Time for another round of “Is this ‘just’ a particularly nasty allergy/asthma day, or am I also coming down with something?” 🤔
I definitely got a snootfull of mold spores I shouldn’t have yesterday and especially after I got up today, but yeah. Hopefully that source is taken care of since Mr. C got home and dealt with the likely source (*crossing fingers*), and I have the HEPA unit running in there to try and mop up the worst of the remnants. With any luck, tomorrow won’t be a repeat.
But, I’ve been frustrated at being pretty firmly on the disabled list tonight. Between that and the antihistamines, I just got up from an unplanned nap a little while ago. When I had planned to push through and get some already overdue aquarium cleaning done.
We even got Indian delivery to try to save some spoons for that, though tbf I didn’t really need to work in the kitchen when I could hardly breathe either. Still irritated at not being able to follow through.
One of my recent purchases:
Meanwhile, back home:
I mostly did a quick comparison out of curiosity, because I remembered it being like 2-3 pint bottles for $1 when I was last buying any. About the same price still. Figured it couldn’t be much more now, and definitely not around 20x as expensive 😨
This time I was specifically wanting some for a skin problem, and to dilute for a mouth rinse. Best thing I’ve found for some uses. (And it’s not going to turn your teeth brown like the chlorhexidine they push for any kind of gum problems here… 😦)
And I would rather avoid unnecessary additional ingredients which might cause more irritation. (There is one Peroxyl mouthwash formulation available, but yeah. It’s more expensive, besides the extra crap I don’t want.)
I may have been able to find some plain peroxide a little cheaper somewhere else, but possibly not by that much. It’s barely used as an antiseptic here, and IME really is not worth the hassle of trying to buy in person. Which really surprised me the first time I tried.
Maybe my favorite comment I ran across on another site, though:
There are some very dangerous uses for hydrogen peroxide, using it to clean a cut is a very strange idea. I would not like to be the one helping OP to obtain it.
That would be in reference to another American looking for the 3% stuff to treat a cut. It would be very difficult indeed to do anything nefarious with that weak a solution, even if someone wanted to try.
Reminds me of when my first GP here was appalled to hear that I’d regularly been taking Benadryl, because it is “a powerful sedative” 🤔 Including with the attitude. (No joke. Turned out they only sell diphenhydramine as a Nytol/Sominex here, in small boxes behind the pharmacy counter.)
Oh yeah, I also had no trouble buying the 40-volume hair kind at Sally’s before. No questions whatsoever. Shame that’s not something I would want to use except for hair.
Impressive differences sometimes, yeah. And it’s definitely not just the US that’s prone to weird panics. Unfortunately.
Guessing it’s been at least 5 years now since those lower ribs decided to break. (I could look it up, but nah. Doesn’t really matter.)
But, I just keep getting impressed at how, anytime something makes the muscles around them tighten up, they will still hurt like a sonofabitch. With as far down as mine go, that also means the lower back tightening up will set them off 🤗
Tonight they’re being particularly fun, after that fall earlier and then getting really cold. Usually it’s mostly the one side with more (totally healed for years) breaks, but the other side wanted to get in on the act too.
Hoping that will calm down some with sleep, but we’ll see.
Plans for tonight: hot dogs. For which I am currently trying to throw together some lentil chili and a little slaw made out of a fragment of Savoy cabbage lurking in the fridge. Because I really want proper hot dogs with chili, and the store up the street was unexpectedly closed all weekend for some kind of renovations 😒
Don’t know if they’re open now, with the doors blocked off so I couldn’t see if there was a sign–and I just don’t have the spoons to hike up there and see right now. Especially if that means coming back empty handed again, and still needing to use spoons I don’t really have to MacGyver some food out of what we’ve already got at home.
To make things even better, even if I did have the energy to do that and feed us too? Bussing it elsewhere wouldn’t be a reasonable plan, with maybe £20 cash on hand and HSBC having decided to block my debit card for no apparent reason again 😬 (As I also found out over the weekend.) The buses also haven’t taken cash for years now. I guess I could put £10 on an old Oyster card to get to another store and have the other £10 to spend, but nah. Talk about extra hassle and spoons I just do not have available. Hopefully Mr. C will remember to bring more cash, though that’s not helping today.
(And of course my half-deaf ass hasn’t had the wherewithal to try calling the bank to deal with that yet. I’ve been doing without a working credit card for months, for the same reason. Most likely their fucked up anti-fraud algorithms again, but who knows. There’s no accessible way to get in touch about account problems, and my one attempt at dealing with the bank using the shitty relay service here was unpleasant enough that I don’t want to try that again. Going to have to think of something, though, because now I have no direct access to funds whatsoever. While needing to do most shopping online, because disability. I really fucking hate HSBC by now, but nobody else seems to be any better 😧)
Enough disruption that I needed to bitch about it, apparently. I know I don’t handle disruptions that well at the best of times, but this is just too much at one time. When I’m already having a hard time coping lately, as a baseline.
Probably should have just said fuck it, and asked him to get takeout tonight. But, I am stubborn. Plus I didn’t trust those overly expensive GF sausages to stay good much longer after the delays already, and I really wanted some hot dogs after not getting them over the weekend.
Sometimes specific comfort food is exactly what a person needs. Even with kitchen MacGyvering required. Have to do that enough usually between foreign ingredient availability and special dietary requirements, so at least I have gotten decent at it by now.
At least the timing worked out better than it could have with this virus garbage. Mr. C got sick Wednesday, and had already planned to take Thursday and Friday off as “use it or lose it” vacation days. Today, he seems to have his voice back some.
He’s one of those people who rarely gets sick, and usually throws it off quickly when he does. Bit of a surprise whenever it does drag on even this long.
As for me, I wasn’t totally sure Thursday if I was also coming down with it, or if it was just an extra crappy day, “normal” chronic illness styley. Then I suddenly got exhausted and had to lie down for a couple of hours–which somehow turned into 11 or 12!
My throat hasn’t been as bad as his, and thankfully so far the asthma hasn’t been going crazy (*fingers crossed*). So, hopefully it won’t mean a couple of months of coughing this time. I don’t care as much about the rest, as long as I can breathe. (Or so I tell myself…) Not much fun right now, but priorities.
But, that’s a decent summary of the past few days around here.
I did get an NHS flu shot letter with clinic times this year, with diabetes putting me in a priority group. And yeah this is a good reminder to try and get out to do that, once this bout with the crud is over.
Well, that was interesting. Just back from buying some more cat food and miscellaneous up the street, after picking up those packages. (Thankfully somebody was home, because I wanted at least one of the items today.)
Anyway, the warm Friday evening collection of assholes outside that pub next to the shop decided it was more fun to hassle me than the young woman in hijab right ahead of me. Ignored her, then started yelling and hooting as soon as I went past.
Which, I am glad in a way, for her. But, I could have done without that too.
No idea what these grown-ass adult jerks are even triggering off of most of the time, but it sure does get old fast.
Perfect setup again to drive myself crazy: Mr. C is running late home without getting in touch (again). So, I delay finishing putting supper together–and crash my blood sugar (again)! 😈
Cue some shaky OCD fun.
As many times as variations on this exact same bullshit have happened, it still took me a while to recognize what was going on. (Again.)
Now at least I am fed and sitting down for a while. And I am already getting less looping garbage. Rationally pretty sure he’s fine, but just shit at remembering to text me once he’s caught up in something and/or after a couple of drinks. I’m not very happy with him right now, assuming he is fine.
Frustrating how this stuff can keep sneaking up on you, though.
With one (1) not quite full cup of coffee, I just managed to make a pond in the microwave, plus wet down two new loaves of bread and a plastic bag of onions.
(At least the bread was in closed plastic bread bags, and I don’t think any managed to seep in. The onion bag was open, so it went in the trash and now the onions are air drying after some toweling off.)
This would be the second time in maybe a week that I have fumbled a cup and spilled drinks in the microwave while trying to warm them up. The previous one mostly went/stayed inside there, however.
Thinking again that the main reason I have run into so many problems trying to deal with the NHS that I’m currently just having to go without treatment for some serious health problems is probably a combo deal.
Mainly consisting of (a) more things working against me wrt discrimination, and (b) much less/not as effective support available as a disabled foreigner trying to navigate an unfamiliar system. Set up so that it’s much harder to just find someone else to see who might treat you more like an actual person, rather than a weird and exasperating waste of increasingly limited time and resources.
(And I have to say that the current state of the US healthcare system likely does not help with some perceptions there. On a couple of fronts. Kinda tying in with the too-popular scapegoating of “NHS tourists” as somehow responsible for the austerity undrrfunding mess. People working in the system are not magically exempt.)
At least I am less inclined to blame myself for all of the difficulties now, while well aware that probably 90%+ of people not facing the same combination of garbage totally would. Still very short on feasible workarounds, though.
That calf muscle “plantar fasciitis” has thankfully improved enough that I’m about to try gimping up the street shopping. Which I had been particularly holding off on, since things seized up on the way back the last trip to start this round 😒
But, better use the cane. Wished I’d had it then, but that store has a cramped enough layout that I rarely use it going there. Very awkward trying to juggle a basket and the cane in tight quarters, and I don’t like trying to navigate with a cart (doubling as a walker with the cane stashed in there). But, that looks like the best option today, and we could use some food.
Glad we do have even a small supermarket just a couple of blocks away, but sometimes I do wish they didn’t make the layout so awkward trying to fit at least one more aisle than the space needs.
(ETA: Though, on the plus side? At least I haven’t been needing the cane in the house much the past couple of days. Things are even worse set up for it in here, which is another story that I don’t need to get started on now.)
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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