• Just One Thing: Boxes

    Prokofy Neva, Virtualtor

    Desert 5

    So the MidJourney artifacture for this one is boxes of clutter in the desert…in the style of Russian 19th century painter Ivan Aivazovsky, because the desert of my living room feels like his seas, endless, and then there's that light…

    After the ordeal of the Desk Clean-Up and the computer crippling, it was hard to complete that long chunked-up chore, but it had to be done. For months — since the summer, has it been? — I've been tripping over three — no four — really five boxes in the living room, the result of the computer desk clean-up — which is like a hutch with shelving and the desk below with the desktop — which was completed only on one side and the middle. 

    Finally, all the items in the boxes — trinkets, knick-knacks, figurines, coins, medicines, children's art, photos of family and friends and more — got put back on the shelves and in a few cases even tossed. Shouldn't medicines be in the medicine cabinet? Well, when you have to take so many of them, and throughout the day, and the medicine cabinet is tiny and filled with a lot of clutter in its own right (another Just One Thing in the making!), then on the desk it goes, it's just more convenient. But at least I could stage them better, put the ones I'm on "holiday" from for three months in the back, the ones not needed as often in the back as well, etc. 

    Desert 5

    I also managed to put a few things that were just scattered around also away on the hutch — and really more could go up there, including Just One Thing projects like "re-do the senior citizen metro card" — there's instructions and the number and such. And of course seeing the completely out-of-date "In Case of Emergency", I just wrote OUT OF DATE across it and continued another little project, that of putting my passwords and insurances and such in a notebook above my desk. 


    Desert 5

    Along the way I was reminded of how I had somehow gotten (or my son had gotten) the disks to install (or rather play) "Dust: Tale of the Wired West" and "Titanic" by the same author, my first video games on the computer from the 1990s, which I just loved to pieces and played endlessly, rarely winning (the Dust had a very tricky, encrypted ending I recall). I believe it even had different ending paths you could take. But I don't have a disc drive any more so I can't play them. I think I've seen other downloadable versions of it online but I can't get distracted with this in my current crisis.

    So meanwhile, I had an unexpected moment of grace when I found a little pink and gold bottle with a dropper called Biossance – Squalame – Vitamin C Oil (it was a present from mydaughter)  which actually worked to soothe my injured finger for more than half an hour — even 5-6 hours — leading me to think perhaps it could be healed some day.

    Rose Dropper

    I cut this finger in the early days of the pandemic when I finally moved into my smaller apartment, and I have struggled with it for four years, because lacerations don't heal due to my immune disease. At one point it had three different infections, and I've been to the ER with it even when it escalated the first week. This is a long, twisty story I don't feel up to telling now but that rose oil is great stuff! Maybe I will come back and fill in the story later. This goes for as much as $55 a bottle, good thing there is a lot left and  I can likely find some on sale.

    Rose Dropper 3

     

  • Just One Thing: Medicine Co-Pay

    By Prokofy Neva, Virtualtor

    Co-Pay 1

    So continuing on with my mission to do Just One Thing…or rather…select a thing that wasn't getting done and feature it…Thus it was with three medicines that had to be picked up, that now had co-pays because I was kicked off Medicaid and started a more expensive insurance. So it wasn't more than like $5.99, but I had other bills to pay, and just didn't have it. Just One More Thing. The pharmacy kept calling…one of them was a new medicine I was supposed to start taking last week…

    Co-Pay 3

    So…it's quite windy out, but not that cold (61?), so on goes the Russian scarf and of course the COVID mask. I sometimes think I'm the last person wearing a mask, although occasionally I'll be surprised and see someone who doesn't seem like a "mask category" person wearing one. So many people are just "half-masked" in the hospital and pharmacy…all the more reason…so saddle up, and walk — it can't be more than a mile?

    Perhaps because of the sprints yesterday to the public library and post office, I was tired today and seemed to nap through the entire day even after sleeping a good 7 hour I think…then I looked up and saw it was 5:30 and the pharmacy closes at 6:00. I would have to hurry.

    Google Maps says 0.7/mile and 16 minutes, I would have to run, because some of these places stop serving at 5:45 pm (like the library did the other day!)

    But mercifully the door was open. They know me here.

    Co-Pay 5

    I didn't have the heart to stall them when they were closing and ask them to put the meds in NON child-proof bottles but honestly, it's one more struggle. I spend a good chunk of every day struggling with 2FAs forced on me by every single site, whether e-mail or Amazon or whatever, then with all the pills I have to take, struggling with the goddamn caps on the bottles. I didn't realize until quite recently that you can ask for NON child proof. I'm all for child-proof caps. As a mere toddler, I somehow got into my parent's medicine cabinet and it was feared I had swallowed some unknown quantity of thyroid pills so I had to have my stomach punked, a horrendous experience I still recall. 

    Co-Pay 7

    Next, to the grocery store to pick out some Vitamin Water (3 for $5 a Morton's — compared to $2.89 a piece at Gristede's, where we are hostages in our food desert, and have to walk a mile to save a dollar or more on practically everything).

    Now, for home, braving the winds again and my mask has fallen off but my hands and bag are full because I refused to pay for one more goddamn cloth bag when I have a zillion at home used for plant beds, cat beds, recycling, and every conceivable thing, as well as groceries.

     

    Co-Pay 8

    Co-Pay 4

    I like the Proper Cloth cloth mask with mesh which some people would wear as their only mask but I put it over the K95.

    Why am I an old lady today? I'm only 67 in real life but when I go shuffling out to the store and on other errands I often feel like the kind of old ladies I have seen for years, struggling with a cart, going to sales to save money. My cart is too heavy to bring down the stairs of the footbridge across the FDR Drive!

    Now, a word about Just One Thing theory…I actually had ANOTHER thing I did today — imagine! But no fair telling! There Can Only Be One.

    And if you fear that Just One Thing-ing will make you tend not to get anything done but That One Thing, actually, I find that it empowers you and energizes you to get ANOTHER thing done. You might think for a minute, oh, I could be featuring this OTHER THING tomorrow, why waste it on today, when I can only do Just One Thing? Answer: there's always Another Thing, trust me on this. The more you do, the more you see what needs doing.