We had all the boxwoods and azaleas and random evergreens taken out of our yard this week and the crew also weeded and mulched and everything looks so good. I want to get two more bee balms and something in the yellow-orange family to fill in a hole where the moonbeam coreopsis was (didn’t make it through the winter and I’m not too upset about it as I didn’t care for the foliage). I’m thinking either rudbeckia or a yellow echinacea cultivar, depending on what the garden center has in stock.

I’ve also gone ahead and hired people to mow my lawn this year so I don’t have to expend the emotional labor on fretting over what my awful neighbor will think and on chivvying P. into mowing the lawn (which he hates to do, which I do understand, but it’s gotta get done).

Reading/Watching/Listening

Went to see Avengers: Endgame Friday afternoon–I enjoyed it immensely and while I found the fat jokes troubling and not funny, I didn’t find them as upsetting as I thought I would, based on the social media rhetoric surrounding the issue. I found the film to be a generally satisfying ending to this phase of the MCU and there were a couple of moments that just cracked my heart open, there’s really no other way to describe the feeling.

I also read Rebecca Roanhorse’s Trail of Lightning and liked it an awful lot. It was a super fast read and, in some ways, reminded me of the early Anita Blake books–like the first three or four. But more self-aware, in a lot of ways. I really loved that there wasn’t a Diné to English dictionary at the end and that the meaning of specific words was left as an exercise for the reader to either puzzle out or research. The worldbuilding is fascinating and I’m looking forward to reading more.

Still plugging away at Nevala-Lee’s Astounding and so far my biggest takeaway is that John W. Campbell was an egotistical jerkface. Possibly moreso that L. Ron Hubbard, if such a thing is even possible.

Work

Finished up a few projects this week, made some incremental progress on a few others. Slow and steady.

Medical

The big news of the week is this: my stent is out. I had an endoscopic procedure on Thursday to remove it and it went well. My GI doctor let me bring it home and it’s sitting on my desk next to the keyboard right now.

The other news is that I need another paracentesis (so. much. fluid. y’all) and I’m getting an appointment with a hematology/vascular doctor. I was supposed to have the info I needed for both these things on Friday, but didn’t hear from my GI doctor’s admin, so I have to call tomorrow. I also have to call the pharmacy to find out what the situation is with the delay on filling the Eliquis scrip that was sent over on Thursday; my insurance covers it, so it shouldn’t be a problem. And I need to call my mail order pharmacy about my Creon refill because their website wants me to pay $650 for it and nope, I’ve met my deductible and it should only be $125 for a 3 month supply until I hit my out of pocket maximum (at which point it’ll be “free”).

I felt fine on Friday, but I’ve spent most of Saturday and Sunday in bed feeling miserable and sorry for myself.

I’ve also decided that being sick is basically a full time job and I don’t like it.

Productivity

Fell a bit off the planner wagon this week, but did take the time to re-write my master list. I need to do a better job at breaking things down into smaller steps so I can continue on with the slow and steady.