It's just Wednesday

 This week feels like it's been a month long. 

Tomorrow, I have my annual checkup. I'm stressing a tiny bit because there are no bloodwork results posted for me (though weirdly the eclinical web claims "vitamin D deficiency" and "hyperlipidema" but doesn't give numbers).

I will cop to Vitamin D defiency; had it before and haven't always been great at remembering to take the supplements. But hyperlipidemia? I never had high blood lipids before, and I'm practically a vegetarian (eat meat maybe once a week) and I don't eat a very large amount of cheese. (I really don't want to be pushed into statins; I hope that is wrong)

and anyway, how can I know WITHOUT HAVING NUMBERS?

I was stressing, the anxious part of my brain (=most of my brain) was going "maybe your results are real bad, maybe there's something indicative of something terminal, and your doctor doesn't want you seeing it before you talk to her" but I think it's MUCH more likely the lab messed up and either:

- the blood samples got lost or damaged (once before I didn't get some of my results and it turned out that tube of blood got overheated and rendered the results invalid)

- the diagnoses are someone else's or otherwise an error

- the lab was just really slow getting the stuff done, and the results are not actually back yet. (Though in that case I'd think my doctor's office might text me about "maybe you would prefer to reschedule because we don't have results yet")

Then this afternoon I remembered that I had heard that Crowdstrike failure affected medical services too (some hospitals apparently had to shut down lots of things) and I'm wondering if that and its associated recovery slowed down my results showing up. I hope that's it. I'd rather not have to schedule ANOTHER fasting blood draw and (I presume) pay the copay and the lab fees AGAIN. 

So anyway. I don't LOVE checkups where I don't know the blood work because I remember my dad's adventure back in the early 00s where he was ultimately diagnosed with an early-stage cancer and the six months of biopsies and probing and appointments started with a weird blood result. 

But maybe, hopefully, everything will be back AND GOOD tomorrow and I can go off for another year of existing without too much worry. 

***

I do have vague plans to run to Michael's if I don't immediately have to start planning for my medical future tomorrow, because last night I got thinking about that Bluey doll and thought "you could mail order the yarn through the Michael's app and just have it delivered by mail and then you would not need to plan to get out to get it"

 Ah but womp womp: working on the app, on its small screen, somehow SOME of the yarn (I ordered a couple different sets of colors; acrylic is cheap enough and I wanted the RIGHT shades of blue and that sort of mustard gold that her snout is) got set for "pick up in store" (some is being mailed) and I didn't know how to undo it so they're holding it until Sunday (I don't know what happens if you don't pick it up, if you get refunded that money or if you're just out it) so maybe tomorrow I do run to pick that up and also get some groceries. I was not planning to do that but whatever.

***

But at least I got the fieldwork done today. It hurt to do it, it was very humid and the vegetation is much thicker now. I did have help; one of our research students came along and he carried stuff for me in return for me identifying plants for him. It took us a couple hours. The soils are extracting now.

But before I went: I wound up having to pump up one of the tires. The "low tire pressure" light came on when I pulled out of my garage, so I retrieved the little compressor I have. At that point I could not see any obvious tire damage so I thought maybe it had just got low over time (I forget to check with one of the pressure gauges). 

But when we got back to campus, after he got out of my car, the research student said "hey, I see the head of a screw, you were probably parked so it was on the bottom before and couldn't see it"

So yeah. So even before going home to shower, I called the tire place I bought these from and found out they were NOT busy, so I took it right in.

It was maybe a 15 minute wait for them to fix it (pop out the screw and plug the hole). $15, which was cheap enough. And I got to see this.

There were two other cats - a black one and a gray and white one - but they weren't in a place I could unobtrusively photograph them, and this one looked much more like they were luxuriating in their bed than the other two were (they were sleeping on the sales counter)

When I was in there before there was a very "crunchy" looking old tabby (not this one, much thinner and different coloring) that I figured had to be a very old cat; they might be gone now as it was a year ago or more I bought the tires.