Echoing what everyone has said, Gud, and yes to Trudy's latest post about just doing that one, first thing by making an appointment with a doctor today.

And, yes, askye, thank you for sharing your story here and for standing up for your co-worker. Both brave and caring in both cases.

I finished off my 7-day On Call shift last night. That was a time of high stress, anxiety, and frankly, very poor mental health. Sleep? I don't know her. Now I have a couple of days to fit in all of my delayed work and appointments before heading into another stressful situation. I'm hoping that I make it through Christmas without getting COVID or having a meltdown. I did a lot of work at Thanksgiving to encourage everyone to wear better masks and to use at-home test kits, but not everyone is masking indoors when out and about. I'll definitely be bringing my noise-cancelling headphones again since that worked pretty well for me to deal with the incessant noise, since my mom loves Christmas music and my dad constantly has the TV on.

Now I feel like I'm just being a big downer which... yeah, back to that not talking thing.

Gud, please please continue to talk to us here. We want you to. It's not a burden or a downer.

After I posted it I had a reaction of -oh crap what If I over shared and made someone uncomfortable but then I thought "well fuck that . This happened to me and I'm not ashamed of it and I hope it helps."

Personally, I'm very glad that you've been sharing, from both a "we like to know these things about you" standpoint and also a "I'm finding this enlightening about my personal experiences" standpoint. It's helping. Thank you.

Also, huge props for how you're handling that work incident with K.

Meanwhile, I'm bummed because we just learned for sure that my husband's brother and his wife are anti-vaxxers.

How infuriating. There are some family members I knew would be anti-vaxxers, but I've also been unpleasantly surprised by some who I thought would know better.

I've also been unpleasantly surprised by some who I thought would know better.

I have friendly acquaintances who fall into this category and I am really sad about them. Worse with family, I would guess.

One of my SIL's closest friends, who argues with DH very very often about all things anti-vax, pro-Trump, and any other lack of sanity subjects was moved to the ICU today. First, she had posted about being Covid positive, then a couple of days later posted, "on top of that now I have pneumonia" like it was somehow unrelated, now in ICU. The woman is an ambulance dispatcher, and not stupid otherwise, but ugh grr. I really don't want her to die, but I am so frustrated with people who take no responsibility and of course infect others. When she recovers, which I sincerely hope will happen soon, I have zero doubt she will say it was no big deal and now she is all immunized.

Totally stressed about my to-do list, so I am taking a break to watch a bit of junk tv.

Good lord. If this downpour keeps up, I may be taking a taxi to my follow up podiatrist appointment so I don't get completely soaked waiting for the bus.

Some were on the Board asking about color wheels for holiday trees. I saw something in a store window that outdoes those - it's a white fiber optic tree that flashes various bright pastel colors. Kind of like this ... only it seemed more so.

In slightly less terrible news, non-surgical treatments for my feets are working and I'm in agreement with my doctor that surgery isn't necessary given my current level of pain.

Yay happy feet!

Timelies all!

Yay for no shrift surgery!

My car is finally ready. (I'm actually going to pick it up Wed. morning before we bring Sam to school and go to Worldcon in DC) My credit card bill next month is going to be ugly.

Woohoo no surgery!