Chief Complaint

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Weekend Breakdown

How was your weekend, Internet?

Here in the USofA, it was a holiday weekend. From a Companionship and Connection standpoint, it was a standout weekend. I am trying so very hard to hold onto the warm fuzzies I have from spending time with dear friends and beloved family members, but I will be honest: I am cranky.

Content Note: What follows is some whining from a highly privileged and wildly fortunate individual who really has nothing to complain about. I don’t blame you if you don’t have time for that, so I’ll see you on the flippity flop.

My husband got Friday off, which meant that instead of going into the office and seeing patients, he went upstairs to his home office and dealt with insurance companies and pathology reports and patient calls from home. Sure, he got to sleep in and wear shorts and a T-shirt and he didn’t have to commute. Still… That’s not really a day off.

Also, the WEATHER, my god. The weather has been my absolute least favorite, unless you count “active tornado” which is worse. It has been SO HOT and SO HUMID and I HATE IT.

Friday afternoon was miserable.

Thank goodness we have a brand new air conditioner and a pool!

Except that last week, my daughter’s room was hovering around 80F (26C) at night. The HVAC guy had warned me, after the installation, that our AC had been off for a full day, so the second floor of the house would take a couple of days to get back to temperature. But… 80 degrees after four days of waiting seemed reasonable enough. Also, we had two VIPs arriving that afternoon, and a third later that evening, and I did not want them to be sweaty and uncomfortable.  

Fortunately, the HVAC guy was working on Friday and came right over and very enthusiastically tested the velocity of our air output from each register and measured the temperature of the air coming out and checked all the connections and did a bunch of other things and by the end of his visit, things were cooling down.

AC accounted for, I went out to clean the pool. (Well, I didn’t clean it, I let the pool guy do it.) The previous owners thoughtfully installed an automatic pool cover, which has been wonderful. The pool stays fairly clean, the water doesn’t evaporate as much, we have fewer critters leaping to their deaths in the water. But it would not open. And it was SO HOT. Together with my husband, we coaxed it into opening about halfway, but then it refused to move any further. Listen, I know the VIPs would have been gracious about not being able to swim, I know this. And yet. Plus, my daughter was having a friend over and I much prefer having lots of outdoor options for kids to relying on a cooling-but-still-too-hot room and a bunch of tempting screens.

Fortunately, the pool service person was working Friday! He sent out his best guy, who managed to open the pool cover. But, he noted, it will not close. We’ll have to get a pool cover specialist to come address it. Can’t wait.

Saturday morning, my daughter notified us that there was something wrong with her ceiling. We trooped into her room (cooler, thank goodness) for a look. Hmm. A suspiciously leak-like circle surrounded a tiny crack in the plaster.

Yesterday, my husband was unloading the dishwasher while I was trying to write. He opened a cupboard to put something away, and the glass lid of a casserole dish leapt out at him and shattered into smithereens on the kitchen floor. It hit the counter on the way down, leaving plenty of smithereens all over that, as well. Thank goodness it didn’t land on his foot. But the poor guy had large hunks of glass ON his bare feet and said he wasn’t sure how or where to move.

Fortunately, after a three-stage cleanup, we got the glass taken care of with minimal bleeding.

Then I got my period for the second time in about twelve years (I take oral contraceptive pills to prevent that; it should not be happening.)

Then I got a notification from Costco that my contact lens order hadn’t gone through because my prescription was outdated.

Then my daughter notified us that her ceiling looked worse.

Then I discovered my cat had knocked a section of staples off my desk and batted them across the room. I don’t think he ate any of them – he doesn’t really EAT things, except food and plants – but I don’t know that he didn’t eat any of them. All the online resources I consulted said a) this is an emergency, call the vet immediately or b) this is not an emergency unless he shows XYZ symptoms, watch him carefully or c) give him food right away to help get the foreign object through his system or d) absolutely do NOT give him food because it could cause or worsen a blockage.

“I would never eat a staple.”

Of course I had nightmares all night, mainly about being pregnant and the baby not doing well. This morning, I noticed that the house felt warmer than it should be, and when I call for cooler temperatures, it doesn’t do anything right away (at all?). The ceiling crack is holding steady, but we are expecting more thunderstorms and more rain.

Today, of course, I have been making all the calls (and you know I love phone calls) (no): To my eye doctor, to update my prescription. To Costco, whose online platform allows me to cancel my previous order, but does not allow me to update or change my prescription. To the pool cover people. To the roofing contractor who is handling our as-yet-not-started roof replacement. Do I call the vet (the cat is behaving totally normally, including eating and producing waste as usual)? Do I call my primary about the spotting? Do I call the HVAC guy?

Yes, I acknowledge that I am very lucky that THESE are my biggest problems. I am grateful to have experts to call (if they would only call me back) and grateful to have the resources to address the issues.

I AM STILL CRANKY.

Okay, deep breaths. Let’s combat the crankiness with some reflection on the absolutely wonderful parts of the weekend.

  • My time with the VIPs was fabulous. It is so rare for me to find people I like and like spending time with, if that makes sense? Even with people whose company I really enjoy, I often end up feeling depleted of energy at the end of our time together, which is not a reflection on them, that’s just my introverted personality. But the VIPs were the opposite. They charged my social battery instead of draining it, and I was sad to say goodnight at the end of our time together, and I hope to see them again sometime soon.
  • Saturday was a quintessentially perfect summer day. My whole family slept in (with a brief wake-up for me at 5:30ish to feed and play with the cat, who slept in until 6:00!) and then spent the afternoon in the pool. It was hot enough that the pool felt wonderful and breezy enough that the heat was tolerable.
  • Fourth of July was pretty great. My family typically spends July Fourth in the basement, feeling crotchety toward our neighbors who set off fireworks. To be clear, this is our preferred way to observe Independence Day. But I asked a friend what she was doing for the holiday and she told me, and then asked what I was doing, and when I said nothing she either took pity on me or thought I was angling for an invitation to her event, because she invited my family to join hers. We had such a nice time! She is my friend for a reason, and she and her family are lovely and welcoming and it was actually kind of nice to celebrate the holiday instead of boycott it. The day’s promised thunderstorms never materialized, and the weather was less humid than it had been. The evening ended with a fireworks show that was the perfect amount of spectacular and the perfect length. I had forgotten the special kind of buoyant unity that fireworks can inspire. And by the time we got home, our neighbors had nearly finished their own fireworks show, so we only had to endure a few pops and booms.
  • The extreme heat may be ebbing. Not only is today supposed to hover around 77F (25C), but the weather forecast suggests that we are taking a turn toward the high 70s/mid 80s (24/30C), which sounds a hell of a lot more pleasant than last week.
  • My cat continues to be The Best Cat.
Here he is, glaring at me because I am Outside and he is Inside. He disagrees with my assessment that his triple-layer coat is incompatible with our current temperatures.

Okay, as per usual, being grateful has shifted my mood toward the positive. Thank you for reading. If you have any complaints, big or small, I am happy to listen!  

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Wordy Wednesday Wandering

June was a whirlwind, wasn’t it? I am still trying to wrap my mind around how it can possibly be July already. The past few days alone included: picking up my child from sleepaway camp, observing a belated Father’s Day with my husband, buying a new car, getting a new air conditioner installed, and celebrating my daughter’s birthday. For those of you who have been around since I was on the fence about having kids: THE KID IS NOW THIRTEEN.

I could only find the “birthday” portion of the “happy birthday” banner, which I think it more of an indication of my current level of discombobulation than lack of delight at my kiddo becoming a teenager.

I have been doing SO MUCH laundry, and there is stuff (camp stuff, gift detritus, air conditioner replacement debris) everywhere, and I cannot stay on top of the mess.

This looks much neater and tidier than it FEELS. It FEELS like being slowly suffocated on all sides by Stuff.

(Alert, alert: Lisa and Nicole, you may want to skip the next two paragraphs and the photo between them.)

The air conditioner replacement was a fun surprise. I scheduled a simple clean-and-check with my HVAC company, and the technician discovered that all the wiring had been devastated by mice. In fact, the only thing that was preventing the wires from being exposed completely was a giant mouse nest. I think you know how I feel about this, which is burn it all down.

How can something so small and kind of cute be so destructive?!?!

We’d already spent a pretty penny to deal with previous mouse-related air conditioning carnage, back in April of 2024, and it was one of those deals where we could shell out a bunch of money to repair the old unit, which could of course die at any moment and has already proved much too welcoming to rodents… or shell out more money for a new, slightly-more-mouse-resistant unit. Considering this week is in the 90s (30s C), we went with the latter option.

The air conditioner is not doing a whole lot for the top floor yet. Carla slept with her camp fan clipped to her bedframe last night. It really does a great job of cooling. (We got it for camp because it is one of the few options that requires only batteries, and not some sort of USB charger to keep it powered on.) Several of the stores we’ve been to recently have been selling fans, which makes me feel like I need more fans. But Carla and I plan to spend as much time in or near the pool as possible, as a heat-beating measure. She has a new turtle pool float and I have pool hammocks to lounge in and copious amounts of sunscreen.

REAL FEEL ONE-OH-FIVE. No thank you.

I have been exploring all the delicious options for hot-weather meals that involve no cooking whatsoever; we had chickpea salad sandwiches last night, on homemade sourdough bread that my husband’s colleague sent home with him. I am planning on making a cold noodle salad later this week, or a Mediterranean platter, or possibly another round of sandwiches, this time with this version of chickpea salad.

Interrupting my husband’s day seeing patients with really crucial discussions.

Carla and I spent the afternoon of her birthday shopping, which was delightful and exhausting. She wanted to go into every tchotchke / novelty items boutique within a ten mile radius. Our adventure included Five Below, Home Goods, Michaels, Hobby Lobby, Target, and the Dollar Store. We also went to Pet Smart, to look at the kitties.

During our expedition, we passed a new international foods store and had to check it out. They had a variety of snacks and treats from different countries. I snagged a bag of coriander flavored Doritos which are my new favorite thing. They taste just like cilantro and are SO GOOD.

Yummmmmm.

Carla was more interested to learn that this store sold squishies and fidgets that are currently all the rage. She persuaded her father to buy her a NeeDoh Fuzz Ball, but then when we got home, she noticed that it doesn’t have the NeeDoh logo on it. We got squishy scammed, y’all. My thought is that this store had no idea they were selling counterfeit NeeDohs, and so I am hoping we can go back and inform them about the problem, maybe get our money back, and definitely get some more coriander chips.  

If you live in the U.S., are you celebrating Independence Day? I dislike this holiday because of the fireworks. They are loud and dangerous and it seems like a lot of people take the expansive view that the entire month of July is for setting off firecrackers in their yards at all hours of the day and night. I get very Grumpy Old Lady about the whole thing, and my husband and I typically prefer to spend the holiday holed up in our basement, grumbling about our neighbors (him) and fretting that a rogue firework will set our home ablaze (me). (Last year, we woke up on July 5 to find our driveway littered with spent firework shells.)

Art by Sina Simburger, @sin.xline

My in laws sent my whole family holiday apparel. This was a very kind gesture, and 250 years is a momentous anniversary. For all its flaws, I love my country. We have freedoms and opportunities here that I try not to take for granted. It is exciting and remarkable that we have reached this semiquincentennial milestone. And… I kind of feel that expressing any kind of patriotism gives an inaccurate impression of my beliefs and politics. I’ve driven past a lot of houses over the past month or so that have cheerful American flag bunting on their fences, or little American flags planted in their yards, or patriotic signs trumpeting their enthusiasm for the anniversary, and part of me feels a little lift of festive joy… and another part of me feels like I have an immediate – and quite possibly biased and wrong! – insight into what kind of people they might be and what kind of beliefs they may hold. UGH. By the way: I am not saying that people more conservative than I am are “bad;” I know many people across the political spectrum who are good, kind, loving people… who simply have different views on some topics than I do. I don’t know. It’s kind of unfair, is what I’m saying, that a symbol of unity should instead carry with it the weight of judgment. As usual, I am not the first or the most articulate person to note this; but it’s particularly noteworthy to me as we inch closer to the Fourth of July.

Let’s turn to a less controversial topic, which is my cat. Poor Lenny was shut away in my room for SIX HOURS while the new air conditioner was being installed, because the HVAC people kept going in and out of the house. He bore the injustice of his imprisonment with dignity. But he did develop a winky eye, which of course made me worry that he had something seriously wrong with him. Carla and I took multiple videos and photos of him, and examined his winky eye in various lights from various angles. I envisioned eye drop prescriptions and Rachel Green-style interactions and surgical intervention and loss of the eye. I called the vet and asked their opinion; their opinion is always “bring him in.” I scheduled the first available appointment, forgetting that there were five (5) strangers meandering in and out of my house for the foreseeable future. I called the vet back and got a later appointment. I fretted as the appointment approached because the HVAC people were STILL THERE. Finally, with about forty minutes to spare, the HVAC people left. I released the cat from my room so he could use the litter box. When he reappeared, his winky eye had resolved completely.

I had texted my husband earlier in the day to alert him to the cat’s almost certain blindness. His response was “Maybe an eggshell.” This requires some backstory, which is that my husband’s colleague sent him home with some fresh eggs the other day, from her chickens. She’d packaged the eggs in a little clear egg carton and had included some instructions with them that said they should be stored on the counter. Well. Lenny was obsessed with the eggs. He must have been able to smell chicken on them? He didn’t bother them until there were only two left. At which point, I came home from Carla’s birthday shopping extravaganza to find the carton overturned on the floor, one egg completely unharmed, and the other broken. I cleaned everything up, returned the surviving egg to the carton, and put a package of insect repellent refills on top of it to make it more difficult to bat off the counter. Not difficult enough, it turns out. The next morning, we came into the kitchen to find the eggshell I’d rinsed and left on the counter to dry once again on the floor, the makeshift carton weight on the counter, and the egg carton on the floor. The remaining egg was still intact. Hence my husband’s assumption that eggshell was the source of Lenny’s winky eye.

Screenshot

I made crème brûlée for Carla’s birthday dessert, per her request. The recipe called for five egg yolks, and I saved the shells because I read that they can deter slugs. Which I think are destroying both my coleus plants and one of my hydrangea trees. I love how pretty the eggshells are, or were before I baked them and crushed them. I hope they help my coleus plants! This is the third year I’ve planted coleus in the same location, and the first time that I’ve had an issue.

What’s up with you this Wednesday? How hot is it where you are? What are you making to eat when you don’t want to turn on the oven?

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This Went in an Unexpected Direction

Yesterday I spoke to an AI agent on the phone. At least, I think it was an AI. It did not announce itself as such; it called itself “Dane.” But maybe it wasn’t an AI? It was so humanoid that I wasn’t sure, so I spoke to it as though it could be a human, albeit one who was extremely adept at mixing conversational speech with call center script. Aside from a general AI vibe I got from Dane, it did some specific things that made me think it wasn’t human. I thought about listing them here, but I don’t want to. And now I’m realizing, perhaps for the first time, that everything I post here is already being digested and catalogued by non-humans.

Which of course I already knew. Surely there have been web crawlers as long as there have been search engines, identifying keywords and indexing my blog alongside every other thing posted to the internet.

If you have a blog: have you ever learned that someone unexpected reads your posts? Once, years ago, I learned that a colleague or maybe a classmate of my husband had stumbled across my blog. Obviously, that has always been possible; my posts are public. I write because I want to be read. I do try to remember that my words are public, and I do self-edit my posts in some ways. It’s not as though this person did anything nefarious, or even (as far as I know) commented on my posts or kept reading for any length of time. (If you’re still reading, hi!) It still felt odd, though, as if someone were reading over my shoulder. (Why it doesn’t feel that way all the time, I don’t know. You’re reading it, aren’t you? And that not only doesn’t bother me, it makes me happy!) Looking “being read” right in the face makes me squirmy. The same feeling applies when I think about an AI scouring the web for ideas about how to be more human, and landing on this post, and tucking my thoughts away for future instruction.

I started out thinking this would be a Five for Friday post, but apparently I want to talk about AI some more. It’s a topic I think about many times a day. It’s a subject I don’t know a whole lot about. It’s something that terrifies and fascinates me.

Let’s start here: The environmental implications of AI are massive and horrifying. Full stop.

A while back, I had a friend who seemed obsessed with LLMs. She used them all the time, and our conversations often included her saying things like, “I asked ChatGPT and it said…” or “I just put all my thoughts about X into Claude and it suggested…” She seemed to derive real insight from her interactions with AI. Sometimes, when we exchanged everyday gripes or concerns, she suggested that I turn to one of the LLMs for answers or clarity.

I occasionally use Chat GPT, and I do so with tremendous trepidation. I do not like what it learns about me when I ask it for things. I do not like the humanoid quality of its responses. I do not like that it makes assumptions and intuitive leaps. I do not like the image, in my head, of all the resources it’s depleting just to give me a list of books that meet a series of very specific requirements.

At a work event for my husband’s practice, some of his colleagues were discussing AI and its various applications in the medical field. Providers ask AI to summarize patient visits, which can optimize their time doing paperwork and allow them to interact with patient instead of focusing on their computers. Surgeons operate robotic tools remotely. AI can help spot pre-cancerous polyps in endoscopy videos.   

Requests for my freelance work have declined in recent years. Occasionally, I decide that I want to earn more money and I look for jobs. Usually, my searches are for remote positions because I dislike wearing real clothes any more than absolutely necessary. My entire career has been in writing adjacent fields: editing, copywriting, content creation. Editing and writing are what I love to do; they are my primary skills. The job search engines turned up posting after posting after posting for various methods of training AI to edit and write.

(I use Google and Gmail every day. I click on words in my Kindle and in online content to see their definitions. I employ spellcheck in Word.)  

Two men at my neighbor’s barbecue chatted about their use of AI at work. One uses it to generate marketing copy. The other uses it to write emails to customers. They agreed that AI is so much cheaper and easier and more efficient than hiring an expert to do those tasks. They noted that the output isn’t quite as good. They each shrugged.

I disabled the predictive text function on my phone. I disabled Gemini in my Gmail accounts. I refuse to look at the AI Overview in my Google search results. I feel principled and righteous. I feel irritated because I have to do so much scrolling to find a reputable source for my inquiries and I misspell so many words when I text and I overlook emails from my mom because my inbox is so clotted with advertisements.

One of my writing friends recently told me that she was quitting ChatGPT cold turkey. She had been using it to help her brainstorm ideas, refine sentences, identify plot holes… but she’d been horrified by the number of articles she’d been reading about AI use in the publishing industry. She also felt her brain wasn’t working as quickly or as deftly as it had before she’d started using AI.

(Apple Maps tells me how to get to the airport and friends’ houses and medical offices. Siri tells me what to expect from the day’s weather. Presumably nearly every airplane I’ve ever been on utilizes autopilot.)

I worry about: My lack of marketable skills. The various ways AI might impact my child’s future: her career prospects, her critical thinking skills, her mental health. The longterm effects of the systematic mutilation of our environment. Doctors relying on AI to the point of missing symptoms or eroding their own skills. Deepfakes and AI scams and chatbot-fueled psychosis.

A professor friend of mine laments the increase of AI-generated work among her students. She uses AI to pinpoint whether an assignment has been completed using AI.

Sometimes I think that it’s shortsighted and stubborn to resist a technology that could offer real improvements in efficiency and scope of knowledge. Sometimes I feel like a side character in a dystopian story, being propelled inexorably toward the collapse of humanity.  

(Netflix recommends shows I might like. Google Lens helps me identify plants, and Merlin Bird ID recognizes the birds I’m listening to. Shazam tells me which song is playing on my Apple playlist of “summer songs.” My phone’s Clean Up tool removes blemishes from my photos. A robot vacuums my floors and another robot cleans my pool.)

Elevator operators, lamplighters, crossing sweepers, linotype operators, travel agents, video store clerks. I’m not the first person whose career prospects have dwindled or disappeared due to technological innovation. I won’t be the last.

There’s nothing new I can add to the conversation. There’s SO MUCH about AI I don’t know and haven’t considered. But it’s something I think about all the time and it’s something that has insinuated itself into all of our lives.

I don’t know if I can be against AI when I use it so frequently in everyday life. But I certainly don’t feel good about AI. Outsourcing our critical thinking to AI can lead to faulty conclusions (“cognitive surrender”) and stunt our capacity for analytical reasoning (“cognitive offloading”). Generative AI models and the data centers used to power them have clear, measurable environmental consequences (one estimate I read says the same query on ChatGPT uses five times the energy than a web search). There are the slippery moral, ethical, and philosophical issues of AI consciousness (or not). But AI can also increase efficiency, automate daily routines, facilitate learning, summarize and analyze vast amounts of data, and and and and.

I don’t want to contribute to the depletion of our water sources, the impairment of our ability to think, the decline of civilization. I don’t want to be left behind.

(My phone labels unknown numbers as potential spam. Canva’s AI tool alters graphics to my specifications. Google AI Mode generates a list of articles about AI.)

Some AI use may be “better” than others. But where’s the line?

I would be so very interested to hear about your thoughts regarding and experiences with AI. Do you use it at work? In your personal life? What worries you or excites you the most? This is a judgment-free zone; I feel like we are all grappling with how and when and why and at what cost.