The Mandelbear's Musings

Long month, the last week and a half. Let's see. A week ago last Thursday I got an offer of a 3-month contract at Amazon, which I took immediately. Since it's through KForce again, I had very little paperwork to do and everything continues much as it has been. Colleen got her diagnosis of posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome, which is associated with immunosuppressant drugs, hypertension, low K and Mg. All of which she had.

Friday I cancelled my Norwescon concert -- I really wasn't ready, and was already under too much stress.

Saturday it looked as though Colleen was coming home, but by the time I got there her blood pressure had gone up to really scary levels, and they decided to keep her until it stabilized.

I spent most of the weekend shuttling back and forth between North Starport, Rainbow's End, and the hospital in between. I slept at RE, with Naomi and I keeping one another company.

Monday I picked up Chaos and Emmy, and went out to dinner for Emmy's 21st birthday. Blue C Sushi, which was expensive but able to satisfy the YD's craving for plum sake. I have two drinking-age children now.

I didn't notice any hill.

Tuesday Colleen came home. KForce called and told me I was supposed to start Wednesday.

As it turned out, my boss at Amazon had been expecting me to start on Monday the 1st (i.e., today), so things weren't quite ready for me. More or less ok, though; they were at least able to get me a badge and a laptop. (A Thinkpad T400, which isn't half bad.)

Last weekend was Norwescon. The "surprise open mic" that took the place of my concert was Saturday night, and I gave a perfect demonstration of exactly why I cancelled. GAAK. I should know better than to try to sing anything off book. Especially when I'm unprepared and stressed.

I was plagued by charger problems all weekend, but at least my computer charger worked most of Saturday when I really needed it to. The "geek toys" panel was a lot of fun. I read off the specs for the Cray 1 from the web browser on my phone, which had it beat by orders of magnitude. (How many orders of magnitude depending on which spec you looked at. 8MB of RAM? How... quaint.)

Sunday we had dinner at Romio's in Kirkland, on the way to take Chaos home.

Aha! moment -- I figured out that apologizing (which drives Colleen crazy) is my way of trying to make myself feel better after screwing up (especially in a way that hurts somebody else). It mostly doesn't work very well, and if Colleen tells me to stop, or I'm afraid she will, I can spiral downhill very quickly. (Started to write "downhell", which is actually a pretty good description of it. What was I doing in that handbasket, anyway?)

Didn't do a lick of open filking, but I enjoyed the concerts, and spent a fair amount of quiet time in the Green Room. Which was good for (introvert) me, even though I didn't realize at the time that it was what I needed.

So... last week was both relaxing and stressful. It was my first full week after my contract ended, and included our second weekend in the new house. Saturday, in fact, we had our first event, a tea party catered by Friday Afternoon Tea.

I had several interviews, and one in-person interview. That was pretty good; my job search was really starting to heat up. I spent quite a lot of money on and around the house, some of it rather inadvisedly. We did save rather a lot by switching from a curved stairlift from Ameriglide (which we found out doesn't actually get permits or use licensed installers in Washington) to a pair of straight ones from Acorn. Saved $4k.

The house has a secret passage! Well, ok, it's a laundry chute. But it was a secret from me, anyway.

I'm going to cut this short (if you really want details, you'll find them in the notes) to get to the last two days, which were kind of harrowing.

Today I am thankful for...

• OUR HOUSE! Well, ok, the bank's house, but it's ours as long as we keep paying them. It closed today, and I have keys in my pocket.
• A fantastic real estate agent, Dave Reith, and mortgage broker, Kathryn Seymour of Evergreen Loans.
• My former coworkers at Disney. The timing of my contract's ending, which kept me employed exactly long enough for the house to close.
• A lender who understands about how contracting works, and who let the loan go through anyway.
• Overestimating the closing costs by $15K.
• Colleen, Naomi, and our kids.
• Feeling at home.

It's been a long month this past week. Our mortgage broker failed to get us a loan -- we didn't get this finally confirmed until Thursday, but it had been crumbling for a week. Our realtor, who obviously has a considerable interest in our closing the deal, found another mortgage broker. She claims, on the company website, to have a 100% success rate. Still waiting.

(Meanwhile, interest rates have gone down a little. Every silver lining has a cloud around it?) And my tenants at the house formerly known as the Starport asked whether I might be interested in selling the place. To which the answer was hell yes! (I'm looking at adding over a half megabuck to my debt. Yes, I can use it.)

This Saturday we went to the Seattle Home Show with Naomi and her new GF Susan. Lots of fun, and a trifle expensive. But we found what looks like the right gardener, and spoke with what looks like the right contractor. And found what looks like the perfect power lift recliner. Now all we need is the house to put them in...

Sunday I actually got in some good walking -- home from N's after taking the Honda back.

There are links in the notes, as usual. I'm going to post this and try to get to bed; I've been sleeping badly recently.

I finished my sales tax (a big zero) on Monday, and told the county assessor's office about the end of my owner-occupied home property-tax exemption. As it turned out, I needn't have worried about getting dinged with penalties on my last payment -- it runs to the end of the year.

Realized that I'd be stuck paying CA income tax on the Starport, until I sell it. At least I won't have to file two state returns!

I've been sleeping too much. On the other hand, my mood is mostly good except when I'm overloaded or worried. Both of which happen pretty easily. I'm probably not as resilient as I used to be. I feel like I've been stretched way too thin.

Surprise.

The weekend was fun. Saturday we (Colleen, Naomi and I) went furniture shopping. N had found an astoundingly inexpensive dining set at Don Willis's -- beautiful dark wood; 8-person table, four chairs, and a bench for under $1K. Three more chairs turned up; we bought them all. The factory has gone bust -- there won't be any way to get more. N. found a dresser she liked that matches the one Colleen and I had bought there over the summer.

After splitting up for dinner, we met again at the Heather Dale concert. Fun, although there was a lot of overlap with Conflikt.

Sunday Colleen and I went to the West Seattle farmer's market, and explored a couple of blocks up and down California Avenue. I really love our new neighborhood.

So, welcome to 2013. So far it's starting out pretty well, with three very productive days at work, and spurts of productivity at home as well. I've done some walking, though not as much as I'd like, and even a little practicing. Colleen and I went to our doctor's appointments on Saturday. I get to stay off my morning BP meds! Colleen, OTOH, needs to go back on hers.

And Thursday was our 38^th wedding anniversary! We celebrated by going out for dinner-for-two at Anthony's seafood restaurant in Alderwood. Dinner consisted mostly of molluscs - a double helping of oysters, clams, muscles, and clam chowder. Plus drinks and dessert.

The free test coverage tool in Eclipse is pretty good. Fun!

We had house guests on Sunday; anyone in the Seattle area who wants to visit is welcome to come on over, given a few hours' notice.

Quote of the week:

Colleen: What are you depressed about?
Me: Depression doesn't need a reason.

As well as the year is going, I'm still apparently feeling pretty depressed and very, very stressed. I think I'm trying to do too much, but there's no helping it. I was kind of shocked to find that Colleen's last hospitalization was in 2009, only a little less than 4 years ago. It feels longer.

For you TV fans out there, here's a great write-up about the plot holes in WWII on the history channel.

It's going to be a bit of a wild ride here on the River. I seem to have been drifting for a long time. (I know, I've always viewed my journey downriver as a walk along the bank, but I can damned well mix my own metaphor if I want to.)

And I know that most of what I've written about under this tag has been relationships, friendship, and the care and feeding of geeks. But every once in a while, you have to change direction. And it's happening now.

Grand Central Starport is full of boxes now -- we're moving in less than two months. (How much less is, at present, a matter for some speculation.) I'm also changing jobs. What job I'm changing to is, at present, also a matter for speculation.

I believe I've mentioned alexithymia. I have it -- a difficulty detecting and identifying emotions and other mental states. I believe what's going on now is a mixture of anxiety and stress, mostly. And although I'm getting better at identifying and dealing with anxiety, stress is another matter.

Guess I'm going to learn.

I'm not sure exactly what went into the decision to move from the Bay Area to the Seattle area; economics (cost of living's 25% less) was only part of it. And certainly the fact that I have family and close friends there was a factor. But I don't think that's all of it. Both Colleen and I were ready for a change. Big change. As I said, we'd been drifting. 36 years in the same house, 19 years in the same job... one gets stale, somehow. Complacent.

And, yes, I've always taken the hobbit's view of adventures -- "Nasty, uncomfortable things. Make you late for dinner." It takes a certain amount of concentration to look at that big bend in the river coming up and look forward to finding out what's around it.

The house is full of boxes; we're moving from 1850 square feet of house and 1600 of garage, to a two-bedroom apartment (and some storage in Naomi's garage). The bookshelves have been ravaged. There's an apartment waiting for us in Lake Forest Park, empty of everything but major appliances and potentiality. Potential energy, soon to become kinetic energy.

Is that white water up ahead?

I have finished my penultimate day at Ricoh Innovations. Yesterday I was grieving. Today was more... I don't know. It was exhausting, but there was a certain lightness after boxing up and handing off my notebooks, and putting the last three boxes of accumulated files -- 19 years worth -- into the recycle bin and the secure destruction bin.

I ran out of space in the shredder bin just as I was finishing the second box of files. Then I remembered the ones in the desk's file drawer. Then the man came in and emptied the bin, and I finished my task...

... and did my last backup. Yes, very odd.

The signs are auspicious. The Spring equinox, with the sun rising higher in the sky with each passing day. The weather going from cold and wet to sunny and almost warm. Green hillsides, and leaf-buds. A renter for the house, found on the very day we mentioned that we were looking for one.

I'm not saying it's all going to be easy. We'll have to use a lot less money, and fit into a lot less space. It'll be great if I find a job right away, but I'm 65 years old and have to assume that I might not. It won't change our plans.

As of Saturday I'll be retiring for the first time. Maybe not for more than a couple months, this time, but it's the new steady-state for a bear who is no longer middle-aged. I'll be back. Maybe not for another five years, but maybe sooner.

We'll be moving to an apartment in or near Shorline, WA sometime this summer. Leaving a house we've lived in for over three decades. That we've gotten comfortably stale in. Getting rid of or storing most of half a lifetime's accumulation of stuff. The Buddha had a point -- you get too attached to stuff, and it weighs you down. Time to lighten up. Time to get moving.

Maybe it sounds like I'm trying to talk myself out of a depression, and maybe I am. But I'm also trying to say that I'm basically okay. It'll work. It's an ending, sure, but only the end of a chapter. I'm looking forward to the next one.

Not bad; I actually got in a very short walk, just before going home. It was still drizzling, but not very much at all; it was cool and moist and pleasant.

I spent the morning working on my resume and website; when I finally looked up it was 11:15, so I stayed home and had lunch with Colleen.

My "Avoid Avoiding" group was cancelled for this week; disappointing, since I had a lot to say. Next week...

I spent the afternoon doing file cleanup, and installing software on the old MacBook (which I had cleverly cleaned up after getting a new one). I also cleaned up and gave back the new MacBook, with the excuse that I didn't want to get too attached to it. It's more complex than that, of course; I never did much with it and probably wouldn't have even if I'd stayed on. I think mostly I just want to start disengaging. These things take time.

Disengaging from the house will be even harder, of course, though I've already started thinking about it. I'd been worried for a couple of years, actually, because many of the doors and passageways are too narrow for Colleen's scooter -- she can't get into the laundry room or the front bathroom, for example -- and of course the entire upstairs is inaccessible to her. If not now, soon.

Links, as usual, in the notes.

Was I just complaining about not having enough entries? Admittedly, there are a lot of links and bits of puttering (indicated by the 15min: tag), BUT there were a few major items, too.

The biggest, I think, was the fact that Colleen was able to stand up and take 6 steps without holding on to anything. That's a total distance of about 3 feet, but still! Progress!

I set out for my walk in the morning, but stopped in at a garage sale two doors down and found a queen-sized futon couch for $20. The lovely young woman selling it helped me haul it to the house and into the living room, whereupon I decided that I'd had my exercise for the day.

We went out for a drive in the afternoon -- Highway 9 to Santa Cruz, then south on Highway 1, getting off at the exit labeled "harbor", because Colleen didn't want to be so close to the ocean without seeing it. We wandered around for a while, eventually finding ourselves on Cliff Drive between Santa Cruz and Capitola, which was simply lovely. I figured, correctly, that it would be difficult to get too lost in the little sliver between the ocean and Highway 1.

We remarked on how we should come back and explore Capitola on foot/scooter some time, and how it would be a nice place to retire to (though probably way too expensive). The fact that we're starting to consider moving, and actually talking about it, is a major step.

When we got home, I made a lovely guacamole (brightened by a ripe jalapeno and half a habanero pepper), and eventually posted my second Songs for Saturday. And Colleen repaired the pair of pants that's been sitting by the sewing machine for half a year. So I'm feeling pretty good about the day.

I went splat at 11, after feeling sleepy for about an hour and a half. (I got up at 8:15 this morning, so apparently I needed the sleep no matter how much I resent having to spend so much of my day unconscious.)

Quite a few links up in the notes, including several about ebooks. Most of those were related to seanan_mcguire's Across the digital divide. I may have something to say about that in the near future.

I forgot to turn the alarm back on after the weekend, and got up at 7:30 (an hour late). Made for a slightly tight morning. But work was reasonably productive, so that's good.

And Colleen arranged for our new HVAC to be installed later this week, so that's good too. It will take a while to show up on the bills, but I expect the savings to be considerably more than the loan payments.

Cool link: Copenhagen Suborbitals Launch Videos -- this is an amateur group building a sub-orbital passenger rocket. Way cool! Some of the other links are less happy -- our society is pretty screwed up.

A pretty good day; lots of puttering. Typed in Naomi's script for the Norwescon concert as the liner notes for the CD. Bid high in the Interfilk auction at Consonance -- it's worth it. Spent more time working on the website.

I also went to Southern Lumber for 1x12's, to become shelves in what once was the "sewing room". (Before that it was the kids' bedroom, and it still does double duty as a guest room.) Getting there. And I pulled down a goodly number of guided-imagery mp3's from Kaiser.

On the downside, I had a blood sugar crash on the way back from Southern, so stayed home rather than going out for a walk as originnally planned. And then cooked up some chili for dinner.

A reasonably good IM conversation and a nice drive with Colleen finished the day; I went splat somewhere around 11:30.

Lots of good links up there under the cut. I think my favorite is OpenMesh via Humans Are The Routers on TechCrunch.

Yesterday was a pretty good day. I got in a walk, and made a successful expedition to Big!Lots for full-spectrum floor lamps (plus bonus desk lamp and torchiere). We had three extra people for dinner; I made chicken wings, ribs, and cauliflower. Yum! I got the backup drive moved over to an external box on the fileserver, just in time for this morning's backup.

Some great news from a friend.

The fact that there are still some lingering bugs and corner cases left over from last weekend's server swap is not terribly surprising; I'm not going to let it worry me.

Some good links. Watch out for book bears!

The main event was a shopping expedition, to REI, for bike accessories. Mainly a helmet, but along the way I couldn't resist three new pairs of socks. Some of the oldest ones have gotten threadbare.

Changed the sheets, washed one of the quilts, made lamb chili for dinner, didn't take a walk.

Some really nice snuggle, though, and I slept well modulo a dream involving some weird party food and coming back to find that a a leak in the ceiling had sogged my half of the bed and made parts of the kitchen floor so rotten you could put your foot through it into the slimy water filling the crawl space. It appeared to be our house, though the layout was completely unrecognizable.

Dreams about unfamiliar houses probably map onto unexplored parts of my mind. Not so sure I want to go poking around this one.

Several good links under the cut.

A pretty good day, all told. Got the clothes out of both dressers. A nice walk, if a little too fast -- $boss spotted me on the way to the pond and walked with me in lieu of our 2pm meeting.

Link: Chinese Medicine Demystified (Part I): A Case of Mistaken Identity -- first of a 5-part series on how acupuncture actually works.

It's done. Except for the sheets (still in the drier), a quilt, and a wallboard anchor (needed for the shelf track on Colleen's side). The mattress bags have gone missing, but I can add them later.

I had help -- lots of fantastic help -- from raindrops. He's tall, strong, and knows how to clean things. His housemates, ravan and datapard, also came over and kept Colleen company.

The bedroom looks both larger and lighter now that the two huge oak dressers are gone. Their storage capacity will be a bit hard to replace, but on the other hand it'll be harder to lose track of things in their depths. They've been replaced by 2-foot-long Elfa shelves with closet poles. Later I may add drawers, but they may not be necessary.

I am feeling accomplished, productive, and pretty thoroughly depleted.

The office makeover will have to wait.

A pretty decent day. Did backups and decided that the slower network really didn't make much difference in the time, so I can put off getting a new gigabit switch for a while. What I spent on shelving for the bedroom more than made up the difference, of course. Grumpf.

I combined my walk with making hotel reservations for my Mom's visit in mid-May. So that's done. It's a 20-minute walk, and scootable.

A nice drive after dinner, which was gluten-free pasta with the household's standard red sauce (a 2:1 mix of mild and hot Italian sausage, mixed with Classico spaghetti sauce from jars).

It just occurred to me that I can overlap three rather disagreeable major projects this weekend: moving thestarport.org's DNS and email, upgrading the fileserver, and cleaning the office.

I just realized that I have to do the first two in that order, or a lot of email will end up dropped on the floor. Most of that will be spam, of course, but the sheer volume of it means that if I don't move it, the tiny mailbox at my ISP will fill up and things will start bouncing.

But I also realized that having my fileserver out of service for a while will remove a major distraction that would normally keep me from cleaning out the office. Which direly needs it. Because I have to do a lot of that before I have the space to do the taxes. AAARGH!

I don't think I need help with this, just some good excuses to stop making excuses, if that makes any kind of sense. This post is a step in that direction.

It appears to have been a fairly productive day, in spite of ending rather badly. I did quite a lot of puttering, installed the other new shelf in the office, did some shopping, went to Kathy Mar's bash (and bought her new CD/DVD set), and boxed up Kat's computer, keyboard, and monitor. Discovered that just after getting up seems to be the best time for meditation.

On the minus side, no walkies, I got a well-deserved chewing-out from Colleen about the fact that email still doesn't work on her computer, and I ended the day sore, dead tired, and unable to get to sleep. A bath and a bit of IM conversation with another insomniac helped.

My stomach muscles were all knotted up as if I was afraid of something, but I still don't know what. Weird.

Yesterday was mostly spent puttering around the house; pocketnaomi and I carried on a very sporadic IM conversation egging one another on. Not as good as being there to help, but good.

The main thing was working on the SE corner of the bedroom. The goal is to replace the old shelf standards and brackets with Elfa, and add a couple of shelves to the South wall. I got the South wall done, and three shelves cleared on the East wall (leaving two more) A lot of sorting and recycling happened at the same time.

I went out for a walk (including some grocery shopping). The major insight was noticing how liberating it was to know that a lot of things simply are not going to get done. The more essential stuff still has to happen, but...

I bought some Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime Extra tea along with the other things; it turned out to be useful when I had trouble getting back to sleep at 3am.

I ended the day with some singing (at Colleen's request): I sang "Gentle Arms of Eden" and "Where the Heart Is" for Marty, then Naomi asked me to call her and sing something, and Colleen suggested "The Mary Ellen Carter". Fun!

Back to work. Worked from home in the morning (thanks to ssh, X11, emacs, and galeon) because we hadn't arranged for a Cat-sitter. The YD took over in time for me to go in to work for the afternoon group meeting.

Colleen is continuing to improve, though it's still slow.

I spent the entire day being rather very stressed, despite picking up Colleen at White Blossom and taking her to Cosentino's, then home. I told several people that it wouldn't seem real until the next morning, which indeed proved to be true (more on that downstream).

There were a few glitches, but no disasters.

By a little after 9pm I was feeling completely drained and mostly out of cope; Colleen walked to the bedroom, and we both went happily splat in our new (rented) super-adjustable king-sized bed. I finally relaxed in her arms, for the first time in over two months.

Thursday was a hell of a lot more work than I expected. I did get about half a day's working from home in, mostly while waiting for things to arrive, but it was still a long, stressful day that seemed unproductive even though, objectively, it really was.

In the end, the bedroom and guest room got cleared out, the carpets steam-cleaned, and one of our two hospital beds installed. It fits beautifully, and looks like it will work. Damned if I know what I'm going to do with the bedframe, though. Colleen suggested putting it in Kat's room and giving the YD the double-sized futon; that makes a lot of sense. I was up in the bed (it's an Ikea loft bed) and it's shaky enough that I wouldn't want anyone to sleep in it even if they weren't prone to seasickness. The YD might be amenable, since the queen is really too big for her room, and a futon frame would give her a huge amount of space.

Apria screwed up completely; two different drivers arriving at three different times, even after a couple of phone calls on my part telling them that we wouldn't be ready before 8pm. (Steam cleaning didn't get finished until 7pm.) And only one bed at the end of it all.

I'm going to need twin-sized sheets and mattress pads. I installed some Elfa standards as a replacement for the headboard -- those look as though they'll work out well. The Container Store's 30%-off sale runs until a week from Sunday :).

Colleen is coming home Friday!

I should be excited and happy. Instead, I'm worried, depressed, a few things I can't identify, and totally unmotivated. We're having the bedroom steam-cleaned tomorrow afternoon, and a pair of hospital beds installed tomorrow evening. I'm still not entirely packed, and the bed is still assembled.

I understand some of it. I have no idea how much care Colleen is going to need. I'm stressed because I'm almost certainly not going to be able to go to work tomorrow morning -- I'll need to clean and vacuum the bedroom floors. And so on.

Also, we've had that bed for around a quarter-century, if I remember correctly. I built it myself. Colleen grieved over chaoswolf leaving the house -- I appear to be grieving our old bed. The YD just took the mattress up to her room. I'll be sleeping on an air mattress tonight. Our lives have changed, over the last few months; I have no idea what the new "normal" will be like -- it's change, and unknown, and it scares me.

Whatever the reason, I have a great deal to do by tomorrow noon, and I'm not doing it. Instead, I'm sitting here wingeing into my posting client.

Not a happy bear.

Colleen came home for an hour this morning! I helped her into the car, and was followed home by Peter and Amy, her physical and occupational therapists, for a "home evaluation". It was a fun outing, but turned up a lot of problems. Some were things I already knew, others rapidly became obvious as I tried to wheel Colleen around the house in the transport chair.

Some of the obvious stuff, that I'm either already working on or had on the list:

• The bed is way too high. They agreed with me that a pair of hospital beds would be ideal. A couple of months' rental should get us enough information that we can order the right ones. I'll need to put in adjustable shelves in place of the headboard.
• As much clutter as possible needs to be cleared out bedroom to give her manoevering room, including the laundry hamper and the desk. Since we were already planning to get rid of the desk, and have to clean out everything in order to have the carpet steam-cleaned, that's already in progress. Right now, of course, it's a mess.
• The ramps need a piece of metal on the ends to allow a wheelchair to roll up them smoothly.
• We'll need to take off the door on the back bathroom, and even the strip that the door seats against, in order for the walker to get through. We can put them back when she's able to go sideways, and use a curtain for privacy until then.
• She's going to have to keep her cell phone on her, possibly on a neck lanyard, at all times. They didn't mention that, surprisingly, but I thought of it about a week ago.

Some things that weren't obvious before, but are now:

• The big one: she needs a self-propelled wheelchair, not a transport chair. We may be able to get away with renting one until we can get a scooter, but right now she's not able to get around the house safely even with the walker, so she needs a chair with big sidewheels that she can get around in.
• Speaking of which, there's a big difference between the four-wheeled contraption we bought a while ago, and the four-legged, two-wheeled frame properly called a "walker". Fortunately we have one of each. The walker is needed for both stability and leverage: she can get inside it and push down hard. Try that with the push-handles of the four-wheeled thingie and over it goes. Oops.
• The front door threshold needs to be removed - it's a barrier to rolling. Probably best to weatherstrip the bottom of the door instead.
• The area rugs need to be rolled up and put aside as long as she's going to be using a wheelchair.
• We need to clear away all the floor clutter around her chair, to give her room to manoever the walker.
• The kitchen island needs to be moved out of the kitchen in order to give a wheelchair room to manoever.
• She needs a commode, not only next to the bed for night use, but in the living room for the day. We can put it in the media/sewing alcove and pull the curtains for privacy, as soon as she's able to make the trip safely in the walker. Since Kaiser didn't pay for the one we already have (I didn't realize they would), they can pay for this one.
• I'll need to work from home in the morning, like I did when she was on TPN, so that I can get her safely out of bed and into the living room, as long as she needs the wheelchair and possibly beyond that. Fortunately I usually spend mornings on web stuff and email; I may need to be in for the occasional early meeting, but that's manageable.

A couple of things are already taken care of:

• They suggested a "gait belt" to help her stand up, rather than just grabbing the waistband of her pants. I found a nice rainbow one at ABC that matches our luggage straps.
• They've ordered a knee brace to keep her left knee from buckling; that should be arriving tomorrow sometime.
• They'll be ordering the commode and the bed(s). I'll have to ping them about the wheelchair rental if I don't find one I want to buy, and ping her doctor about a scooter evaluation once she's home.
• They'll be recommending outpatient PT rather than home care, which is too easygoing for what she needs. It'll mean she'll need transportation, but that's manageable as long as she can either get Outreach or can schedule times that work well for me (i.e. never on a Monday).