errands
Life uneventful since my last DLU, really . . . aside from Shobhit and me heading out shopping after work yesterday. We had three stops, first to Lenscrafters at Northgate Mall, because I had a replacement box of six months supply of my left eye contact lenses. I had ordered six months' worth of both prescriptions about a month ago, but did not notice until opening the new boxes when it was time to switch out my monthly lenses that they gave me two boxes with the very same prescription. So, instead of sending me six months each of my different prescriptions per eye, they basically sent me a year's supply of only my right eye lenses. They ordered me the proper box with little hassle, though, and just asked that I bring back the extra box of the wrong prescription for exchange—even though I had opened it and used one of the lenses already.
Anyway, then we went to the Costco in Shoreline, since we were already on the north end of Seattle anyway. After that, a drive back south but to the office so I could both swap out paperwork, and also pick up several samples that had been left just for me. That was when I noticed the blow-up reindeer in the building lobby has a face mask on, made of Christmas gift wrap, which cracked me up.
Oh, we also went into the Petco across the parking lot from that Costco. We got way more treats than we really needed, which was Shobhit's doing. I also got new collars to put in the cats' Christmas stockings. Don't tell them!
Shobhit asked me to do all the driving. I was stunned by the amount of traffic on the freeway, both on the way northward as well as on the way back. It wasn't intolerable, which means it's still far from normal levels pre-pandemic, but it was also still the most freeway traffic I had seen since February. Where the hell is everyone going? Sure, I was on the freeway too, but I rarely am, and only ever to go grocery shopping, really. It surely can't be that everyone is just out grocery shopping. I suppose some of them may have been Christmas shopping.
I had hoped to watch a live program last night with Broadway performances, and Shobhit acted weirdly put out by the very idea. He even had the balls to say "Why do I always have to compromise?"—when he had literally been watching all the TV he wanted all day, having had the day off of work. He suggested I record it so I could watch it later with the ability to fast forward through commercials, and I just thought, fine, whatever. So who the fuck was really compromising here? I know this is a dumb thing to get worked up over, but his blatant falsehoods pile up and one day I might just get fed up with that shit for good. Not that any of this matters that much, really. I don't even expect I missed out on much by not watching it live (even though that was kind of the purpose). For all I know it's not even that good. But it's the principle, god damn it!
I just finished my fifth book of the year, two months after starting it: Marilyn Walls's Mother's Secret: A Nutritionist's View of Family and Alzheimer's Disease. Marilyn worked at the office before retiring in 2017, and when she offered to send me a copy of this very personal book of hers, originally published n 2017, after she heard about my mom passing earlier this year, it was a lovely gesture. I had little expectation that it would have a lot I could directly relate to, given the truly unique relationship and history I had with my own mother; and I told her I couldn't tell her when I would get to reading it but I likely would eventually. Well, now it's done—and although most of her story is, as expectly, pretty wildly different from mine, there remains the bit about her mom having a stroke (on top of Alzheimer's, from which my mother did not suffer, although she suffered from plenty of other things). At that point, I found a lot of it almost shockingly relatable.
In another plus column: the book is eloquently written, a very engaging tale, with alternating chapters about her personal experience dealing with her mom's declining health, and then those packed with details about the science behind dementia and nutrition and how they are linked. The book was actually rather impressive and I would recommend it, and not just for people whose mother's have also recently passed away.
[posted 12:40 pm]