adrian_turtle

I have remarkably strong opinions about airports, considering how seldom I travel. Heathrow does several things right. Their line management is excellent; better than anything I've seen in the US. Chalk one up to national stereotypes.

They have what they call "repacking stations" right before security. Those are little places to step out of line, put your carry on bag on a table and rearrange things. It's like they know you want things packed differently when you're standing in line for half an hour (perhaps managing small children), or when you're proving everything fits in a standard-size bag, than when you need to dump your water bottle and display your toiletries and electronics and empty your pockets. So they put the stations after the line, as well as setting them a bit aside so people can do that rearranging without blocking traffic. I'm not sure what you call the people who do this kind of work (it's not exactly urban design or wayfinding), but somebody did a very good job.

Then security itself. Gevalt. You take one of those plastic bins, put your bag and coat and shoes and everything you were supposed to take out of your bag into it, and shove it from the table onto the conveyor belt. (Fortunately, they allow you to get help, because it's a hard shove at an awkward angle.) After they come out of the scanner, the bins continue on the conveyor belt and you pick up your bags. Travelers are supposed to pick up the empty bins and put them on the stack of empty bins a few inches away. This is extraordinarily bad design, socially and physically. Everyone in that line is picking up a bag, usually a bag + a coat + a little quart bag of liquids. Until very recently, they were also picking up their shoes and looking around for a place to put them on. What hands were they supposed to use to pick up the bin? It's only a few inches, but you can't just slide it over with your elbow or hip; you have to pick it up before sliding it over to where it drops onto the stack. As I was putting on my belt and reloading my pockets, one of the airport workers came by with her arms full of bins and called us all rude, bad people for not putting our bins away.

I used to think the law of driving on the right side of the road was completely arbitrary. Socially determined, with no particular basis in any level of reality, but of course once it has been determined it becomes very important to abide by it. In a community where most people are right-handed, the choice is NOT arbitrary. When a right-handed driver is startled on a right-driving road (by, for instance, a bird hitting the windshield), their stronger arm tends to pull them off the road. On a left-driving road, that panicky flinch tends to pull them into oncoming traffic.

On my recent visit to London I learned the people there drive on the left side of roads and walk on the right side of sidewalks. I know such conventions don't have to make sense. The increased danger of driving cars on the left is pretty small. If cars and pedestrians both kept to the left, I suspect I would just chalk it up to Foreign Customs Are Different and it wouldn't itch my brain like this.

I noticed something when I used public toilets in London a couple of months ago. For years, I've been seeing UK TERFs absolutely freak out about the possibility that a transwoman might be in a stall next to a ciswoman. So I somehow thought they were less private than the stalls here. Or at least no more private. The standard I'm accustomed to is that the doors come down to about knee height, maybe a little lower. (Plenty of space to run a mop under them.) The public toilets I used in London had doors that almost touched the tops of my shoes! And the doors closed with proper hinges, without big gaps on the hinge side.

I've always known the TERFs were outrageous bullies, but it was so weird to see this particular wrongness. It's like they've been saying they hate people because it's raining outside, and then it turns out it wasn't even raining?

I have bifocals now. After more than 10 years of changing back and forth between reading glasses and distance glasses, I have to learn a whole different set of reflexes for looking at things. When to move my eyes. When to move my head and NOT my eyes.

I was fine with carrying reading glasses with me, even though it meant I couldn't just go out with what fit in my pockets. But it's tricky to change glasses while wearing an N95 mask and a broad-brimmed hat, especially when I don't have a table or even a lap where I can put down the pair I'm taking off. So I spent a lot of time in the wrong glasses. Unable to read the bus schedule on my phone or unable to see the bus stop sign telling me which direction the bus is going. Unable to find my way into the supermarket, or unable to read package labels. I appreciate how labels are color-coded and otherwise designed for the convenience of people who cannot read! But it's frustrating how often I bought the wrong thing, or had to ask for help.

Adjusting is ... not great
I woke up with a migraine 5 days in a row.
I stumbled and fell on a trolley platform yesterday. I very nearly fell off the trolley platform, so it was much more upsetting than it might be. I wasn't really hurt, but it was scary. It wasn't even one of the transit stops where the footing is particularly bad.

But the bifocals are great! They're great in the ways I had thought they would be. Even better, because my old distance prescription wasn't right. I can read my phone and read the labels on groceries and also see street signs. I can even see leaves in trees!

The problem is that I don't know how to look where I'm going, literally. When I wore plain distance glasses, my eyes were often aimed at the ground I was about to walk on. Especially when I was walking on rough ground, and most of the pavement in this neighborhood counts as rough ground. The line of the bifocals hides that "3 steps away" ground, and the "next step" ground I can see through the reading window feels harder to focus on than when I just walked around in reading glasses. Is this a solved problem? I presume some of you wear bifocals and look where you're going...do you tuck your chins or something?

I was about to gripe about limited storage space in this apartment, but I'm not sure that's the right word. There's the storage space where you put stuff you aren't using. The extra toilet paper and soap and hair stuff we stocked up on. The first-aid supplies that just sit in a drawer until something goes wrong. The tube of toothpaste you use every day needs space on the counter, or space somewhere, but it doesn't feel like "storage" space. But the 3 of us like 3 different kinds of toothpaste, and this apartment has no counter in the bathroom, so it gets a little tricky.

We have a narrow little cart beside the sink, with toothpastes and shaving creams and sunscreens and dental floss, all placed so we could reach it when we need it, without walking across the apartment. So I reached for a tube of toothpaste, noticed it was white (Cattitude and Redbird both use toothpaste from green tubes), and failed to notice that it was sunscreen. I failed to notice that it was sunscreen until I put it on my toothbrush and started brushing my teeth with it.

I don't care if it wears off in 80 minutes. I threw away the toothbrush.

It has been a terrible week. I went to London for the first time. I saw my mother-in-law for the last time. I discovered how much of modern life depends on having my cell phone. I hope to post more about all that, but I am demonstrably not very good at following through on "I'll post about that later."

One afternoon, Cattitude and I went out in search of a cell phone. We left Redbird in the hospital room where her mom lay gasping for breath, too weak to sit up by herself. It would have been better for one of us to stay with Redbird, but none of us trusted my ability to find the store and find my way back to the hospital, especially with no map or way to call an Uber.

Cattitude has long legs. For decades, he has walked behind our hobbit, moderating his pace. It unsettles him that I need him to walk in front, because I have no sense of direction (and can't read a map and a street sign with the same glasses.) And I want the option of hiding behind him in case of strobes. Anyway, he worries about outpacing me or otherwise leaving me behind. So I said, "Turtle here. Not lost yet."
And a block later, "Turtle here. Not lost yet." Good to know.
And later on, "Turtle here. Not lost yet."

We found a place to buy a phone and found our way back to Redbird and her mom. We all talked about how much we loved one another. Now she's gone. We came home so Vicki could do the rest of sitting shiva not in London.

Turtle here. Not lost yet.

We may be rushing off to London. Vicki's mom said she was starting to feel her age, which is 94, so we were thinking maybe we would go visit her this summer, or maybe fall. But then she fell ill and we are looking to travel much sooner. It brought home that feeling of needing to leave with no time for your bread to rise. It's not literally that urgent. There will be time for laundry to finish drying, time to call the catsitter. Still nerve-wracking

This is not a good time for international travel. We have passports, and we all just applied for the new Electronic Travel Authorization the UK started requiring for visitors from the US. But the...the lawlessness at the border, makes it all feel frightening and out of control. Advice? Lawyer recommendations? We don't have anyone on retainer, or even anyone to call if something were to go wrong.

I just got email from my friendly neighborhood hospital network. They've been monitoring the local levels of contagious viral illness, and found they are decreasing. (Happy spring! Yay!) They have reached a low enough level that "employees are no longer required to wear masks during direct interactions with patients," though they will continue to monitor conditions.

If a patient wants a clinician to wear a mask, feel free to ask. Remember they don't have to if they don't want to.

If patients or visitors want to wear other masks or respirators, they are required to wear surgical masks on top of them in order to impair the fit. Layering masks only causes the underlying N95 to leak 13% of the time, so it's not a reliable way to cause leakage. It's just so annoying, because the hospital is not requiring everybody in the room to mask. You can walk around unmasked, wearing a surgical mask, or wearing a surgical mask over an N95. It's only the safest option, the N95 alone, that is forbidden. I don't expect the new rule to be enforced, but it still distresses me.
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/study-wearing-surgical-masks-over-n95s-can-cause-dangerous-leaks

I have carefully avoided eating in restaurants for more than 5 years now. I remember the last time I casually got a cup of tea and a macaroon in the library cafe (in early March of 2020. That was the trip where I checked out a doorstopper of a short story collection that sat on my headboard shelf for 10 months.) After the 3 of us were vaccinated in 2021, we went out for lunch, rejoicing. We didn't know how little help the vaccine was on somebody immunocompromised, nor how little it helped with the new variants. That was probably when Vicki got Covid. And pneumonia. And she's coughing yet.

For a long time, I've heard some people saying Covid has been thoroughly suppressed already and we can go back to doing what we like. The economy needs it, or everyone is exhausted, or it just isn't necessary to be cautious anymore. And I hear others say common courtesy requires stringent precautions: masking everywhere, not eating in restaurants, etc. Brunch? You would risk everyone's health for something as trivial as brunch? Yes, I am taking stringent precautions, but it's a loss. And it has been a real loss that I have not been able to have a festive meal in company. That I have not been able to invite someone over for dinner. That I have not been able to stop off for a sandwich as part of a long day of errands. It's not trivial. (footnote) I've missed it.

I spent most of last week at a shiva out of state, eating meals at restaurants. Cousins very kindly drove me everywhere, as I can't drive. There are restaurants that one or another of my relatives really like, so all eleven of us went together. Sitting under flickering lights, in a large group that contained Cousin Shouty, it did not seem feasible to keep my mask on OR ask detailed questions of waiters before each meal. Are the eggs cooked in butter? Is there beer in the fried mushrooms? I took a lot of LactAid, but it wasn't for dairy foods that I enjoyed. I ate in restaurants without masking, but they weren't foods that I enjoyed, and they weren't experiences that I enjoyed.

So now I am wearing a mask at home. To protect Vicki, in case I caught something from all that unmasked running around Ohio and eating in restaurants.



(footnote) I do eat outdoors in company in good weather, but I live in Boston and good weather for outdoor dining is not predictable, and just doesn't happen for much of the year. Especially for those of us who can't tolerate serious heat and don't have our own comfy backyards.

I'm about to head to a "Stop the Coup" rally on the Boston Common. I hope it will be too crowded to find anyone except the 2 people I am planning to meet, but please join me. (Then again, it's a weekday and everyone is tired and there might be few enough that a couple more people standing there would be really noticeable!)

I found a piece of cardboard to make a sign, despite Redbird's recent valiant efforts to tidy up the living room. All I could think of was, "NO!" It has the virtue of fitting on the sign, but does not seem adequate in other ways. There's just so much to protest. Flail.