Complaints Department (With Bonus New Drag Name)

So, O Best Beloveds, I won't lie to you: la vie is rather bleak chez nous at the moment. I'm in a slough.

This is never my favorite time of year, but so far 2018 seems to have pulled out all the stops in reminding us just how awful the depths of winter can be.  The cold and dark and damp always get me down, but right now there are more than enough non-climatic reasons to be dyspeptic. I thought it was bad enough the last time I put virtual pen to cyber paper, but really I had no idea...

In no particular order, but with the kicker last:

So I ended up traveling once more on Golden Handcuffs' orders out to San Francisco. That would normally be nothing but a plus (and when I'm less grumpy I'll recount, possibly, a highlight or two, principally involving our own Mr. Peenee), except that about midway through the trip, I tripped, rolled down a hill in the rain, and sprained my ankle. Falling in general rattles me (at my increasing age, if nothing else, it so very much seems a harbinger of worse to come), but being injured while traveling, trying to work, staying in a hotel, and in the hilliest and one of the least gimp-friendly cities in America was little short of shattering.

And then, just to one-up me, a day or two later Mr. Muscato goes and trips himself, ending up with what was first diagnosed as a fracture but which, on further inspection, turns out to be, as his orthopedist mournfully intoned, "a sprain just as bad as many fractures." So he's now encased in a vast and intimidating boot and to try and not walk for three weeks (I'm at least hobbling).

But the Fates aren't finished with us yet, not by a long shot: on Sunday morning, around 4:00, Himself had what very may well have been some sort of cardiac episode, so that we got to spend the next eight hours in the emergency room. And then the better part of the time since then (the time that was not spent at the orthopedist, at least) with him having various tests (complicated by not being able to have a standard treadmill stress test, what with the boot and all). And now we're waiting for a read-out from the cardiologist, and as you might imagine, just a tad anxious. We know what the worst might mean, and even knowing how much better I've gotten since the worst, we're nervous.

The absolute only consolation I've been able to glean over the past couple of days is that, if nothing else, obsession with one's personal miseries almost - almost - obviates the pall of horridness that hangs over Our Nation's Capital as our collective sociopolitical existence continues to implode.

In short, I'm not all that cheerful, for which apologies. I suppose I should just go and tell Miss Helen Wait...