You Fail At Accessibility

...I finally felt both good enough and bored enough earlier today that I started planning out one of the important chapters of book 7, with the intention to write. I think I knew the writing part was doomed for the day, given it's a "dueling tournament" chapter(s), and those always take a fuckton of work for me to prepare for since I have to come up with at least a handful of names for the other school's team members (for Singles, Doubles, Melee, and now also Triples), decide how far I want the Fae Springs players to get in each category, fill out the W and L brackets to match, and other miscellaneous planning. So all of that work tends to be exhausting even on good days, and usually takes a few days to finish even then. So I shouldn't have been surprised to get only as far as coming up with a list of things that need to be in the chapter, which this time includes a lot of callbacks to events in book 6, meaning I had to re-read part of one of the relevant chapters because I keep forgetting to write down truly minor character names in the character notes.

Anyway, so I lost energy after finishing the simplest part of that process earlier, the literal first step for this chapter, because I'm still ill. But it's a good sign that I was able to do even that much. I might need to include more in the chapter, but I got the biggest parts written down. And AFAIK I did not forget anything; anything that gets added later will be something I think of later.

Fun fact: Whenever there's no need for me to decide a name for a player in one of these tournaments, I like to come up with funny names for them instead of all of them being "(X school student) (#)" (or more likely "FS1 v SM2")¹ or whatever. Some examples: Barney vs Betty, Fred vs Wilma, Tom vs Jerry, Donald vs Mickey, Wednesday vs Pugsley, Shaggy vs Fred, or Tweedle Dee vs Tweedle Dum. It works because I color code the backgrounds of the name tag thingies by school anyway. (Fae Springs is always green.) If I need to give one of those joke names a proper name later, I can just delete the joke name(s) and put in the proper one(s) instead.

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1 = FS1 stands for Fae Springs (team), player #1. SM here stands for Shawnee Mountains, since that's the school the chapter in question is playing next. The last tournament was against Loess Hills School in Iowa. (Loess is pronounced Lush.)

Fun fact: Loess Hills School of Magic is in the middle of the first featured all-witch city/town in the series, which is named Vanishing Valley, Iowa. The town, which is about the same size that Shenandoah, Iowa was when my family lived there, is located inside a hollow hill, and was inspired by supposedly true stories on Reddit about towns that don't exist on any maps and which the people who stumbled into them can't locate again later even when they know the area very, very well. And having lived half my life in the Midwest and knowing how horrible it is there for anyone outside the norm at all, I figured most Midwest witches would either live in big cities like Chicago, or inside hidden towns like Vanishing Valley, Iowa.

Went to WinCo today for a few things -- decongestant, chicken drumsticks, juice, and old fashioned egg noodles.

I am very glad that I don't get ill with colds or other contagious stuff anymore, this last week being an exception. Because when it does happen, the illness hangs around for fucking forever. I'm mostly back to normal now, but occasionally still coughing and with a little congestion.

At some point in the over-a-decade since I've gotten ill with a cold, the OTC drug companies seem to have stopped making decongestants that do not contain a pain reliever. Which is wild, because I remember when decongestants with added pain relievers were new and controversial.

Okay, there is in fact one exception to that, from what I've seen: I ended up getting the Mucinex knockoff (same drug, store brand), which is okay because I'm mostly still dealing with potential chest congestion (I don't feel anything odd in there, but I keep hawking up phlegm, which is very telling). Though I was reluctant to get it because the last time I had a cold, Mucinex didn't exist yet.¹ Also the last time I had a cold, the most common decongestant, pseudoephedrine, was not yet basically a controlled substance because I didn't even hear the word "meth" until years after the last cold I had, and I lived in Iowa at the time; Iowa has been the meth capitol of the US since I was in high school. I may be autistic, but it was impossible to live in Iowa back then and not hear about meth at least a dozen times a day. So yeah; last time I needed pseudoephedrine, you could still buy a few dozen boxes of the stuff without anyone batting an eye about it. Now, reading all the backs of these decongestant meds, I didn't recognize a single fucking name, and there were like 30 different brands. Thirty different brands and the only one that didn't have some kind or other of pain reliever in it was the Mucinex knockoff. Also, I couldn't even find pseudoephedrine on any of them. Has it been banned entirely?

Fun fact: Guaifenesin [gwy-FEH-nih-seen] -- the drug in Mucinex and its knockoffs -- is derived from an Indigenous American remedy, the guaiac tree, which is a plant in a "caltrop" family. Interesting irony there, given that caltrop seeds are like living LEGO bricks with sharp spikes.

On another note, I am slow cooking some chicken, to have chicken noodle soup for the first time all week. Closest I've had to chicken noodle soup this last week was Soon Veggie ramen with some hamburger added to it. Soon Veggie ramen is basically like the Shin Ramyun stuff, but a lot milder. Still spicy, but the half dozen times I've had it, I did not have any diarrhea, so that's good.

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In other news, my old little grocery cart that I got years ago at Goodwill for $10 finally broke its leg and had to be put down. (Seriously, one of its legs broke off, and now it barely resembles a cart anymore.) Brooke (kengr) bought me a new grocery cart because she has Amazon Prime and I don't, and also I'll be paying her back when I get enough money to do so. (The old one is now a laundry hamper.) It was very easy to assemble, needing no tools at all -- not even included tools. Just push some buttons down and snap things (wheels and the front axle) in place, everything else was already done; it was so easy that I figured it out in two minutes after having completely missed the fact it had instructions included. It only took that long because it took me a minute to realize that the plastic caps on the back axle needed to be taken off first. And it came with an included waterproof liner that fits perfectly and is indeed waterproof (it was raining a lot today on my trip to WinCo), though it does slip off if I leave it on when I fold the cart up. My only complaints about it so far: it moves around on the bus so it has to be held still, which is something I haven't been used to in a long time because my Goodwill cart didn't have any wheels on the front, so it didn't move much when it was on all fours. It was bought used, and was $10, and it lasted at least two years, possibly longer; I don't remember how long ago I bought it.

The only other minor annoyance is that I can't figure out what the manufacturer meant the extra storage basket in the back of it to be meant for, because it's too small for me to put my Gaia bag in there, and the spaces between the slats are so big that most things I put in that rear basket immediately fall out. If it had slats going the other direction as well, it would be more useful. As it is, I'm gonna have to find a bag of some kind that will fit in there. I tried putting my little handbasket that I found in a Free Pile once in there, but it wouldn't fit.

Favorite thing: the waterproof liner thing, its lid Velcros shut so readily that if I didn't know better, I'd swear it was a magnetic clasp instead. In fact, I'm not actually convinced there aren't also magnets inside the Velcro bits.

Anyway, out of words for now.

( PS )

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1 = Hell, I'm fairly certain that the last time I had a cold, Google didn't exist yet.