Sue! Thank goodness for pharmacists who know their stuff. If you get the anti-virals early enough, you escape most of the bad consequences of shingles, so yay for prompt diagnosis.

That's so good to catch early but dang, what a pain to have shingles!

Vonnie glad you checked in. I am so over this timeline.

I ended up having a good day, I noticed the weather was better today than tomorrow and my friend and I switched our plans to today, went to Snoqualmie Falls and to see the salmon swimming upstream, and lunch. Yay

Right, Jesse? It's a whole lot of different flavors of fucked up.

Glad to hear that, meara!

I would swear up and down that I've never had chicken pox, so I would have never even considered Shingles. I was seriously worried that I had bed bugs rather than flea bites because the "bites" were so closely clustered. Also, it's on both boobs, so it's crossed the centre line, which is not normal with shingles. But I don't have a huge rash, so I'm hopeful I will kick this easily.

I have Monday off and an appt with my actual doc on Tuesday AM, so I'm doing nothing until then.

Vonnie, thank you for checking in. I'm sorry this happened in your neck of the woods (and anywhere).

Sue, I'm sorry to hear about the shingles. I know the anti-virals can make a big difference though when you get on them on time. I've seen it play out in my family different ways. Three cheers for your pharmacist.

Theo, I'm glad your friend's family wasn't there. It's going to feel like enough of a violation that it happened in their synagogue.

And wtf is this world, even. In addition to everything else, I feel bad that I'm mad that these shooters somehow are taken alive when so many black people are killed by police for doing nothing wrong.

I felt the same way this morning, Jesse, between the MAGA bomber and this gunman. I had to remind myself that it's not that I want the perps killed; it's that I want unarmed people with broken tail lights, not to be killed.

meara, it's great to read you had a good day.

We're all pieces of trash in this house today. Our younger son came home from college, and he, our older son, and dh watched the Red Sox/Dodgers game. I got tired of waiting for it to be over (sometimes big stakes series are too tense for me to watch), so I joined them.

Two of us quit around 2:30am, dh quit around 3am. Only our oldest son stayed up to see the whole thing then couldn't get to sleep until around 4:30 from being charged.

Dh and older son were both complaining about feeling hungover today, even though nobody had anything stronger than ice cream or soda. It was just a tension hangover I think.

This is a weird, disconnected post. Just felt the need to chime in.

Take it easy Buffistas. Things are tough out there.

My Sat was another stressful day on top of a week of being nibbled to death by ducks. Matthew and I went to his brother's house for his nephew's birthday party. I like Matthew's family but they are big and loud. And his brother and SIL have a large found family as well.

So it was going to be loud and noisy but then someone there (a friend I think and not a relative) had a seizure and 911 was called. She became aware and was able to walk assisted to the ambulance but I guess she is an alcoholic and has an eating disorder.

And Matthew's brother asked what we were doing tomorrow and if we would be at church and I ended up trying to explain why I don't want to go to church. It was difficult because I know his brother was shaken up and is worrying about everyone but it just is all hard.

And then we got back to Matthew's and a restaurant across the street had really loud music so I called the police on them.

Cindy that's so late to stay awake watching (or playing!) a game, yeah.

Cindy, TCG went to bed after the 9th. I stayed up for the whole thing. I just kept saying "one more inning" to myself.

My 90 year old dad lasted until the 13th inning. But he says it messed up his sleep.

And Matthew's brother asked what we were doing tomorrow and if we would be at church and I ended up trying to explain why I don't want to go to church. It was difficult because I know his brother was shaken up and is worrying about everyone but it just is all hard.

askye, this is from someone who still (sometimes*) goes to church. If I had visitors, I'd invite them, because I wouldn't want to just abandon them. I also in no way would expect them to come along with us. My daughter doesn't go to church with us, and she lives here (well, when she's not at school). I'm sorry it was difficult, but I just want to chime in as a churchy person and say I don't think churchy people should feel bad when their non-churchy friends don't want to go (for whatever reason, even if it's, "I'd rather sleep"). I'm sorry the day was stressful. Damn ducks.

meara and sj, the game was just ridiculous. I was still kind of wired (had more caffeine than usual, later than usual, yesterday), so I was fine until about the 14th inning, then I was actively hoping someone would just lose, even if it was the Sox.

sj, you must have been tired today. TCG made the smart call. My dog kept looking at us, trying to figure out why the heck we were still up.

*I need to find a new church. Ours has taken a turn I don't like. I just don't know where I want to or should go.

I'll probably delete this later, but to the Somervillains, the church that burnt down this week was about a block from my church, but not like a big, city block, a little small town New England block. You can see it clearly from mine. The whole town is just devastated.