Darren’s Here!

Darren came to stay with us! He plans to stay until the work-from-home orders are lifted and he needs to go back home. I’m soooo happy to have him here! I was stressing his two-day drive from Boise to Albuquerque (that was part of my stress from yesterday which I didn’t mention because he hadn’t arrived yet and I guess I’m superstitious, lol.) I always worry when people are traveling.

I’m happy he made it safely! Although now we get to wait around for a couple of weeks to see if we get covid. Everything is so fraught these days! He wore a mask and was very careful and stayed at a campground instead of a hotel. He’s even wearing a mask when around us in our own house! And we’re avoiding close contact. And I’ve got the evaporative cooler blowing air constantly through the house.

I meant to convert to refrigerated air this spring, but then I was in Boston getting cancer surgery and now it’s a pandemic, so I never got my air conditioning. Turns out the evaporative cooler is very good at pushing a lot of fresh air through the house, which they say makes a big difference. But who knows, it’s so hard to know what is prudent and what is just unnecessary and not going to make any difference anyway. Traveling out here from Boise was a risk, but I’m just so glad to have him here.

Today he did a video interview with Laura about autism for her company’s diversity program. I listened in, and it was absolutely amazing. Like wow. I’m going to see if I can get the recording of the video and post it. It was so impressive.

And now he’s helping a friend of mine move. She was trying to do it all by herself and it’s just not possible to move furniture alone. So he’s got gloves and a mask and they’re doing their best to social distance. The reality is, sometimes we just need to interact a bit with each other. How is she supposed to move alone?

I wanted to help her myself, but I’m still recovering from surgery. I’m not in much pain, just twinges when I move in certain ways, but I feel like I have a long, narrow piece of cardboard inside me, horizontally across my lower abdomen. It’s stiff and pulls and just feels wrong. I guess it must be internal scar tissue. Anyway I’m not supposed to be lifting heavy objects, which presumably includes furniture.

It was very nice of Darren to spend his first day here helping out my friend, after doing a fabulous job of talking to Laura’s coworkers about autism.