So join the union while you may, don't wait until your dying day, for that may not be far away

I saw the condemnation of Trump's racism by the House of Representatives. I saw the shutdown of ICE headquarters by Never Again Action and Movimento Cosecha. I hope the Amazon Prime Day strike made a difference and not just news. I hate that these things have to be done; good for people for doing them.

No one ever got back to me from the specialist's office I called on Monday, despite a second call on my part. Thanks to the lethal nonsense of American insurance, I can't actually see my physical therapist without someone from this office ordering me further sessions with her. I will be getting up in about four hours so that I can get to the office as soon as it opens and talk to one of their staff in person, which was the only thing the secretary at the office could offer me, all actual appointments being booked in apparent perpetuity and the concept of calling patients back being apparently, equally borked. Frankly I'm expecting this to play out like The Consul. Oh, yes, yesterday, and the day before yesterday, and the day before and every day for oh, so long . . . But my jaw still hurts to the point that the additional pain kept me from sleeping more than another two hours last night (during which I dreamed confusingly of Anthony Perkins as sort of Norman Bates c. Psycho II (1983), wiry dark in a blue workshirt, not very sane and a far more sympathetic figure than any authority I have had to deal with lately), so I might as well burn an entire work day waiting to see if I can be seen. I slept about ten hours the Friday night of Readercon, when I crashed hard with fever and food poisoning. Otherwise, between heat waves and health issues and the ridiculous complications of the past weekend, I think I have averaged three to four hours a night since the start of the month and I don't know how much longer I can keep up even the minimal coherence needed to sound amusing on the internet, never mind not lose jobs. The last time I slept this little, I lost grad school. I have started to feel glassy all the time.

Governor Baker owes me another $15 for my taxi today. At least Alan Turing will be on the £50 note.

In a file marked secret, in a drawer kept closed

I'm alive because of modern medicine, but modern healthcare might still kill me.

I slept about an hour. I got to the specialist's office right on time and the secretary told me the doctor I had come to see no longer practices out of that office and it was impossible for me to have been told on Monday that I could see her on Wednesday because she hasn't been there for months. I insisted that I was told just that. The secretary wanted my information. I gave the secretary my information. She told me I had no history at that office. I told her I had seen four doctors there over the last three years and that several of them had given me referrals, for example to PT as recently as last fall. She repeated that there was no trace of me in their system outside of a completely different practitioner. Eventually she agreed to let me be seen by the emergency clinic. The emergency doctor thought I was overwrought and wanted to rate my pain on a one-to-ten scale of three when I was explaining that it was so bad I couldn't sleep. I finally got recognized by an RN and the emergency doctor was able to find my file in the computer, which does not explain to me why the secretary couldn't. She connected me with the successor of the doctor I used to see, who seemed friendly and whom I cannot see again until October because the office is so booked. She reactivated my referral to PT, although I can't see the physical therapist until the end of the month because they are also booked. In the meantime I am supposed to use hot compresses and Tylenol. And see a dentist about the wear and tear on my teeth according to the emergency doctor, which is the last thing I want ever to do again in my life: my jaw is in this state because of dental malpractice and the previous doctors knew that. I barely trust anyone with medical initials after their name anymore. I trust the specialist's office a lot less now than when I called on Monday. Over and over I said that I was not just recounting a weird painful thing that had happened over the weekend, it was an ongoing pain that was interfering with my life. At least I got the PT referral out of it,

I am eliding the emotional content of this experience because it was like plunging straight past Kafka into Hitchcock, with multiple people telling me to my face that I wasn't feeling what I was feeling or had been told what I'd been told or have the history that I have; it was violently anger-making and disorienting and I had to keep calm in order not to be dismissed out of hand and increasingly I feel that all calm does is provide cover for the other end of the dismissal spectrum, the one marked then it can't be that bad. I had to say thank you when the verb I wanted to use was more explosive. I barely understand why I was told a doctor was still with the practice when she wasn't and I don't understand my disappearing act from the database at all. I had previously thought of this system as sympathetic, reliable, and competent. Now I'm trying to figure out if they were just replaced by pet rocks when I wasn't looking.

As a bonus, when I tried to get a raspberry lime rickey to drink while waiting for the next bus out of Davis, I discovered that the Diesel Café has just gone strawless; leaving aside the entire argument of whether this tactic actually decreases plastic waste on a level comparable to regulating the trash of corporations or whether it just further complicates the lives of disabled people, right now it is easier for me to drink through a straw than through the disposable plastic style of strawless lid because I don't have to open my mouth so much and when I explained that in so many words to the person behind the register they miraculously found a formerly nonexistent jar of straws and offered me one, but my jaw is going to heal and other people are still going to need straws and it is exhausting to have to defend your right not to be in further pain and I guess I haven't left that entire argument aside after all. I could have drunk my soda without a straw. It wouldn't have been impossible. It would just have hurt more and I felt like I was pleading for favors and it was just an unnecessary little filip of further work.

$20 for this taxi, Charlie.

Soon I'll hit the switch and fold into the universe

In things today that didn't suck rocks screaming through a straw, I worked through the late morning and afternoon and dozed off on the couch in the evening while rewatching Jean Renoir's This Land Is Mine (1943). Occasionally the thunder woke me and sometimes I saw the lightning flicker on the inside of my eyelids, but otherwise I slept through a shatteringly impressive storm that seems to have done nothing to wring out the humidity but was probably still a good idea for avoiding drought. spatch made me dinner of scrambled eggs and very liquid grits with goat cheese and black cherry Jell-O for dessert while I was sleeping. Hestia watched over me. I feel very cared for by people who are not medical professionals. The part where I remain in lots of pain still sucks.