toe-dipping into mystery
As of yesterday, I finally have last weekend's events all covered here on the blog -- over three separate entries, all posted over the course of three days, although the three major events occurred over two days (San Juan Island; Saturday evening with Gabriel, Mandy and Lea; Easter Sunday). This coming weekend is going to be even worse! Harder to cover completely in a short amount of time, I mean. At least last weekend I only had how busy I was over Saturday and Sunday to worry about.
This coming Friday officially starts my Birth Week. Not only that, but I then leave town Saturday and don't get back until Monday. I suppose I may manage to post Saturday morning about Friday night, when I will be doing the Fremont Brew Cruise with Laney. But by Tuesday I'll be needing to catch up on another three days of activities: boating with Heather (a work broker contact) in the South Sound on Saturday late morning and early afternoon; staying overnight with Jennifer in Shelton Saturday night; driving to Port Townsend for lunch with Auntie Rose Sunday afternoon; Sunday evening and probably most of Monday in Bellingham to visit Ivan.
I actually don't have anything boating-specific to do with either Jennifer (even though Shelton is also located on the Puget Sound -- maybe I'll stop at the waterfront downtown, which I have literally never done even though my dad was born and raised there, and find an interesting boat to get a picture of) or Ivan, although in Ivan's case it kind of counts that I'm taking a Washington State Ferry from Port Townsend to Coupeville on Whidbey Island on my way to see him in Bellingham (which, of course, is also situated on the water).
I had a tentative schedule mocked up on my Google Calendar as far back as about the week after my last Birth Week. It's probably not much of a surprise that it's pretty radically rearranged at this point. I had even long ago settled with Laney on doing the Fremont Brew Cruise with her on Thursday next week (May 2), only to discover last week, when they finally got back to me as I attempted to book it, that due to it being early in the season, they were doing only Fridays in April. So, just this week my Birth Week evening with Laney was officially rescheduled to this Friday, April 26. I'm kind of glad, though, as I did not otherwise have anything more major than simply dinner with Lynn and Zephyr planned for that evening -- which is now swapped to the following Thursday -- and this means I'll be launching Birth Week 2019 with much more of a bang: something new and fun I've never done before, and actually on a boat. In fact I am currently scheduled to be in an actual boat on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday, the following Friday and the following Sunday. On other days I'll be settling for meals or activities at least close to or on waterfronts (dinner Wednesday 5/1 with Danielle at Water's Table in the Hyatt Regency in Renton on the south shore of Lake Washington; breakfast with Dad at an Olympia waterfront place he recommended on Thursday morning).
Of all the things I would like to do for my Birth Week, I may have to do some on my own, or with Shobhit as a repeat companion, because I could not coordinate with enough separate friends to join me during the week. This won't be without precedent, as I did the same thing with some of the Botanical Gardens that made the theme of last year's Birth Week. To a degree I may have to improvise, and that's fine.
Anyway, the only thing for me to tell you about last night, really, is that I took the bus to the U District to see High Life, and boy am I glad I used my AMC monthly membership for that. What a disappointment. And it didn't even have an early evening showing, which meant I had no time to write my review after getting home, and I had to wait to write it until this morning -- something I really try to avoid doing anymore. Oh well; I do what I can!
Oh. One thing I keep forgetting to mention is my toe. Yes, my toe! My right, big toe to be exact. On Sunday night, right before bed, I clipped my toenails. And I think I must have given myself an infection of some kind. I also clipped a bit of what I thought was dead skin off the upper left corner, and maybe I cut too deep? I didn't draw blood or anything so I don't know. Googling "toe pain" has been of little help as it keeps bringing up things like bunions (nope) or arthritis (nope) or gout (nope) -- it also brings up ingrown toenails, which appears to be a possibility, even though my toe otherwise looks normal.
I mean, sort of. This is the same toe that has had multiple fungal infections in the past (first thing I ever contracted at a bathhouse), and that has sort of come and gone over the years. My nail on this toe has had some weird thickness that maybe is related to fungal infection, that perhaps my nail (and skin) clipping somehow complicated. I truly don't know the definitive answer here -- all I can tell you is when I woke up Monday morning, I had a sharp and constant pain in the toe, which intensified when I got on my toes to do the morning's push-ups. And then it remained constant the entire rest of the day -- a sharp pain that was well above my threshold for tolerance, to the point that I could not concentrate on my tasks at work, and it made me feel nauseated in nearly alarming intervals the entire day. I even took Aleve for the pain, which I usually only do for headaches, and that seemed to help for a few hours. I never took any more the rest of the day because I just never want to take more than the recommended dose on a pill bottle (although even according to that, I could have had one more pill before bed).
My toe got so painful and tender that if anything hit my toe, it was legitimately excruciating. Shobhit convinced me to put Athlete's Foot cream and talcum powder on it, under a band-aid wrapped around it, before going to bed Monday night. Shobhit rolled over in the middle of the night and hit my toe and I yelled out in pain. I had to take the band-aid off because just the pressure of it seemed to be making it worse. At one point, it was throbbing. Even soaking it in hot water for a bit earlier in the evening seemed to make it worse, rather than help. It got to a point where I legitimately wondered if I was going to need to call a doctor.
Somehow, even though it had hurt like hell and woken me up just a few hours earlier, when I woke up yesterday morning, it felt much better. I still wore sandals (with socks, but the socks were because it's still chilly outside and the sandals were for a health reason!) just to be safe, to remove the pressure of my shoe on the toe. And, although I did hit a few things with my toe yesterday and each time that happened it was really painful, most of the day yesterday the pain had comparatively subsided, quite significantly.
I have put the cream on it again both before work yesterday, before bed last night, and again this morning. Either the cream is helping or the toe is just getting better regardless; I don't know. Although it's still a little red -- and, a little puffy right in that corner where I had cut off a bit of skin -- it really seems to be getting better. I'm back in shoes today, although I do take them off sometimes when sitting at my desk. Whatever the case, I never experienced anything like this before and what exactly has been going on remains a mystery. The fact that it appears to be on the mend seems to be the most relevant part.
And in other news, I just had lunch with Scott . . . and Elin! She was down here for a meeting, which was why we scheduled for today. Scott had suggested a lunch weeks ago, because we all have birthdays this month. We went to the U District, the neighborhood of our old office location (which we were at when Elin retired in September 2015), and we ate at our old favorite, Little Thai.
Elin and Scott did most of the talking. They had more work stuff and more work history in common -- I worked with Elin for many years, but she and Scott did a lot of the same or similar things. I was able to talk a bit too, though. We all did a lot of catching up. It was really great to see her again. I often think about how, when Shobhit and I got married, she was the only person from work I invited to the wedding. (One of two if you count Shauna, who I also used to work with, but she left PCC in 2008 and the wedding was in 2013. Elin was still working at PCC in 2013.)
We all rode there and back in Elin's car. She told us next month is her final Board meeting. I guess after that, her professional ties to PCC will officially, finally be over for good. I got the feeling she was ready for it. This time on the Board served as a nice sort of transitional stage between full-time work and full-time retirement.
I was kind of shocked to realize she actually turned 70 this month. Holy shit! "I say I turned 69 + 1," she said. "We don't say that other number." She was very clearly uncomfortable with how old she's gotten. She later said, "There's only one problem with retirement. O.L.D., underlined!" I remember her telling me how much she disliked getting older, like a decade ago. So basically when she was around sixty . . . and I was around thirty-three, I guess.
[posted 1:51 pm]