Ulog #1 - So much at once

As of late I've had to deal with social security for the purposes of disability. What it boils down to is that I have a physical disability that results in extreme pain in my lower back if I stand or walk more than 1-2 hours at a time, pain so extreme that there have been times I am physically unable to get out of bed for 12 or more hours after just 1-2 hours of doing simple errands like grocery shopping and going to the pet store for supplies. I also risk permanent physical harm any time this happens and ending up wheelchair bound for the rest of my life, which is not something I want for myself for a variety of reasons. Any job I could do that doesn't require such physical work is negated by my anxiety - too much dealing with people such as for the purposes of a call center or tech support job will result in me having a full on mental breakdown that takes 2-3 days to recover from during which time I am completely nonverbal and will lash out physically at anyone who tries to talk to me in person and lash out verbally at those who try to communicate with me via text or the internet because my brain cannot handle the stress of dealing with other human beings.

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To that end I was supposed to have an appointment today to get the physical bit of all this evaluated for disability determination. I had an original letter stating the time and place as well as a letter from a few days ago they sent to remind me of the appointment. As if I would miss the appointments I've been waiting 7 weeks for, because these original letters were sent at the start of June and it is now late July. So my roommate and I were double sure to compare both letters for the time and place and set off an hour early for the half hour drive, wanting to count on traffic and generally getting lost and other potentially unforeseen things as much as possible so as not to be late.

There was some confusion, as the name of the place written in the letter was not the name that was on the building. And more than that instead of a doctor's office I was sent to some small chiropractic thing in a strip mall in the middle of redneck country out here, which didn't help. But once we verified we were in the right place I sat down to wait, holding a stuffed rat from my roommate's car as I had forgotten my usual comfort teddy bear in the chaos of trying to get out of the house on time.

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(that's actually his exact Build-A-Bear design, though he's a little more ragged than this pristine one!)

My appointment was at 12:30, but I was not seen until almost an hour later which was an hour we wasted sitting around when other things could have been getting done, especially on my roommate's part. He's worked 12 hour shifts for 4 days this past week, he's got other things that need to get done now that work has chilled out and he's not coming home and passing out for 8 hours only to have to get up and use the remaining 4 hours he wasn't working to eat, shower, and drive an hour one way to work. I know he doesn't blame me, but it was unhelpful to my anxiety that I knew that hour wait was causing him to not get things done he'd stated he wanted to get done today.

When I was finally seen the appointment was disappointingly short. Given that I gave social security an exact description of my disability and what it's related to physically speaking you'd think they'd have sent me to a specialist. But instead this dude was just some general doctor who did a general physical, took down how I described my disability, and told me that disability determination would call me to either confirm or deny my payments or send me in for further testing. I'm willing to bet on that last part, with another 7-8 week wait to see a specialist and all. I'm not at all counting on them to decide to pay up before the end of the year, that's for sure.

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My roommate and I got food and were on our way home shortly thereafter. He knows how much pain I'm in, I intentionally did a lot of walking, standing and other physical activity last night and early this morning to set off my condition so that the doctor could get an accurate vision of what exactly this does to me and I could give an accurate description of the pain levels. When we got home all I wanted to do was sit down, do a few other things, and wait on the online Dungeons & Dragons game that I was supposed to be part of tonight. Yes, playing the game is anxiety-inducing because I'm interacting with others but there is a difference; over the course of the month or so we've been doing this these people have become my friends and I'm no longer as scared of them. You don't get that when you're working a register or a call center job, every person who comes through your line is a stranger unless you live in a small community and might recognize someone and that's what causes my mental breakdowns. Plus with D&D I'm only dealing with 3-4 other players and the DM so that's not as bad, and I always feel less anxious when I know the people I'm interacting with have at least something in common with me.

But, of course, we came home to find our internet out. At first I thought one of us had accidentally touched the light switch by the door, which for some reason does not control the ceiling fan that's right there when you walk in but instead controls a plug further down the wall where we have our modem and such plugged into. When resetting the modem didn't work I restarted my computer and pulled out my wifi stick on my desktop and plugged it back in, but I kept getting the same thing - 'secure, no connection'. Frustrated by this as well, as he just wanted to sit and play ARK all night, my roommate called our provider only to be told they are experiencing a "high volume of calls right now" and the wait timer would be upwards of 20 minutes to speak to a representative.

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At this point it's about 3pm, and there's a local office for our provider just a 10 minute drive. So my roommate decides to take matters into his own hands and heads out, taking my library book with him to return and a few other things to run errands with. I'm exhausted, as I did not sleep well before the doctor's appointment given my anxiety, so I figure I can just nap until 5:30 and be up in time to make coffee and sound presentable for D&D at 6pm. My roommate texted me around 3:30 stating that yes, our provider is actually experiencing a massive outage that's affecting basically a little west of us and then everything east of us and it's slowly spreading westward and they could not give him an estimate as to when our internet would be back on.

With that in mind I used my phone to send a discord message to the DM for tonight's game and tell him I'd be unable to make it because of this, then went back to bed. I completely missed my roommate coming home from errands, napping, and then getting up and taking our dog over to his parents place to play around and visit with some family that's over there, I was just that tired. I finally woke about an hour ago, 10pm, and found our internet back. My roommate was home shortly thereafter and we took a minute to drive out to a 24 hour CVS as I wanted some drinks and he wanted to get more pop for himself and the 12 packs were like 3 for $11 on sale.

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And now I'm just chilling, finally. The internet is back so I can go about all the projects I have that need to get finished. Early this morning I streamed and recorded the last two parts of my Minecraft Building a Victorian Manor series so that I would't have to record tonight since I figured I'd be too wiped out after what I thought the day would be plus the D&D game. The reality is I might stream The Flame in the Flood or another game instead of Minecraft just to spice things up as I'm not really that tired after my long nap, but we'll see.

Also sadly there was another fire in our complex yesterday. This marks the 3rd in under a year and a half; some burned out near our old apartment just a month before we moved in, and the ones across the parking lot from our current apartment burned out last winter. But considering that the wiring in this place is faulty at best, there are many smokers despite the lease saying no smoking on the premises and many people have grills or meat smokers that they are not supposed to have I am unsurprised at this. And seeing as it was an issue in our old apartment that didn't get fixed until we brought the fire department in on it, I wouldn't be surprised if other places also have squirrels or other critters in the walls chewing on something they shouldn't and starting fires that way too.

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As far as we know no one has been killed in these fires and the injuries are not severe which is good, but on the bad side the two previous fires were chalked up to a smoker and someone having a grill so the apartment complex even as skeevy as they are is not responsible. We're kind of hoping this ones cause is faulty electrical or a critter in the walls just so these jerks will have to take some responsibility and fix it, and I'm sure by now they're under investigation because I've never heard of one complex having 3 fires in under 16 months before that wasn't intentional arson by a person or group.

Regardless, it's been one heck of a day. I'm hurting quite a bit but most painkillers just make my stomach turn so I don't take them. I have a heating pad though, despite the heat outside and sweat on my skin I know that heating pad is probably the only thing keeping me sitting upright right now and I've got things to do so I can't be laid up in bed for 12+ hours again. But I have my favorite iced tea and some slightly spicy boneless chicken wings, so all will be right in the world soon enough :)

Background noise for writing this post provided by The Guild of Ambiance on YouTube and their lovely 45 minutes of Potion Shop Sounds. Check it out!