Couch 212: The French Vanilla couch

Congrats on your new piggies, LT.

Hi. One of my investment accounts is a Roth IRA and the other one is a regular IRA I think. My finance guy got back to me and said that we would pull from the Roth first. Hopefully it wouldn't be a big deal but yeah, if I lose my job I'm going to have to pay COBRA and stuff like that. That's going to be expensive!

Well i was wondering how i was gonna get my form to mail in to get zero dollars back. I usually get it from the city library and the library is closed.

Thanks! Watching them chase each other and jump in the air ("popcorning") while chattering to each other is helping distract me from what's going on in the world...

First Zoom session with Dr. T in 15 minutes. Wish me luck! Also, would it be weird for me to ask him what socks he's wearing?

Of course you can ask him what socks he is wearing! It probably would help you connect to him because that is something that you notice about him when you are in the room with him. I don't think it is weird at all!

Oh and good luck LT!

hope it went well, LT.

Thanks for the wishes. He said he was wearing boring socks that I likely wouldn't recognize. From the outside, session went OK. After fixing a few glitches on my end (including changing my location to the bed because the corner I was in was so dark), Zoom worked OK. But I just feel totally despondent now. And more disconnected in some ways. Because it's like he was there, but not *really* there. I think I may ask if we can try the phone for the next one, even though he admits to being more distractable that way. It's a more natural method for me. I don't know...

So I just talked to L for about 12 minutes or so, I knew there was a reason she's been on my mind all week besides my own stuff... she's sick, hardly has a voice, no fever or anything she said (thankfully). That's why she's doing phone/facetime sessions right now. We might schedule something for next week assuming she has her voice back all the way. I'm so glad I finally let myself call today. It was good to talk with her briefly and she had some good suggestions for me from our mutual shamanic viewpoint for dealing with the phone calls at work.

Well my lunch break is over so it's back to work with me. 6 hours down, 5 to go. And 10 tomorrow. Then Sunday I rest.

My mother officially retired as a physician and gave up her medical license a couple of years ago.

She got a call from her state board today asking if they could add her to a list of retired doctors and nurses who would be willing to return to hospital work during the crisis if needed.

She said yes.

I'm really pleased that she did, but she's also almost 76 and has high blood pressure (runs in the family), putting her in the risky category. Plus the stories of what it's like in hospitals are alarming, so I'm really worried too.

I just used Vsee with L. It was so nice seeing her, but I'm super sad! I miss her so much.

Hugs, I know the feeling...

So far my state is not following suit. Which makes it a pain and I will just file them both at the same time.

Not entirely sure how this happened, given that tests aren't widely available yet, but my school (a state school) is going to be doing extensive virus testing for students and the community. They asked for employees to volunteer. I don't meet any of their scientific expertise criteria, so wouldn't be doing the actual testing, but I volunteered to help with logistics and registration and foreign-language speakers (modern Greek--there are a decent number around here and many older locals aren't completely fluent in English).

So they want to take the most at risk demographic and put them right on the front lines? I understand that we need all the help we can get but this seems kind of unethical. If we get to the point, like in Italy, where we're having to choose who gets care because of lack of resources and one of these people becomes ill, will they get priority treatment or get less treatment. Because both of those options seem wrong.

Also, I'm not picking on you or your mother here. I think if I were in the same situation and I had the knowledge to help out, I probably would, but it's the asking that's bugging me.

I know you're not picking on her. She could have said no, and they did ask questions about age and underlying health conditions, so I'm guessing they're prioritizing their list to put the younger and healthier retirees as the first called. They're not the only state doing it or considering it (I Googled around).

ETA: Part of the problem here, of course, is there's been a shortage of doctors in the US for decades.

Italy is apparently asking new graduates of medical programs to go into hospital work right off--no board exams or anything.

When I tried to turn my (personal) laptop on this morning, it would not boot. Kept giving me the BIOS Boot Menu screen and nothing I picked worked. Ended up taking it to a repair shop because the thought of not having my laptop this weekend was causing my anxiety to ramp up. I have my work laptop, but I don't want to and probably shouldn't install games on there and it's just not as easy to use as mine. Apparently between me turning it off last night, when it was working just fine, and turning it back on, my entire hard drive got wiped. The old guy at the repair shop, who's probably seen it all by now, said he'd never seen anything like it. There's nothing wrong with the hard drive but it had absolutely no data on it. His only idea about what could have caused this is a virus of some sort. I have virus protection so that's kind of worrying.

$90 later I have my laptop back with a fresh install of Windows 10. Now trying to set it up the way I like it again. Luckily almost all of my personal files were saved to Dropbox so it's not the end of the world, but it's still annoying. Stay safe out there online and backup your important data.

That sounds so hard. This is such a difficult time.
Hugs.

It's probably good for the retirees mental health to have a sense of purpose right now.

I know in my city they're asking the public and closed dentist's offices and the like to donate masks, gloves, disinfectant, etc. It's amazing to me that we're just barely into this and they're already running low on supplies like this. I don't know how much of this is because of the public panic buying and hoarding or some sort of just-in-time inventory system that the hospitals are using.

I've been watching my cats interact a bit more too for the same reason. Last night, Stormy (the big older cat) was sleeping on the couch and Penny hopped up next to him and laid down and positioned her head across his tail, closed her eyes and fell asleep. He didn't even mind. It was sweet.

Well the imaging place called today and canceled my mammogram/bone density test that had been scheduled for 4/15. Good thing I suppose, because I'd taken PTO so I could go, and work canceled PTO for the foreseeable future today. Wouldn't have been able to go anyway...

I think it might also be the number of patients. I was reading about San Francisco hospitals, and the article said they generally keep a six-month supply of protective equipment on hand, but they only have about a week’s worth left now. If you have to change gloves between every patient, and there are more than usual, you’re going to run out faster.

To do their testing that I volunteered for, my university is using their own science departments’ supplies of equipment, since we’re not having labs meet anymore.

Hugs, NP, I'm really sorry about your laptop. I had something similar happen ages ago, and it was so tough. Glad you still have most personal files. For a long time, I was really bad about backing up, but have gotten better the past few years. Helps how small and inexpensive (compared to, say, 10 years ago) the external hard drives can be.