Wednesday, May 23, 2018

Legwork and Life, week of 5/23/18

This week "feels" like it was a balanced week, but honestly, in review, I think it was probably more good than bad.

The church incident I related last week, with the being shooed out of my accommodation area, is going to be reviewed by a church official I'm familiar with.  Actually, it's the same person that did my premarital counseling... because that's pretty much the only "office staff" person I feel sufficiently familiar with to relate my situation.  I'm somewhat annoyed that the response was very last-minute, and the mediation for the incident is going to have to wait until Thursday morning... but I'm also fairly sure this particular staff member is remarkably busy with other facets of the church life, and the fact that they're trying to fit me into the week at all is probably a stretch for them.

So meh.  Grumpy about the whole thing, but you do have to be reasonable about others' time and needs.  Speaking of others's needs, one of my readers who attends the same church stopped me on Sunday to express her support and relate that sometimes she has similar sensory problems.  I was rather startled, actually, as I usually don't hear from my readers much, and one of my strongest, most enduring life lessons has been: "You are utterly alone, including your specific problems."  So that was a really heartening moment in an otherwise disheartening day.

Another highlight from the last week was going to the farm market and a store called The Cheese Lady with Chris and my mother.  It wasn't the prettiest day for it, but we were hoping to pick up some meat from the humane farm that sells there, and snag some fresh vegetables and nice, Mom-friendly cheese.  Sadly, the humane meat farm was just leaving as we arrived, but the rest of the farm market provided lovely, inexpensive produce.  There was a lot of asparagus (blech), but also things like fancy lettuces and other greens, potatoes of many colors, berries, and a truly astonishing number of fresh flowers or potted flowers.

I do kind of wish we'd get to the farm market more often.  Their produce tends to last so much better  than the stuff from the store.  But I guess part of the problem is the unpredictability of the vendors, and the fact that it's not one-stop-shopping the way Meijer is.  Also it's not a 24 hour enterprise, and Meijer is.  Truly, I am ridiculously spoiled.

Anyway, the Cheese Lady had no disappointments.  With over a dozen each of sheep and goat cheeses, there was plenty to choose from... and despite that I need to be cutting down on dairy, I did indulge in my favorite cow-milk cheddar. It's just so ridiculously good.  Mom was able to find a selection of cheeses to suit her diet, which included at least one that should be good on pizza.  So that's fun.  It's annoyingly hard to find foods she can eat without having to be very careful, but I think this place might be okay for that.

My Monday evening got shot by getting my blue hair redone, and then cut nice and short.  These trips almost invariably take hours, and I'm really starting to wonder how long I have the patience for it.  Besides taking literally 5 hours at present, the process involves breathing bleach and harsh chemicals while they sit in my hair, and putting up with the loud noises that accompany the functioning cosmetology school (screeching chairs, loud music, chatter all around).

The crowning awful part, though, is common to any short hair haircuts... the process of trying to get all the little pieces of hair off yourself afterwards.  While most people can probably just brush themselves off a bit and ignore the rest until it goes away... I get home, shed my shirt and top clothes, and proceed directly to the bathroom, where I have to use a lint roller to get all the tiny hair-bits off myself.  They itch abominably and drive me nuts until I get them off.  After that's done, I shove my head over the sink and proceed to ruffle my hair until it stops raining tiny blue hair-bits.  This can take a while.

Normally, haircutters tie a band around your throat, in addition to the cape, to keep the hair from getting down your shirt.  And they did do that here.  But they didn't put it on tightly, because they know I have problems having stuff tightly around my neck.  Like the itchy hair-bits, that also drives me nuts.  I'm sure there's a solution of some kind, like a reverse cone of shame for dogs, or something I could hold at my neck rather than having it tied there... but I haven't an engineer to come up with one, and I'm not sure it'd be allowed in the school even if I did have one.  So in the meantime, I tend to end all my haircut/color appointments worn out and miserable.  But hey, now I'm set for like 7 weeks, so that's good.  I did get some good progress on reading a book to review for this Friday, so it's not like I wasted any of the time, either.

In happier news, I'm well on my way to having a successful bath experience.  I did try my pot-on-the-stove-heated water idea again, and this time I managed to get the bath water to "maybe 5 degrees too hot" instead of "scalding."  Much more comfortable.  I used the jets again, and added some bath salts.  It was a pretty nice experience... until the jets stopped and I noticed the water was all full of tub scum.  I'd hoped I'd gotten rid of that after cleaning it a few times, but apparently not.  So that was gross.  It didn't entirely ruin the bath, but it was an unpleasant note to end on.

As I didn't want that to be the norm for my baths, I decided to research how one cleans a hot tub... and it turns out you can usually just fill the silly thing, add bleach, turn on the jets, and walk away.  So that's what I did.  I already had bleach in the house for use with the washer (which you should clean once a month by running an empty wash cycle and adding bleach), so I simply poured about a third of the container into the tub as it was filling.

Somewhat sillilly, the bleach proceeded to foam up a whole bunch, resembling nothing so much as a death-bubble bath.  I resisted the urge to play with the foam... but it really did look inviting.  But of course the water was ice cold, and the foam smelled like bleach.  Also, chemical burns are definitely not in style right now.  Anyway, after that had finished cycling, the tub had to be drained and then refilled with clean water, because bleach baths are never the answer.

Hopefully sometime this week I'll get to try the tub again, and this time it won't have scum in the water, and the temperature will be closer to "just right."  I'm looking forward to it.  

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