Cimorene

I just spent an increasingly distressed several hours trying to fill out Customs forms because the online Customs page for paying import fees doesn't allow the possibility that you're receiving a replacement item covered by warranty from outside the EU without having mailed something out of the EU first to be replaced.

This is unfortunate, because Twsbi piston fountain pens have to be taken apart to be cleaned and they come with a special and totally unique wrench that you have to use to take them apart with, and I broke the wrench, but they don't sell it separately. The ONLY way to ever use my expensive Diamond 580AL ever again was to personally email the Twsbi customer service dude, who put me in contact with their factory in Taiwan, which will mail a replacement metal wrench to you in exchange for shipping costs only, presumably because the wrench itself is so small that the cost is negligible and it's not like it would benefit anybody who didn't have a Twsbi fountain pen anyway.

I was on the verge of tears and had nearly yelled at waxjism about what an MRN was (something to do with shipping numbers but it's not a shipping number) when she finally advised me to just fill out the form as a purchase that cost 6 USD with free shipping (rather than a free purchase with shipping that cost 6 USD). That way it went through automatically, scrutinized only by computers, and I was able to pay 2,15€ to customs and 2,60€ to the post office for their trouble and now they will finally deliver my tiny wrench to me with, purportedly, no further cavil.

Put in an application for Finnish citizenship last October, so that I could 1. vote in national elections 2. use the EU passport line while traveling in the EU and 3. do all my paperwork online at the employment bureau in future. They've been understandably swamped, but yesterday I got a text message that they needed further documents so I scanned some tax returns and forwarded some of Wax's old payslips and then I woke up this morning to give Snookums his insulin to a text message from the Immigration Ministry that there was a new judgment waiting for me to log in! So of course I panicked, took twice as long as usual to eat breakfast and then dithered about drinking a second cup of tea until Wax finished work. And then I took a benzo so that I would stop panicking enough to read the decision.

Okay so sidenote. Taking a benzo. They are fast-acting, quickly metabolized, in general, albeit not all identical to each other, which was why the Klonopin I took to sleep and to calm down enough to leave my apartment sophomore year of college just resulted in me dozing through almost every Logic 101 lecture. Not great for my ultimate grade in there, though for the parts I did witness, the lectures were fun even when they were above my head! Later they gave me Xanax, which I used more infrequently, typically when I was having limited-symptom anxiety attacks, and then more recently switched to a third kind which as far as I can tell is just like the others except that it doesn't ALWAYS make me fall asleep promptly, sometimes it just makes me relaxed enough that I feel a little bit sleepy. (Whereas a lot of times a full Xanax would just irresistably lead to napping.)

But with these benzos, there's a sweet spot when they start to work and before the sleepiness really builds up to threatening naptime, when I feel so relieved - I mean technically relaxed, but it's mostly just a relief because usually I'm so anxious - that I'm almost mildly dissociating, or like starting to get tipsy from wine but just giggly, not dizzy.

Do you ever hit the supreme calm state with a benzo, before the impulse to nap rises up and grabs you, and think "Is this what it's like to be neurotypical? Are people who don't have anxiety just walking around like this, only without the warning to not drive or operate heavy machinery?"

I wonder that every time.

Anyway, then I opened the message and I did get citizenship. It's not REALLY a surprise. I've lived here 18 years, I've studied both the official languages, I have been somewhat gainfully employed, I've voted in local elections. But it's still worthy of mild celebration. Now I have to join the miles-long queue to get a Finnish passport and update my ID card (this system is somewhat overrun currently with identity documents for refugees, as we share a big border with Russia and one with Estonia and are settling a pretty massive influx of Ukrainians).

This is a random and petty one, but it's also funny.

Remember how I couldn't send a message to the employment bureau because my bank codes didn't work? Well, my new bank codes got here and I was finally able to log in to send a message!

But I discovered that I couldn't send a message, because you have to have already registered as an unemployed jobseeker to use the message function. (Not sure why I'm not anymore, but it wasn't important while I was under Social Security's jurisdiction in the career counseling program anyway.)

It tells you to register as a jobseeker online, but then when I tried it said that non-EU citizens can't do that part online.

Since I can't send a message with the list of questions from my career counselor, I guess I need to talk to a case worker on the phone — but then I learned I can't request a phonecall from a caseworker without already being registered either.

So I called their general customer assistance line, thinking they would have to either do the registration over the phone or have a case worker call me back... and found out it's way worse than that: I have to go in person to an office to confirm my identity in order to register.

And they closed the local office with the nice and helpful caseworker I met a couple of years ago. The closest office is now in Turku, I guess. Or maybe Skanssi, but that's nearly as far. (Is it like 30 minutes instead of 45 by bus? Something like that.)

I've never read any Anne Rice, but Wax read all of them when she was younger and owns many of them. My impression from fandom osmosis was largely accurate as to the character and quality of the movie, and it really was a good time, and a well-made movie about two completely unlikeable hilariously melodramatic emo jerks. Will be interested to see the new series or whatever they're developing now.

Fandom osmosis had managed to give me the impression that Louis and Lestat were ultimately the intended OTP of this universe, which would have been very Yikes on the basis of this movie, so I was relieved that Wax told me that wasn't the case.

So now I've watched Top Gun, Point Break, Robocop, and Interview with the Vampire, I'm afraid I may run out of silly 80s (action? genre?) pop culture classics to watch. There's still Blade Runner, obviously. Wax suggested Gremlins, but other than that horror is ineligible. I can't think of any other ones I've missed! I may be reduced to reading listicles soon.

I applied for Finnish citizenship today, or, well, I filled out the online application. I've been meaning to get around to that for years, but it was always like "Well, when's a good time to suddenly spend 380€?" (No better time than the day you get paid, I guess.) That's what the application cost the last time I checked, but it's up to 460€ now, and the process takes like a year, haha. Still, I guess that's in time for the next national elections so I can vote - and before my US passport expires so I can get an EU one instead.

Everything seems to be going pretty fine with this going out in public gig EXCEPT the indoor dining.

If you just thought that you need to be about a meter away from other people to be safe as long as they're not yelling or coughing, you'd think it was fine, and if you thought that air circulation was also required you'd PROBABLY think it was fine; but, following Zeynep Tufecki's work, I know data suggests indoor dining - even with personal space bubbles, even with air circulation if it's not adequately ventilated - is not enough to protect people from unmasked superspreaders if they're in the path of the airflow. But based on how I see people acting, I think what's going on is not that everybody's an asshole or an anti, but rather that almost everybody thinks one of the above two incorrect things: poor public health messaging. I mean, there hasn't been an outbreak there yet, but I think we've been lucky and it's also pretty close to the beginning of an acceleration phase, but the time to stop indoor dining is not AFTER an outbreak at your lunchroom.

Anyway, apart from that anxiety, the course is going very well, but I'm very glad tomorrow's the last day, because being On around other people for 7 hours 6 of the past 8 days has emotionally exhausted me and then moved on to drain my brain power and also my physical prowess. I'm looking forward to sleeping about an extra week's worth over the next few days after tomorrow, getting up just to supervise the preparation of a carrot cake for my birthday on Wednesday and light the Hanukka candles starting Thursday.

I have spent a few days mostly restrainedly panicking, but today after I filled out the enrollment questionnaire the printer suddenly wouldn't work.

The new printer problems (multiple) infuriated first me, then Wax for about 3 hours before we gave up, and it somehow replaced most of the panic temporarily with frustration. I will have to offer to email it to them tomorrow, so that they can print it there. Who knows when the printer will work here. The easiest way might be to actually upgrade an OS entirely.

Last time I was supposed to print something to bring somewhere the printer also wouldn't work, though that was a different printer, but we got it up and running soon thereafter and since then TODAY is the first time it's refused. So that's good timing.

Getting ready to attend some sessions of an in-person class thingy for social security that they could TOTALLY have held long-distance but didn't, because at least there's now a public mask wearing recommendation in place and the organizer told me about their ventilation measures and honestly I just really want to do something about it. I mean, it's next week so I'm more mentally getting ready.

And the mental getting ready has me ruminating on how I turned down the one that would have taken place last time because there was a pandemic surge and there's actually a second wave happening now, even though it hasn't gotten very big in this town yet... and also that everything going wrong with this house and... stuff... is now a year-and-a-half long nightmare and we still don't have our radiators fixed. I got dressed under my down duvet this morning (although it's not really FREEZING, but... the duvet was there... and it's under 5° this morning).

We went to order our kitchen countertops today (butcherblock), and they have to be put in before the backsplash is tiled and before the plumbers and electricians install the sink, dishwasher, and oven (because the backsplash goes behind the hood, which needs both plumbers and electricians). They're supposed to be finished sometime this weekend, but that leaves us several days where there won't be anything the carpenters can do, which, given how hard it sometimes is to get carpenter time, and that the apprentice carpenters go back to school in the fall, is a tragic waste of potential carpenter availability!

We can paint and wallpaper in there before that (except Wax is working and I can't hang the wallpaper alone), but otherwise we have to wait for the counters.

In other news, yesterday I had an appointment that was supposed to be at city hall if the pandemic was over, and over the phone if it was still pandemicky; and given that the pandemic is not over, they've just set up testing points at the Turku airport and are setting one up at the harbor for boats, I concluded that it was a phone appointment. However, since nobody called me as expected, I deduced that in the eyes of the local government at least the pandemic is officially "over", but they thought I would just know that even though the government organization's own website, when I went to try to reschedule, made me click through two announcements about how they're handling things differently right now due to the pandemic crisis. It took me a few hours of battling with the website to find out that I can't reschedule electronically because of having missed the appointment, so I had to text the social workers and ask for help rescheduling. And of course, I "should" be able to schedule it online as long as I have a social security number, but "temporarily" their website can't handle non-EU citizens and when I tried to click 'register' it just gave me an error message where the sole option was clicking on 'OK'.

Been waiting for the program where the career counselor helps you get a useful work practice, not least because participating in an activity prescribed by Finnish social security is the one way to circumvent the otherwise 4-month no-unemployment-money period I became subject to again when I got kicked off unemployment for not answering the unsolicited and unexpected job offers that the unemployment agency mailed to my old address after the address change was no longer in effect because nobody told me that the unmployment agency is the sole agency of the government that doesn't automatically receive updated addresses when you register them with the magistrate/post office.

The nice social worker and employment bureau case manager that I met with later couldn't find anything that could actually help or appeal this because there was a built-in appeal period and after it was over, that's final! But I didn't know about it because the two letters from Finnish social security that would have notified me about this looked exactly like all 500 other letters from Finnish social security that everybody gets that just notify you after the fact that they've sent you a payment or that your application has been received and you never have to do anything about them and they're always the same, and this happened when my mother in law had just died and I was camping in the midst of towering piles of garbage and trying not to faint from anxiety about the sudden apparently unsurmountable debt, Wax was having constant panic attacks, and both of the cats were having sudden Is-It-Gonna-Die? scares from their longterm illnesses while one of them was constantly peeing on the bed and we didn't have a washing machine. So, not so surprisingly, these letters got lost unopened in piles of papers and junk around my desk and I completely failed to remember that they even existed. I have executive dysfunction issues, and this is something that could even happen to me without any special emergencies. As it was, last fall I just didn't have a single braincell to spare. All they had to say was that "It really is important to open letters from the government promptly." I know that, and I knew that but I DEFINITELY know it now! Too bad that didn't happen what with all those emergencies! Sucks for me! "But it really IS important, VERY important. You just really have to do that." WELL I GUESS YOU DO AND NOW I'LL ALWAYS RESPOND TO THEM WITH AN INSTANT PANIC ATTACK, SO AT LEAST I SHOULDN'T HAVE THIS SAME PROBLEM AGAIN!!!

Anyway, you have to repeat the initial copay period which you get when you first register for unemployment which applies, I forget exactly, but depending on how long you were employed or how long you were unemployed before that, or something. And that is four months. But you can skip right over it if you participate in one of the employment bureau's employment-promoting activities, like a job fair or a short course from one of the staffing agencies etc, or in a work practice placement, but also because of the pandemic it was not a good time to try to work in retail. There were no substitute long-distance options and the unemployment workers were inundated and probably actually drowning in phone calls because of all the people who have been laid off or put on recesses without pay, so good luck getting hold of one.

So in principle it's good, at least financially.

But what's not good is that when the consultant called me, he started with "Now that this corona-virus situation is over..."

Here in southwest Finland the cases have been very low for a month or so, and the one outbreak in that time has been contact-traced and contained to some dock workers from the Turku harbor. So perhaps scheduling a course in early August is reasonably safe, but I find it hard to believe they can't manage long distance for this stuff, which in my experience is usually interviews with case workers of various types, power point presentations, and filling out forms with help. Also they're planning to put clients in a room together seven weekdays in a row, with hand-washing rules and a one-meter distance from everyone else. Their invitation warns that it's much safer to come in a taxi or a car, but Wax can't take off work to drive me there and back seven days in a row and a taxi from here to Turku - half an hour - is prohibitively expensive. OTOH, the commuter buses from out here in the archipelago tend to be extremely lightly populated, unlike some local buses. Finland (5.5 million) had 63 new cases in the past week. The sewage tests showed small amounts of the virus in Turku and bigger amounts in Helsinki, none in the samples from the rest of the country. Finland has also never updated their recommendations to not wear masks because they won't help that much and will just confuse people, even after the WHO did; the goverment has remained pretty stolidly "you might touch your face and then it would be WORSE than no mask!!" along with the bogus alarmism propagated in early spring by so many irresponsible Western medical authorities, and unlike the others, haven't reversed that in light of the piles and piles of new research and evidence to the contrary. So I would be entering this small air-conditioned room with a bunch of people who are probably not prepared to be that careful and won't be wearing masks.

So anyway, it might be safe to go there, and I'm not really in a risk group, but I'm one of those people that always gets a cold or flu every year (minus this year because I haven't left the house...) and I can't help being alarmed by all this. Plus they want to hold these classes in what are probably air-conditioned rooms, which is also not great for air circulation. I'd feel a lot better if they were planning to meet outside. But is the risk high enough for me to voluntarily postpone participation, essentially losing income for another month?

I don't know, but I'm having a limited-symptom panic attack about it! And if I changed my mind and "can't" participate I'm supposed to notify them "immediately". So.

I saw my regular psychologist Friday for what should be the second-to-last time.

Essentially, my medications work pretty well and my coping methods are good, and I'm legally and scientifically speaking no longer depressed, according to Beck's Depression Inventory - and this has been the case for... several years now actually. Even through my near-nervous breakdown over the past six months, my reactions to stress have been reasonable and I have handled it all well, in his assessment. So technically I haven't needed mental healthcare, per se, apart from supervision of my medication and management in case of having another episode; but because my major malfunctions (avoidance, executive dysfunction, anxiety in social situations) combined with my circumstances make it especially hard to get a job, and because I needed certification of my mental healthcare client status for applications, and because his client lists are basically at his own discretion due to his exact job description, my psychologist has kept me on the rolls and continued checking in on me once a month or so, and gone about 500% above and beyond the job description to help me find someone in the unemployment bureau or social services who could actually talk with me for more than fifteen minutes in a personal manner and give appropriate advice, basically, and he's been trying for YEARS now to find someone like that ( Read more... )

But moving to Pargas in June led me to transfer to the Pargas branch of the Employment Bureau, but because Pargas has only 18 000 people to Turku's 190 000, Pargas doesn't have a branch but only a single worker, and I guess because they have so little else that they have to do here, the city social worker in charge of employment/etc was also present at our meeting, where both of them helped me in a friendly and competent manner for about two hours and covered helping me finish the application to the abovementioned career counseling course as well as spending a fair amount of time figuring out how I could fit a work practice in the meantime if the wait for the course is until the summer (they texted me the next day after checking with the course secretary to say that it is). I am pretty much covered now, because I can count on these ladies for further help in a similarly in-depth and solicitous manner if the course doesn't pan out; and since I am both mentally healthy and now a resident of a different city from his practice, my psychologist suggested we have one last meeting in about a month's time. I'm okay with that, actually; I think he's right about the two women who helped me and I think it would also be easy to get help from other people, and I don't think I really need a psychologist's services right now. If I did need to see a psychologist or a psychiatrist again, it would probably be much easier to see one in Pargas than in Turku - Pargas seems to have much less in the way of waiting times and so on, understandably for a town with a single main street.

Looking back over this quest, and hunting down links to the old journal entries about it, has really impressed upon me again just how much he's helped me over the last... is it 11? no... nine years, almost exactly. I'm lucky it was him that now-retired psychiatrist sent me to in 2011.