alltoseek

I exercised the first eight days of May: two times at the community center gym, while the rest were either unpacking-related or pacing while on the phone. Then on May 10, I came down with COVID (caught from my dad, who caught it from his poker buddies.) 

On May 11, Mom also came down with COVID, and at 2AM on May 12, she fell on her way to the bathroom and broke her leg.

Between all of that, I didn't do any more exercising for the rest of May. COVID was weird. I never felt very sick. I had a sore throat for a while. It was mostly gone after several days and I went back to drinking caffeine-free Diet Coke instead of strawberry-watermelon drink mix. Then a few days after that, I switched back to drink mix because my throat felt a little not-right. It wasn't exactly sore, but soda did not feel good going down. I am still having drink mix instead of soda, though I stopped warming it up a week or so ago. (Now I make it cold, with filtered water from the fridge and crushed ice.) My throat doesn't bother me at all but I feel like it would bother me if I drank soda, so I haven't. I like the strawberry-watermelon drink mix pretty well, and the nice dietitian Lut saw a year ago recommended flavored drink mixes over soda. I had a significant amount of fatigue that lingered along with a little congestion and a little cough and the barely-noticable sore throat. So I was like 90% recovered after four days and then stayed at 90% for a week and a half, and then upgraded to 95%. By the end of May, I'd reached 99%, with just the barely-noticable throat thing remaining.

Eating habits have been reasonable by my standards. Mom often wants a sub, and I get one whenever she does, so technically I'm eating a lot of restaurant food. But sub sandwiches are fine as restaurant food goes; I get a bit of veggies on them and they're not particularly fatty, nor large; I'll eat half of an 8" sub for lunch and have the other half for dinner (unless my father eats it for dinner first). No worse than the usual foods I eat. I also ate more frozen vegetables at home this month.

Dailies

I did well with these until I got sick, and then stopped using them again. May 11 through May 23 is just blank. Once again, with the new month, I've started using them again.

Writing

I basically did no new writing in May. Like two hundred words added to The Secret Dragon, up 39,604, I'm guessing. (I haven't done much writing so far in June, either, but I forgot to check where I was at the start of the month. Didn't work on the soloRPG at all.

The Business of Writing

I renamed Be That Way to The Kitty Coffee Pack (which also may not last as a title) and made progress on edits. I got it to 40% complete by the end of May. My goal for the month was 50%, so I missed it, but with everything else going on this month, 40% is pretty great.

Art 

I drew a few times in June, finishing one small (6"x6") marker picture of Koysko from The Secret Dragon, and starting a similarly small picture of Strikvi from the same story. Art ranked at the bottom of things to do this month, so it's amazing I did any of it.

Reading

More big chunks of unfinished manwha. I re-read some of my own books for comfort, but no books by other people.

Lyric update

Lyris has adjusted to her new home pretty well. She likes to hang out in the garage. At first, I thought garage was her Substitute Outside. But it has since struck me that the detached garage at my old house was a favorite hangout of hers, too. It was very common for her to emerge from it when I called for her to come in after a few hours. Perhaps even more common than hanging out on the porch. Maybe she just likes garages.

She got outside once, when Mom let her into the garage without realizing I'd accidentally left the outer door open. I came home when Mom let me know, and Lyric came running to me as soon as she heard me calling for her. Since then, she hasn't tried to get outside; she no longer mews at the door, or comes running when it opens, or runs in front of me when I approach a door, hoping to get out when I open it. I keep an eye on her when Dad and I leave the house, because there'd be plenty of time for a cat to get out, but she just watches us from the living room.

So while I still feel like it'd be nice to have a screened-in porch for her, I'm not sure she needs it. Also, I asked the HOA about a catio and the rep was like "NO CATIO. But MAYBE you can have a screened porch. First you need to read this 80 page document and figure out what in it is relevant and complete this form asking for approval from some number of neighbors and then we'll think about whether or not we'll allow it."

I don't even want to read the 80 page doc and I definitely do not want to wander the neighborhood stalking neighbors to get them to sign the form. Dad has a poker buddy who's involved with the HOA; I may ask him at some point if there's a way to make this process less onerous than it appears. But between the cost, the bureaucracy, and Lyric's increased tolerance of life as an indoor cat, I'm leaning towards letting the whole thing slide.

Goal Scorecard for May

• Provide care for parents: This has been A Lot. Dad is low-maintenance, thank goodness. The home health aide is mostly important for ensuring he gets showered; he's pretty self-sufficient on other daily tasks. Mom was in the hospital for nine days and is now in a skilled nursing facility. I've visited her every day but one (when I was too exhausted from COVID and poor sleep to feel safe driving). I've been bringing her food most days (she won't eat the institutional food), and doing what I can to make her more comfortable and promote her recovery. (Sometimes those goals do not go together.) She hasn't been able to walk since her leg broke; she's not allowed to put weight on it and she's not strong enough to support herself with her arms and one leg. So therapy is doing what they can to improve her mobility.
• Pay May bills: Done!
• Call Ting to cancel second phone line: the magic of goal list works again: this is done.
• Complete at least 50% of final edits: Not done, but honorable mention for making it to 40%
• Register with the HOA: Done
• Find out HOA approval process for catio: Done and bleh.
• Attempt to get DMV appointment: Done! On the second attempt, I even succeeded at getting an appointment!

Stretch Goals:

A bit surprisingly, I did none of these. I mean, yeah, it was a busy month. But usually I get some random stretch goal done anyway.

June Goals

• Provide care for parents
• Pay June bills
• Complete 70% of edits on The Kitty Coffee Pack
• Find out what I need to do to register car in new state
• Make podiatry appointment for Dad

• Write 10,000+ words on The Secret Dragon
• Finish edits on The Kitty Coffee Pack
• Publish The Kitty Coffee Pack
• Play more of romance soloRPG
• Exercise 15+ times (organizing stuff/cleaning counts as exercise)
• Track what I read
• Keep up on my Dreamwidth feed
• Ask Bookbub for a Featured Deal and run another ad campaign for a book
• Get backmatter updated for whatever book I promote
• Pick an old picture to redraw
• Do some art
• Sell mom's car (I do not expect to do this until Mom is home and I don't really expect her to come home until July, at this point. But I want this to stay on the list so I don't forget about it entirely.)
• Register car