so that she can go on a hike.

And here is the rest of the room. I love this room and give myself credit for putting in a half wall so that the big front area has some cozier nooks.

I really didn’t like the living room until I took all the back cushions off the sectional couch that Sarah David sold me for a song off LaMorinda Treasures. The couch is great but/and I also bought two other pieces when I was tipsy – one of which I didn’t even remember. And it’s BIG.

I covered the couch minus the back pillows with faux fur throws from Target. They are easy to wash and hide a multitude of sins. Plus it’s cozy and without the back pillows its like a chair and a half or an almost-chaise. I can sit on the couch like Edith Ann with my feet straight out in front of me or I can curl my legs to one side. The dogs like to flop on the couches and given the ratio of humans to dogs (2:5 at the moment but one of the humans is usually in his room), its kind of like two big dog beds that I am welcome to use when I’m home.

The two Santas and the Nightmare Before Christmasy rats stay up all year, because I enjoy them. There are also two ball ornaments I have hanging in front of a window and they stay year round too. It’s easier and things are always festive.

When I cleaned off this counter I found my binoculars. They are next to the old radio that belonged to my grandfather that is next to the pretend pay phone that looks real but is actually plastic.

The big horse came from Uhuru and I got it for a song. Uhuru is a used furniture store that sells donations to benefit something kind of secret and possibly communist or shady in Africa. I have never figured it out but they sell furniture and pies. The store is across the street from me, on the Piedmont side of the street. All the fancy furniture comes down the hill from Piedmont and the rest of us in Oakland fight over the used merchandise.

I moved the trailer ice chest to the living room to fill a space and I decided I needed a place to keep my violin out for easy access – and maybe it would be nice to store few books and things at the same time. That was my thought.

Easy peasy. I jumped in the Prius and fifteen minutes later I was home with the unfinished but very solid wood bookcase you see above, and my bank account intact.

That’s the beauty of my style. You can decorate on a very small budget.

The plant below is new too. Owen has a friend who works at the nursery down the street and I didn’t plan it but he was there and gave me his employee discount. I think because I miss my daughter and my daughter loves plants I am craving more greenery inside. Natalie is in Brasil until February and the pictures coming out of there look beautiful and……warm.

This photo is to show that the piano isn’t covered in random stuff. Poor piano. He was my mom’s piano from when she was young and it’s over a heater because that’s the only place I can figure out to put it. A couple of the keys are now dead. It’s been tuned many times and now I have to decide if it’s worth another sprucing up. I’m thinking yes but I must stop dropping the mail and god knows what down onto the piano. Trying.

That’s it on the house cleaning and organizing and bragging. I do love my space though.

At some point today I reflected on making things. I know because I wrote it under Notes in my phone. It occurred to me that making music and art and a home – making things – is a way to remember that we have existed, and still exist to take it all in. When I look at something I made, or look around my house I see memories everywhere my eyes land. Quite often I admire my own taste and talent. I feel blessed (probably the only time you’ll hear me use that word) every time I am gifted the inspiration to make something. Creativity comes from out of nowhere and riding each wave that comes our way – that’s all we can do.

I remember being out of my mind at the thought of Trump becoming President. I remember when he was President watching his news conferences and constantly wringing my hands and fretting over the whole thing.

I think a lot of us were sincerely apoplectic the entire four years.

The instant we got a real commander in chief I stopped the vigilance but it’s not like things suddenly normalized.

The war in Ukraine sealed it for me. I did not imagine we would sit back and watch a democratic nation get pummeled. Call me naive but I thought we’d do something to protect those people.

Yes, we are sending weapons so they can fight this war they never asked for. Yes we support them and are invested in the outcome. But turns out it’s a balancing act like threading a needle to stand up to Russia without starting WWIII.

So basically we will sacrifice men, women, children and entire nations in some kind of war game to preserve world order.

I was instantly disillusioned and I understand that there’s been bad things happening in the world since forever but this really got to me.

My mental health is pretty good right now. There’s still a few things bothering me but mostly I feel pretty decent. I am grounded by my animals (shout out to the new puppy Rayna), my work, the flowers and trees in my garden, etc. etc.

On a micro level my life and all that surrounds me gives me a sense of purpose and meaning. And beauty. My life feels beautiful.

But the world order can suck it.

Oh and let’s not get started on the metaverse and VR. I want me some of those goggles but same time I am a little freaked out by the extent to which we are happy to live inside a headset.

It all feels like a game. Once you start to think of life as a simulation and once you start to suspect that some pimply kid is gifting you with superpowers and subjecting you to crushing defeat it’s all a lot easier to laugh through the tears.

Nothing is real! Everything is real! What is reality anyway but a collective hunch?!?

I’m working on my micro life (the hand I was dealt) as best I can with a feeling that the macro stuff is all some kid/alien/god stirring the pot and haphazardly causing upheaval and mayhem.

Things have become just too bizarre to think otherwise. I don’t need to list all the bizarrity. You probably have your own examples.

Here are some prompts: homelessness and our inability to get folks off the street, animal shelters and a society that can’t seem to spay and neuter, people isolated behind their phones, junk food, junk products, consumerism, suicide – I gotta get myself to work and I need to stop writing but I’m going out on a limb to say that any enlightened society should be able to fix at least a few of these issues.

We have accepted a load of crap as an excuse for not doing better and that just seems so not like the reason we were supposedly created in God’s image and given free will. (You gotta admit creation stories and video games fit together nicely).

When you accept that life is just a bowl of cherries and it’s all a game everything is easier. It might seem like a copout but if it’s a game then it’s also a game we can win.

I have a hard time taking anything seriously anymore but paradoxically I am more likely to roll up my sleeves and try. If it’s all a game then it’s a game we can influence and sometimes win.

Yes, I am in it to win it, whatever that means. The world is going to spin off its axis in all kinds of directions and we must do all we can and know when to shut it all down and go inward.

I will leave you with my tortoise, Blossom. She is a sulcata baby and very well may outlive my human children. Lots of folks are raising them and I know because I belong to seven or eight Facebook tortoise groups. I think we all like the idea of raising a dinosaur that will outlive us.

Godspeed everyone. It’s crazy out there. But maybe it’s a good thing. Maybe it’s enough to get us to do the things we can – Serenity now! And Namaste.

Okay so I’m supposed to write about the Productive app and I’ll get to that but first I need to share that we may be heading toward an apocalypse or some kind of Mad Max future sooner than we expected.

What really got my attention is what’s happening in pharmacies right now. We could start with the observation that a huge percentage of us are on meds just to stay afloat but I happen to be a fan of better living through chemistry and I’m not going to take that particulor fact of modern living on as an issue. I personally need small doses of three meds to keep my blood pressure down, one statin per my cardiologist, a baby aspirin, an Allegra because the statin gives me hives, and my favorite SSRI, Lexapro.

And I feel great!

I feel great and yet I am dependent on meds that are made G-d knows where. So the first sign of the Apocalypse is I went to Walgreens to get my meds and their pharmacy was closed at 4pm. There’s a really great younger woman who works there and she always overshares, as do I. The first time I came in looking for a silver eyeliner she sprang into action helping me navigate the cosmetic section and I left the store with the perfect eye pencil and a gift with purchase. Turns out this woman used to work for a big cosmetic somethingorother but lost her job during covid.

She explained to me that she isn’t too proud to work at Walgreens but most people must be because that and the low pay and they can’t find staffing and that’s also why they can’t keep their pharmacy open – they got 168 prescriptions behind and though the store manager was trying to help fill prescriptions (you heard that right), they could not stay open.

Whoa.

She was so nice that, not wanting to see me stroke out, she retrieved my meds from behind the locked pharmacy doors. But there were only half my meds ready. I’m on this automatic refill program and it doesn’t work. They automatically refill a random number of my prescriptions but not all of them so I have to make several trips a month to fill them all, or risk stroking out.

My insurance company will not allow me a three month supply. If it weren’t so iffy I would love to stroke out and give them the bill and say….if only you’d made it easier for me to get my meds I wouldn’t have to ask you to pay 300K for this admission – but that’s just a fantasy.

Instead I swing by Walgreens several times a month and visit with the woman who knows make-up and isn’t too proud to work at Walgreens (her words) and I just hope that the apocalypse decides to wait a few more decades, at least, to declare itself.

I had an interesting exchange trying to get meds for one of my littles with a UTI. The first step after hours is to find a 24hr pharmacy. I have my patients do this because I have limited time and they know where they like to shop.

The mom said Walgreens. I gulped and parked myself on hold knowing that I could be holding for a pharmacy that might not be open if they had to close early for the night. You can follow our texts below (I have permission).

It took over an hour to help this family and all I can say to anyone contemplating a career in medicine is that if you can go into pediatrics and manage a private practice, and if you take all your own calls 24/7 – you will have a front row seat to some of the most adorable kid moments like little ones licking cookies, throwing ornaments at trees and peeing on their beds before passing out. The kids and their parents will drive you crazy and also keep you sane. If this momma hadn’t held with me I’d have lost my marbles but as it was we had a decent amount of fun.

But it’s still the apocalypse.

If I hear supply chain one more time I’m gonna have to face the fact that our opulent American lifestyle with full shelves that never run low – it’s a thing of the past. We are now a nation on back order and we aren’t as resourceful as say, Cubans or Ukrainians. Those folks make do better than anyone and we will need to take a page from their resourcefulness when a full collapse hits.

When my patients reported that pharmacies are out of ibuprofen this week a chill went through me. Trying to find Tamiflu was also tricky. There was a moment when a pharmacist refused to fill an order for prophylactic Tamiflu for an exposed parent because “they weren’t sick”. Yeah – not yet they aren’t and I happened to know this parent has bad asthma and I’d like to keep them from getting the flu if that’s ok. I can’t blame the pharmacists for attempting to allocate resources but with my 1200/month health insurance premium it seems a bit BS-ey not to be able to get some Tamiflu when we need it.

I would like to entertain you with my first week using the Productive app but I’m going to end this post and get to that later. I have only a few hours of weekend left and Band practice tomorrow and I’ve got some music to work on (more on that later too)

In the meantime I’d put some Ibuprofen in your emergency kit next to the Potassium Iodide if I were you.

It’s the end of the world as we know it, but I feel fine.