Friday started late, too

No school for A., however I had things to get done today. Specifically, I decided to day I was going to crack this Get a PCP problem or demonstrate conclusively that it was not solvable. I started back at the beginning, by calling Registration at Acton Medical. They’ve got one doctor taking new patients and that doctor is only taking Blue Cross Blue Shield. I did not even know that this was a thing that doctors did. However, I have now completely closed the option down. I bailed out before registration on the previous phone call, but I figured, well, maybe they’ve got some process. They don’t. I have no idea why the previous person was going to transfer me to registration — it’s just another person to say no. And also, what a shitty job to have. I mean, I suppose they can still enroll children on their pediatrics side, but basically every new adult patient gets told no. Can’t be fun — altho when I said that, the person there said they loved their job. Which let me tell you, that tells me everything.

Moving on! I found a place in Westford that is taking new patients but their first appointment is in August. I was like, hmm. Everyone kept pointing me back to the Emerson system search page, and I’d already been there and been making phone calls and leaving messages with machines and sending forms through the web and no one has been answering for up to a week at this point. So, I decided to give up on the idea of a Family Medicine PCP (my preference) or a woman (my preference) and just go down the list, calling every number until a human picked up. I hit the jackpot at a Concord internal medicine shop that also has an aesthetician side of their operation. If I’d thought of it ahead of time, I’d have headed straight there. They are probably always interested in late middle aged women. Which includes me. I called my insurance and said this is my new PCP. I’m to call the doctor’s office back on Monday to work the appointment part of the puzzle. In the meantime, I now have a medical records home, so I set about updating my PCP in various other locations (the hospital — where I set up an account, Mass Gen Brigham’s patient gateway which is used by Emerson Urgent, etc). Somewhere in there I called the dermatologist and told them as well. So, fingers crossed, everyone who I might go to in the future will have easy access to each other’s participation in this madness.

I pulled some bins out of the basement and unpacked my nice porcelain — mostly the coffee set, but also the bowls set and the chocolate pot and a few other odds and ends. It all went into the sideboard where it belongs, and some things came out of the sideboard and are heading out the door. I’m waiting on some silver cleaning wipes to get the tarnish off an ice bucket and a silver ladle. I don’t know if I’ll keep either. Probably the spoon and not the ice bucket. I have an ice bucket I like.

I unloaded my Kobalt tool chest of drawers and posted it. I expected interest, but wow. That thing was more popular than legos. R. figured out a way to connect it with straps to a handcart and we got it up the stairs so

HEY WALKITOUT IF YOU HAVE WEIRD MUSCLE PAIN / TWINGES TOMORROW PROBABLY BECAUSE OF THAT TRY NOT TO FORGET AND PANIC

I don’t think I hurt myself, but it was effortful.

I listed two drills, one that was mine and one that was R.’s; there’s a third, his, that is better than either of those, and he’s really entering into the spirit of this thing. He also asked me to list a car tape deck (Alpine something or other — very expensive back in the day). Two people were immediately interested, which was a real surprise. Someone came up and picked up a drill. The person who was supposed to pick up the Ranma 1/2 DVDs did not show up, but did eventually message me to reschedule to tomorrow including supplying their cell so I could remind them. That’s really considerate, honestly.

Friday cocktail zoom was fun.

The cyst no longer smells bad! Yay antibiotics! OTOH, it is now oozing, which is … creepy and gross. But it feels better than it has for a week, so I’ll take it.

There’s still a fair amount of stuff in the basement, but it’s really been reduced in scope by a lot. That poor basement has had a lot of stuff move through it. There was the delivery of the contents of the storage unit from Seattle. There was the clearout of things from the condo when Priestess moved in. There was Florida Man’s storage unit more recently. There were donations that stalled hard during the pandemic years. There were a few leftover toys that I hadn’t gotten rid of, in case we had younger children at our house with their family at a party.

It would have been so easy to just let it all keep sitting there, until we had to arrange to move to Florence in a couple years. And it would then be such a job sorting through it and getting rid of the things we didn’t want to move. Obviously, a lot of the motivation right now is the excitement other people demonstrate at getting this great stuff that I don’t want any more. But for me, the motivation that really, really, really matters to me is thinking about future me furnishing that new house and making it comfortable and pleasant. I don’t want a bunch of crap I don’t want _now_ joining me in that house _then_. The feelings of future me are ever-present in me.

I know not everyone thinks that way, and I also know that it’s probably just as well. The feelings of the present and the past are a lot to cope with, never mind future feelings. But this is the way I have always been wired up, and it feels so intensely good that this process is working well.