Today perked up some. M and I talked over tacos. We saw a family - I think mom and kids and Grandma and one of the moms (or aunt) was holding a little boy, maybe 6 or 7 months old and not just bouncing him up and down but doing a very small version of Cha Cha slide.
And then M and I went and got a charcoal grill to replace the gas one and he is grilling for dinner.
Also I called the lawyer, he emailed paper work and I'm forwarding it to my dad and uncle (who is a lawyer) to look at and I'll read it. Monday the lawyer will call me back and answer any questions I have and I'll decide if I want to sign it. He cautioned me NOT to fill out any parts because it's the electronic signature and if I do then it's signed and there's no going back. So nothing filled out until I talk to him. I haven't looked at it yet because of the whole Day of Drama.
Dad called and had some questions he thought I should ask if I didn't know the answers and then he also wanted to make sure I understood that hiring a lawyer doesn't mean that I'll get everything I want or that they can help me with everything. I told him I knew, that my baseline expectations for this is: that worker's comp continues to do the bare minimum that they should; takes a long time; but instead of me trying to get in touch with anyone and panicking about what to do next I have a lawyer who does all the contacting and actually has experience with this and can give me advice about what to do next .
Which I feel is very very baseline and I'm hoping that I get more out of it than that.
The lawyer had previously pointed out that companies can't actually retaliate if you hire a lawyer but can make do other things instead of directly doing that. Today I told him that if the company wants to punish me in some way for fighting TO go back to work after I was injured on the job and getting substandard care because they cheaped out on worker's comp insurance than I will happily burn that bridge and be very , very vocal about it. Although really they do most of the work for burning the bridge I would just be pulling the trigger on the clicky fire stick.