I think I overdosed on freedom

So Tuesday my second vaccination took full effect. This is way cool: we made it through a pandemic without catching it and now we can resume something approaching normal life. After a year feeling as imperiled as Mr. Miracle —— it’s a real relief. I’m happy and grateful. Still, the need to do multiple things we’d been putting off did not make for a productive week. While my top goals for Freedom were to visit my comic book store and go out to eat, neither one actually happened — the Musts took priority.

Housekeepers came in Thursday. This was a “must” because we had a friend of TYG’s arriving for a mutual friend’s funeral today. The alternative to getting the cleaners in ASAP was to do it ourselves, which we weren’t looking forward to. And we wouldn’t have been as good either; anybody who thinks housecleaning isn’t skilled labor is kidding themselves. Of course them cleaning didn’t require much effort on my part, but it was distracting, especially dealing with the dogs, who freaked out.

Then we had the plumber coming in to snake the drains. We scheduled an appointment for Wednesday a week in advance. 9 AM rolled around, plumber didn’t show. Office said he’d be by 2 PM. Didn’t show. The plumber finally called, said he hadn’t been given any sort of appointment for us. I found an alternative plumber who showed up the next day and got the job done. Pricey, but satisfactory. However, it all chipped into work time. You know how it goes — it’s 8:45 AM, plumber’s going to be there, no point in starting anything …

Friday I had to take the car in for annual inspection, oil change and general maintenance. Not cheap either, but necessary. But again, distracting. In between all that, I went to the library, got a haircut (photos next week) and went shopping in a grocery store. That was a lot of fun — convenient or not, online ordering doesn’t do it for me. Hell, the store’s close enough that shopping IRL may be more convenient than all the typing and clicking. Plus it had some stuff TYG wanted that wasn’t available online. Plus cold stuff is still nice and cold when I get it home.

In the midst of all that I still got some work done. Partly because I wisely treated Sunday as a regular work day, which proved the right decision. Even so, I’ll need to do some Leaf articles over the weekend. My tax tips for veterans article came out. I finished redrafting Chapter Seven of Undead Sexist Cliches though I still have to rearrange all the footnotes. I rewrote the alien pregnancy chapter of Alien Visitors and got some good feedback from the writers group. And I posted about the early, less-remembered Adam Warlock series at Atomic Junkshop.

So a good, if hectic week.

#SFWApro. Cover by Jack Kirby, all rights remain to current holder.