Friday is difficult for me

I walked with M. That was great.

The Alexa routine worked well, but I was just a little too tired to get up at the earlier time so I hit the snooze. We were all up a bit earlier than usual, yay, but A. needed some imodium. I wasn’t sure if she might be staying home, but she decided to go. I did NOT give her dramamine, because I anticipated that wouldn’t interact well, and a little googling confirmed that. Yes, imodium helps with motion sickness. Good to know, I guess?

My efforts to get an appointment at Acton Medical Associates totally failed because they fired me as a patient for never actually going to see them. I don’t know why so many businesses are this kind of needy. Lacking a PCP, I made an appointment at the Littleton location of Emerson Urgent Care. They relieved me of $65 and a couple hours of my time in exchange for telling me that I should go to a dermatologist and have that looked at but it’s probably a sebaceous cyst, which R. and I had already mostly figured out. I probably should have just self-referred to the dermatologist. I tried calling Concord, and their call tree said make an appointment on the website so you don’t have to wait on hold. But their website said that isn’t working now so call. Rather than call them a second time, I tried the other dermatologists, and after some time talking through insurance, realizing that the referral requirement would require a PCP, which I do not currently have, I decided I’d just self pay (we have a high deductible plan anyway, altho this definitely reminds me that should set up an HSA for exactly this type of situation). I got a cancelation appointment in Chelmsford for next Wednesday. I could have gotten something next Tuesday, but I’ll be out meeting the metalworking artist next Tuesday so that is no good.

I’m quite proud of myself for doing this, and once they knew I was self-pay, they even gave me the rate on the office visit (reasonable). They can’t promise to do same-day removal (possible but not guaranteed, since they want to see what they are getting into first), but I’m optimistic I could get a second appointment in a timely fashion because people cancel appointments.

This is great, because while I’ve had this since pre-pandemic, it got bigger recently and I’m somewhat concerned.

I had a delightful phone convo with K. while driving to pick up A.

Unfortunately, things took a turn at that point. I just wanted to get home and eat some dinner (because some time had passed since lunch), and I wound up offering to cook with A. and make her crepes. But R. hadn’t been to the store, so we went home, and I made the dermatology appointment described above (couldn’t do it while driving because I would have needed to dig out the insurance info and also looked at calendar and also part of the drive is through an area with legendarily poor cell service), and then foolishly offered to take A. to the store. I didn’t have the energy to be the conversational partner and validating and emotionally supportive person she needed, and she was not prepared to accept any kind of boundary on any of that. We did get the food and get home, but when I got home, R. hadn’t started any dinner either.

I really lost my shit at that point. I did make my dinner (mushrooms I had just purchased, the last of the eggs in the house until today’s delivery and also my purchase from Roche Bros, bell pepper, onion, tomatoes, ground beef, and a dinner roll from the store run) and I got chocolate milk (from the store run) and half an apple for A. while R. cooked the steak I had thawed for her earlier and some tots.

On the one hand, I suppose I should have just told A. up front that I didn’t have the energy to do anything but drive home and get dinner, and I should have told R. to go to the store and then start dinner. On the other hand, I’m pretty sick of all of this always being my job, while A. can pout and R. can go see shows and play bridge and exercise but somehow all my spare time is consumed with making sure the house and future house are all lined up to work well for everyone. I told them that functionally, it’s pretty clear there’s a budget. I can either do all the physical care or I can be a nice person to be around, but I probably can’t consistently do both. Especially not if I’m going to actually going to do things like deal with health care and make an effort to portion control.

I was particularly frosty that R. had been expecting me to be happy that he spent all that time I was out of the house replacing a bunch of switches. I may in the future be happy about that — hard to say right now — but coming home to a lot of non-support on dinner certainly didn’t make me happy, and the wall switches weren’t replaced yet, either.

In the ensuing discussion, I learned that his extremely contingent approval of my work over the past year had not been about the new house — if he is to be believed now — but rather about the attic room project. Which is nuts. I _asked_ about the new house, and I said over the last _year_ and the attic room project has only been in play for 6 or 7 months at most (I’ll go check that). ETA: Yep — since July 8.

Also! Since I helped A. get caught up on her overdue Wellness homework, her grade there has moved from a B to an A-. Woot!