Miscellany

Yesterday was a verrrrrryyyyy long day. I got up at 0 dark 30, drive the 100 miles down to Richmond. Blessing of the ride (outside of the traffic thinning out when I got 30 miles down the road) was a group of six deer nibbling in a field while bits of fog still layered the ground. I met with the psychologist for the 2nd psych eval. For my first one, I only was required to do a single online test. This psychologist was much more test-oriented, so I had to do an MMPI, a depression scale, some neurocognitive stuff, and an interview. Meh. He was more focused on my MS and whether or not I showed any indicators of neurocognitive deficit (I did not), but it wasn't bad, and I have heard nothing from him indicating that I had problematic scores on any of the tests, as he had told me he would do, so I am presuming he passed me. Since the diocese pays for this eval, I won't see his report unless I specifically request it from the diocesan folks. Frankly, that's not high on my list of things to ask for.

Then I met with our Diocesan Deployment Officer. It turned out to be a fun time - we walked to a downtown church for their lunch and sermon series. Lovely meal, interesting sermon by a Baptist pastor in a church with the most gorgeous Tiffany windows. It is a place where Robert E Lee and Jefferson Davis worshipped and it still has some feel of Southern privilege, but the folks in the pews were probably 40% people of color. I wonder what old Jeff Davis would think of that.

Then the long drive back. Did I tell you that I have a miserable nasty cold and cough? The good news is that my platelets have remained in normal range, and in the past when I got something like this, they would drop precipitously, so that seems to indicate that the splenectomy did what it was supposed to do. The bad news is that it is still a nasty cold and cough, so I spent the day carefully dosing myself with nondrowsy cold meds and sucking on mentholyptus cough drops. This worked pretty well - I did have some coughing, but nothing too bad - but when I had to drive north, I was already pretty tired. By the time I was 2/3 of the way up, I was feeling really sleepy, so I pulled off to make a couple of phone calls and get a doughnut. The sugar and fat gave me enough of a boost to make through the drive and the next meeting. Not a healthy choice, but a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.

So I made it into DC in time for my 4 pm appointment with the Canon for Deployment for the Diocese of Washington. Gracious, encouraging, although she doesn't have anything right now, had some astute observations and suggestions about my resume. It was a good meeting and a good personal connection to make, and I'm glad I was awake enugh to present myself reasonably well.

I made it back home in time to crash on the couch. A 14 hour day on Ash Wednesday and a 12 hour day yesterday in the midst of a bad cold had pretty much used me up, so PH called for some Chinese food to be delivered (home delivery of food is something we've done maybe three times in the almost 15 years we've been together) - an indicator of how pooped we both are right now - and it was an early night.

I'm spending today on the couch, trying to knock the cold out of me. PH is off to Dallas for a 2.5 day meeting. Poor thing has a cold, too, but his doesn't have the coughing piece. I wish he didn't have to fly with a cold, since it's such misery, but he is well-armed with decongestants and such.

Tea. Time to drink much tea.