#i haven't ordered food delivery except when i had covid years ago and at this point I've forgotten how it works

[goinggoats]

the woman on game changer who spent over $1000 in a month in grubhub sushi. I cannot understand her lifestyle but in this exact moment I envy her

[aetherspoon]

A not-so-simple relocation, Days 13-15.

That whole situation with ordering things? It got worse. Last time: I couldn't make most orders because I either needed a Norwegian phone number, a Norwegian credit card, or a Norwegian bank account. Now: Apparently, I don't exist according to the local postal service. They just outright refused to deliver my packages on Day 13, which included the cat food my cats so desperately needed, among many other feline-related things. I was notified of this at 18:45 or so at night, as the postal service here seems to schedule deliveries for a timespan starting at 17:00. Which is fine, except that the online store stops their support at 17:00, so I couldn't get them to fix whatever* was wrong.

See the asterisk? Yeah, there actually wasn't anything wrong (as I found out today, Day 15). The post office are just being a bunch of dicks and redirected the shipment to a nearby (but not the closest nearby) package pickup area. Mind you, this is about 70kg worth of packages and I have no car. I am not carrying them for a 20 minute walk, even if it is all downhill. What the hell, Norwegian Postal Service? They never bothered explaining themselves, and the initial notice just said that they couldn't find the address. Mind you, same address we've had many other packages delivered by them with Kriatyrr's name on it. Today (day 15) I finally got the notification about the packages being left at the package dropoff. I logged in online and, using Kriatyrr's phone number, instructed them to be dropped off here. Again. And paying a fee for each package to be delivered to my home when I already paid said fee to begin with. And now they've decided they're delivering this... on Wednesday. It was scheduled to be delivered to my home Friday of last week. I... I have no words. This culture is so ridiculously hostile to the idea that someone might not be Scandinavian born-and-raised that absolutely nothing seems to work properly for someone who isn't.

I had to ration my cat food over the weekend. Anyone that knows me (or cat lovers in general) knows to what extent I make sure my cats are always fed and treated with care, and I had to drop their food intake to make it to today. To say I'm furious is an understatement.

Now, you'll notice that I said "until today". I started contacting vet offices around the area trying to find some stock of t/d to buy for my cats, and I finally found an online service that told me that a vet clinic clear on the opposite side of Bergen from here had some. I picked it up today. Meanwhile, Kriatyrr got sick. We were worried it was COVID when things took a turn for the worse on Saturday (Day 13). Unfortunately, when I went out to try and get some COVID tests, I discovered... that the grocery stores around here stopped carrying them entirely. Well, one stopped, the other might have stopped or might just be completely out with absolutely no sign that they were intending to stock any more. People asked why I had said that Norway was worse than (most of) the US with respect to their COVID response. This is why - no one cares here. They haven't for years now. The trip I made here two years ago where I had to go into quarantine was a joke because the highest chance I had at being infected was in the Bergen Airport, because no one bothered to even mask up. Well, it is two years later and they don't even bother to test things here anymore. Hell, they started a pilot wastewater testing plan (which is a good idea!) and then shrunk the pilot down to just a couple of points in Oslo. Because why bother finding out if you have a spike anywhere but the capital, right? Not like this virus seems to come in waves and hit different areas at different times so you can get a heads-up the moment one of your areas gets infected, right?

Anyway, rant aside, it appears as though only pharmacies have any COVID testing kits around here, and by the time I had gone through the grocery store those were closed. I even went out a second time (climbing that stupid hill again) to no avail. Sunday (Day 14) meant that just about everything was closed, because Norway still has a lot of religious laws about working on the sabbath, and I had to go hunting for a place, anywhere, that was actually open on Sundays that would have a test (and any other medical stuff we needed).

I eventually found two, one of which was actually accessible via bus. Went to downtown where the pharmacy was jam packed with sick people because, surprising absolutely everyone but me apparently, sickness doesn't observe Christianity and doesn't take off Sundays.

Folks, I am So. Tired. Of. This. Every step that I try to take, this country tries to thwart. I knew going into this that I was going to have an exceptionally rough time of things, I knew that the language barriers were going to get to me, but this has been absurd. Kriatyrr doesn't have Covid, for reference, and is on the mend at this point.

Today (day 15), I started feeling my muscular issues in my trapezius muscles start coming back with a vengeance. I had stopped taking my painkillers for my gout this morning because I was tired of getting punched in the stomach by them every day (and I'm worried I'm developing a resistance - which I am), but apparently they were also relieving some of the pain from those muscles.

The pain got so bad that I had to stop part-way through my workday, as I couldn't really sit at my desk any longer. In addition, I had to trek to the other side of Bergen (I live South of Sentrum, this is to the North) to pick up 6kg of cat food I had ordered. I just... gave up. I'm tired of having everyone look at me with pain in their eyes and treat me like an idiot because I don't understand enough Norwegian to ask my questions, or laughing at me when I do attempt to speak it. I'm tired of everything fighting me every. single. step. I'm tired of having to practically beg to get my cats the food they need to eat. I'm just so tired.