Proning

Yesterday, I made a trek to the Castro to visit the bank, drop the too-large Birkenstocks off for shipping, and go to Walgreens and Cliff’s. The woman who owns my apartment building was lately extolling the effectiveness of Mucinex tablets for relieving chest congestion. I’ve been compiling a little list of things to do in case of mild to medium chest congestion, or severe chest congestion in the event that medical care is not available. My list includes breathing in eucalyptus steam, or just plain steam; drinking plenty of fluids, including hot tea; pursed lip breathing; and “proning.” (I often have seen the palliative care interdisciplinary team at County Hospital do the latter, or semi-proning, to assist a dying person who has a lot of fluids gurgling in his or her throat.)

I added Mucinex to my list. At Walgreens, I discovered that there are approximately one million Mucinex products. The one I wanted was tablets containing guaifenesin only. Just for the heck of it, I got the extra-strength version, whose only active ingredient is 1200 mg of guaifenesin. Even the Walgreens version was kind of expensive, and you have to take one every 12 hours. Hopefully I will never need to take any, but I now have 28 of them, just in case.

At Cliff’s I got elastic for sewing some masks, and for shoring up a sagging pair of pajama bottoms.

My bathroom sink hot water tap had been dripping for eight or nine months, which I had mentioned every few months to the building owner and building manager. A couple of days ago, the building owner said it would be fine to have this fixed, and to ask the building manager to call the plumber. The building manager said she was reluctant to pay for a house call for such a small need; I grudgingly agreed to wait until there was at least one other need in the building, but later that day, I checked to see just how much water was going down the drain (not to mention making a really annoying noise), and found that it amounted to 13.5 gallons per day, at worst. (Usually the drip stopped during the night.)

I let the building owner and manager know that, and was advised that I could go ahead and schedule the plumber myself. The plumber came right after I got back from the Castro yesterday and ended up having to replace the hot and cold taps and the spigot, or whatever you call it. The charming, old-fashioned fixtures are gone, but the new ones look lovely, and it is now one hundred percent silent.

I heard or read somewhere that the COVID-19 stimulus was just an advance on a future tax refund, but quickly confirmed online that that is not so, and it is also not taxable. Speaking of tax refunds, I have been wondering for some weeks where mine is, and finally discovered that because so many IRS workers are not in the office, they are not able to process taxes filed via paper at the moment; they’ll get to these returns when they can.

Today painters turned up to paint my little front hallway and bathroom. Tomorrow will be the one year anniversary of the flood. I wanted to do the painting in stages so I could see how tolerable the paint smell was. The same painters, in March, painted all the common areas of the building with “odorless” paint that reeked for weeks and weeks. Tom even commented on it, as I think I mentioned here. I did some research and asked if we could use ECOS paint for my place, and ECOS Air Purifying Primer.

I had a couple of conversations with the owner of the painting company, who has an extremely deep voice and deadpan manner. At the end of one conversation, I said, “Have a good rest of the day.”

He said, “Thanks. What day is it?”

“They all kind of seem the same, don’t they?” I agreed. (Even mine do, despite going to work two days a week, for which I am so grateful: My income has not yet been interrupted, and I get to see people.)

The owner turned up along with the painters this morning and pointed out some plaster in the kitchen that was about to fall, on the side of the ceiling not affected by the flood. I asked if we had to have the drywall guys back to fix this before his crew could paint, but he said, “Nah, we’ll fix it.” He also said they would regrout around the tub, removing the old stuff first.

So I feel very excited! If the primer and paint don’t smell awful, then we can go ahead with the kitchen, and once that is done, I can move stuff as needed into the kitchen and/or the apartment across the hall, and we can paint the living room and replace all the carpet with astronomically expensive wool carpeting, which I will no doubt pay for. And then once the SPCA opens, I can go looking for a kitten.

I decided I will probably not move to the apartment across the hall. My current place has been home for 22 years, and I will have new paint and carpet soon. I also have quite a new stove and refrigerator, and brand-new bathroom sink fixtures. Also, after the flood, my bathroom was re-plumbed with copper. I’m pretty sure that the other apartment has not been re-plumbed, meaning it will need to happen in the future, most likely after a horrible catastrophe, which I have already gone through in this apartment. Finally, my apartment has more light, and at least one additional way to get out in case of fire, because my kitchen has a door to the outside, which the kitchen of the apartment across the hall does not.

I have cash on hand to pay for wool carpeting in part because I did not put Hammett through chemotherapy, which would have cost probably $10K, and maybe more like $15K.

When Thelonious died, I had to keep telling myself the story of her end, to help it sink in why she wasn’t here. While Hammett was with me, I sometimes told him the story of the day I met him; I think he enjoyed hearing it. I am now telling myself the story of his end: He was diagnosed with cancer. We did not have any choice about this; Mother Nature made this decision. The choice I had was in regard to how much physical, emotional and financial suffering he and I would endure, and I chose that these would be limited as much as possible: I chose hospice. For seven weeks, he thrived on prednisone, and then the end, inevitably, came. His last day had many moments of peace and even pleasure, I believe. As far as I could tell, he was not suffering unduly. He was loved, cherished and carefully tended his whole life, and he was on his mother’s lap when he died. I still miss him terribly, enough to cry every couple of days or so. He was the sweetest cat ever. My beautiful cat, now in heaven. (Did you ever see a photo of him?)