Couch 214: The chihiro couch

I hope she's able to help you out, Scarlet. With therapy, I forget--do you see L at a reduced rate? If not, could you ask her about that? If so, maybe see if she could reduce it more, even just temporarily? My T said he once charged this one client just $5 a session for a few months because he was in a really bad place financially.

Ugh, I hope it's not something like that! I suspect Fauci could be in the running. Actually, maybe it would be just "healthcare workers." I'd be OK with that (just not "human spirit").

That's awesome that you and others are doing that. The puzzle swap is a great idea!

I agree with Scarlet that honesty is definitely better. I'm sure your T would say so as well.

Its very Darwinian, isnt it? Or Shirley Jacksonish. Its probably too early to talk about survivor syndrome, altho with all the talk about "get back to normal," it looks like we are just going to skip that phase. Plus you know ptooie bad luck.

I'm sorry you're feeling so isolated. It's phrases like the one I put and also the one where we're all in the same boat - grating on my nerves. cuz we're not. i did read an article about how we're all facing the same storm, but we're not all in the same boat. everyone's boat is different, protect us from the storm differently. something like that. i need to find that again.

Isn’t that true of every good relationship, therapeutic or not?

That's a very good point, ATAT.

Don't Try. Do.

Who are you, Yoda? "Do, or do not. There is no try."

ETA: just got an email from a student asking for credit for answers he got wrong on an online quiz because "I know I clicked the right answer!" I can feel my day's supply of little gray cells leaking out faster after that.

That's truly remarkable, ATAT. Technical issues exist, for sure...but if you get something wrong, you get something wrong.

These are all excellent ideas! We had an ongoing puzzle swap with some friends before all this started, and we're continuing with it (minus the in-person contact). I bet we'll do something similar once our respective gardens are doing their thing.

Operation Excessive Produce is going very well. This morning I sliced up a bunch of stuff with the intention of storing it for kid snacks, but she ate it almost as fast as I cut it up!

I do sort of look like yoda - short, round, losing hair.
I don't think I am green - but I could be lying to myself.

Our school went to pass/fail with pass being the default. Everyone has given up grading anything for real.

Thank you. This perspective helps.

I think my current prof is pretty much doing the same thing - he's tasked with running the whole 'everything is online now' thing and seems to be just handing out full points for anything that's even attempted at being completed. I could be wrong, but...

The directives are coming from the administration and all the coddling wimpy dean of student people. It is not our idea - just not worth it to deal with the hassle of trying to enforce any academic standards.

My school, in its constant effort to prove it is A Real University and not Party State U, is sticking to letter grading unless a student registered for a course pass/fail.

We are allowed by student request to give them an S grade for satisfactory. That is a C or better, but doesn’t affect GPA while it does give credit for graduation.

Eh - arent some things just nunya?

Dr. T got to sort of "meet" my guinea pigs today. Was able to do session in the living room, as H and D were out for a bit. So I took my laptop over to the cage for a minute. He was like, "Aw, look at that" when one was moving around the cage.Then he was asking me why guinea pigs (I'd had some in past and loved them, H is allergic to cats, D is terrified of dogs). But then he started talking about how it can be difficult to have pets because they have short lives compared to people. Like, great, thanks, Dr. T! As if I don't have enough to be sad about right now...

I am seriously annoyed. Last summer I ordered a writing product—essentially a device that allowed you to write without the distractions a computer would have. $400 pre-order price, supposed to ship in the fall. Order acknowledged, no updates.

December I write to cancel the order. Guy swears it will ship first quarter 2020, so I decide to wait.

Wrote a couple days ago to cancel again, since it’s past Q1 2020, and I dislike waiting 9 months for a $400 product. And yes, there was a pandemic in there, but they had over 7 months before that to finish. Guy writes back telling me how much having to refund my $400 will jeopardize the company. Oh, come on, I’m sure it will hurt these days, but trying to manipulate me? No, I’m done with them.

Saw my pdoc on Wednesday afternoon via telemedicine. The program he uses is called "Telehealth" by better practice or something like that. It was the first time using that program, for me. I logged on about 5 minutes before my appointment. I was in the lower right corner of the screen. But at least I looked better on that picture than I do on Skype or Zoom. Pdoc got on about 5 minutes after the hour, so I had waited about 10 minutes (whereas I used to wait hours in his office waiting room). We talked. Both Regular T and Pastor T wanted me to tell him about a so-called delusion I'm having. I say so-called because despite everyone telling me it's a delusion, I'm not sure that it is. Anyway, he didn't argue with me. He just listened. He said, well, it's a delusion. But then he said, you're on the right medication for it. He did a short diagnostic sort of scale for depression to see where my depression levels are at and they are amazingly better than three months ago (his words). He said I made his day! It wasn't the same seeing him on the screen as in person, mostly because I miss my hug! But the technology was pretty smooth. He only froze maybe once. I didn't have trouble hearing him or anything. He reminded me to make my next appointment on the portal. So I did. The bad thing is that he is so expensive. $200 for 15 minutes and he doesn't take insurance. But I still feel like he is worth it. I emailed Pastor T who wanted to know how the appointment went so I told him. He said that sounded good. I'm not sure to what he referred to exactly from my email but I assumed that meant things were good. Hopefully we don't have to keep talking about this delusion because I don't think I'm going to give it up anytime soon and I doubt that others are going to stop telling me it is a delusion any time soon.

$200 for 15 minutes? That is remarkable, Kit. I'm sorry he charges that much.

Me too! Up until this year he was on my insurance panel and it only cost me $30 to see him. But now he doesn't take any insurance. I can try to get my insurance to cover some portion of it but it seems very complicated so I haven't tried. Every week I just set aside some funds for seeing the doctor. I put extra in, in case I need an emergency appointment or something. HUGS Kit

The lady from the city wasn't that helpful. Her main suggestion was for me to try to get back om SSI (can't because of our savings),and H to try to get on SSDI (I doubt he has enough work credit). For being in charge of the homeless division of my city, she didn't have much to offer. Now I'm more depressed I have L in an hour and I don't feel like going.

HUGS @ScarletPimpernel