Hypomaina sucks.

 I have not slept well this week. Last night I didn't sleep at all. As a result, I am hypomanic. I don't trust this 'good' feeling. I do dumb things when I am in this state and feel like I am fantastic as I do them. Example, one of my hypomanic episodes included a cleaning binge in the project room. I put all of my magazines into one file box and attempted to set it on the floor. While it was a somewhat controlled descent, it basically fell because the box was somewhere around 50 lbs. This stupid act is why I have a hernia and can't lift anything heavier than two gallons of milk. All the positive endorphins running around in my system buffered my senses from the initial pain of the hernia and I felt 'a little sore'. 

By the time I realized something was wrong, it was a few days later when I was no longer hypomanic and I couldn't figure out why when I moved a certain way a lump would stick out of my abdomen. Like an idiot, I poked at it, pushed it, and prodded it into creating another, larger, hernia. As this opened up, I felt a burning sensation. Being ignorant about how to manage what I had done to myself, I let this sit until my next diabetes follow up (months later). As a result, the second hernia was bigger and wider by the time I saw my doctor. Apparently this is a good thing because it's the small ones that get trapped and need surgical intervention.

But, hypomania and ignorance is why my sex life is dead, I can't do my back therapy exercises, bend over, or pick crap up off the floor with out squatting down (and even that is a bit risky). Beloved, bless that man, isn't angry with me for the long term impact of this on our relationship. Hell, the timing was pretty close to when the vaginal symptoms of perimenopause hit. Fortunately, we have a long time that we were working around problems like this due to trauma instead of physical injury. So, we know how to keep the fire in our marriage even if we can't get it on.

A part of my brain says I should info dump about how we coped early on in our relationship with my sexual difficulties. Another part of my brain says I should info dump about how perimenopause is treating me. And then there's the third part that is insisting I should go to the library and return a book. As is there the urge to start cleaning all the things, clip all the dead leaves off my plants, and throw this restless energy into meal prep for next week. Generally, do everything all at once and throw a few more items on the pile just for laughs.

No hard feelings or depression right now. I'm somewhere around bubbly and silly, but I have some control over it. In case you can't tell, I am very verbal at the moment and thoughts are racing. I can't type as fast as the ideas hit me. It is exasperating. My attention span isn't too great. I'm currently disorganized as hell. But my brain is feeling more wound up than it was last night. Thoughts are racing faster. I'm practically vibrating with energy. And all I have been drinking is water.

Too many cookies

 I have been having trouble over the last couple days getting my web browser to work properly. After a bit of poking around at it, I discovered that I had several thousand cookies. So, I deleted the cookies and ta-dah, it started working right again. I am annoyed with the fact that I had to do that but that is the state of the internet right now. It's like the 1990s returned to gift us with popup ads and bullshit. Unfortunately, the funny memes haven't come back into fashion.

Life around here has been challenging since I last posted. Hence the long silence. My mother-in-law was in treatment for cancer. She's successfully completed that and is working on getting back to what passes for normal. Now we wait a year and see if it comes back. If it doesn't she'll be declared cured. 

Work continues to drive Beloved batty. His boss has a bad case of undiagnosed ADHD, we're absolutely convinced of it. The man is in squirrel mode 95% of the time. His dog just about runs the office, when Dan doesn't put his foot down and get the dog to back down. She's a beautiful rescue dog that is very mouthy and anxious. And seems to have a bladder the size of a walnut. Between these two facts of his boss's lack of ability to stay on task and the dog has needs, Beloved is frustrated and trying to keep work grinding forward. It's been an on going problem for a while that is just slowly getting worse and more insane.

Cuddle Bear had oral surgery yesterday to extract a baby tooth and make room for the adult tooth erupting behind it. He's still feeling the effects of the anesthesia and is kinda grumpy and tired. He is doing ok with his driving lessons. Cuddle Bear is real cautious about four way stops now because he witnessed an accident a few days ago where someone tried to get through the stop before another person. There was a t-bone collision. Cuddle Bear was pretty rattled by the whole business. Apparently one of the vehicles involved was a police cruiser. Police showed up in enough numbers they were directing their own traffic. The drivers of both vehicles were taken to the hospital by ambulance, but fortunately alive and relatively whole. The fire department had their rescue truck out. It was a whole thing.

Snuggle Bug is very irritated with school. For anyone who has been keeping score, he started the year in the BOCES program for computer programming. This went sideways in a big way. He was failing all of his classes at BOCES, suffering from severe depression, and getting bullied a lot. We intervened at that point. He was pulled from BOCES and returned to his home school district. They gave us a line about how they didn't have room in any classes for him aside from his three morning classes before he went to BOCES. After some friction and frustration, he now is at school for a half day and comes home after his lunch period. Snuggle Bug isn't pleased but he is doing his best to stay positive. Bullying is still a problem, but less of a severe one. Now, however, he is getting super anxious over final exams later this month. I'm going to bring up his concerns with his guidance counselor to see if there's something we can do to help him be more successful.

Both the kids are not pleased about the talk around town about making changes to the park around the corner from us. From what they have heard, the playground is going to be ripped out and completely replaced. Snuggle Bug has been making noises about protesting the changes. Cuddle Bear has been making noises about never going back to the park after the changes are made because they are "ruining my childhood". To say the least, they have Opinions on what's happening. Nobody knows what is being built on the formerly empty lot between the old real estate office and the office park where our doctor's office is located. Whatever is being built, they're moving quick to get it done. It's been about 3 weeks since they started and they've got cement slabs poured and walls starting to go up on the exterior.

That's pretty much everything that's been going on in our neck of the woods. I am going to try to write more soon. Life has been challenging on top of daily irritations and the adventure of perimenopause. Hormone therapy helps even out the mood swings and make the hot flashes less frequent, but I still am off kilter. My doctor says that I'm about 2/3 of the way through it. I'm being optimistic and taking that number as a solid benchmark. But I'll go on about that on another post.

NaBloPoMo: Is it too late to winterize?

Beloved and I were talking about preparing for winter earlier this week. I think it was Tuesday. He was talking about getting the car's tires replaced and possibly the windshield wipers. I was talking about putting up plastic over the windows to block the drafts that blow in around them when the wind comes hard out of the west. Come to this morning and I smelled snow on the wind as I was getting to the car to go run errands. It's currently too warm to drop snow on us right now. But if you look at the clouds, they're snow clouds up there.

I now find myself wondering if we're going to get walloped by a big storm in the immediate future and temps will just stay bitter cold. I'm probably worrying over nothing. But, if we can get the apartment a bit more sealed up, it'll lower our heating bill and keep us more comfortable. Of course, the landlord will bitch about the tape holding the plastic on the windows but he doesn't live here. The only evidence he'll have of us putting up plastic will be less dust in those spots.

Anyways, our security deposit went missing sometime between when our first landlord died and the property got inherited by his wife. We suspect she used it to cover burial funds.

NaBloPoMo: Decaf Coffee < Regular Coffee < Espresso

My morning habit is to drink coffee as I do some writing. About this time last year, I had to switch to decaf everything because my heart rate was too high. (It wasn't the coffee causing it but it didn't help.) I see advertisements for different types of coffee and I find myself missing regular coffee. A special treat from time to time was a demitasse of espresso. An extra special treat was chocolate covered espresso beans.

Do you have any idea how difficult it is to find ground coffee that is decaf? It's damn near impossible. For the first few months, I suffered through a few different varieties of instant decaf. Some of them were really unpalatable. Then, on a whim, I stopped at the local Tops Market. Lo and behold, I found ground coffee beans that were decaf. To compound this minor miracle, it was the store brand which made it less expensive than the only other ground coffee that was decaf. To say the least, I was delighted.

I also found an instant decaf coffee that actually tastes like coffee. It is quite a bit like the coffee my paternal grandmother drank by the pot on a daily basis in flavor. It may actually be the coffee she was drinking as her tolerance for caffeine decreased. That one is a national brand. It's from Nescafe.

The awesome thing was when Beloved found coffee flavoring syrups that were sugar free at Walmart. The only one that I've had disagree with me so far was the Pumpkin Spice. The French Vanilla is my go to. So, I get up in the morning, fix myself some coffee with a splash of that and half and half, and start my daily writing. More than once, I have gotten into the coffee experience so much that I finished the pot before I started my journal entries. LOL

Monday Menu

We've been going as low cost as we can with our meal budget in the light of the egg and beef shortage happening right now. That said, I really want to have that $15 brisket to make corned beef and then rubens with the leftovers. It's something I've been craving for a while. It is going to have to wait for the price to drop down, though. The small local grocery store in the next town over has been having some pretty good deals on meat. I may stop over there to pick up our beef for the week. Who knows, maybe I'll get lucky and there'll be brisket for less than $15. (I'm not counting on it, but I live in hope.)

I have started restocking our storm supplies. Last week, I cleaned out canned goods that were from 2013. I know that they're not good. Risking botulism is a bad idea. It can kill you in hours. If I had the energy for it and the means, I'd probably keep chickens. As far as live stock goes, they're fairly low maintenance. I know the landlord would flip his lid over that. He grouses about the wild birds that we feed out front. I think the guy is a curmudgeon underneath his affable affect. This is the same person who mowed down a patch of daylilies because he thought it made the lawn look messy. A square, tidy and well contained patch of daylilies. 

Ah well, enough rambling about that. Here's the menu for this week. 

Day	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner
Sun	yogurt with granola coffee	pb&j tea	Beloved's pick
Mon	yogurt coffee granola	quesadillas flavored water	hamburgers quick salad water
Tues	yogurt coffee granola	leftovers flavored water	chicken patties & salad w/ water
Wed	yogurt coffee granola	salmon salad sandwiches water	spaghetti & meatballs water
Thurs	yogurt granola coffee	leftovers water	split pea soup & sandwiches water
Fri	yogurt coffee granola	pb&j tea	tacos water
Sat	yogurt granola coffee	ham sand. water	take out water

What a week!

 The calendar assures me it is Friday but it sure feels like Monday. I have been busy with housework. I have been fielding phone calls about putting services into place to support the kids going forward. I had an IEP meeting for Snuggle Bug that went surprisingly well, though it ran a bit long. And I've been attempting to write. It's been a busy week but progress is happening.

I haven't just been spinning my wheels, though it feels like it. Back in November of 2024, I submitted an application for Social Security Insurance. I got denied last month. I have started the process of appealing that denial. I am not hanging my hat on any hopes here. It would be helpful to have the extra income but if I'm unable to get it it won't be the end of the world. It is just really frustrating because last year, if I was working, I'd have lost my job due to the fact that I was so depressed I wasn't leaving the house and I was sleeping all the time. I don't have an expansive work history in part because of my parents resisting my having any independence until I was an adult and in part because of complications from mental illness.

I want to work. I try to approach my writing like it's a job. It isn't going that great, to be honest. There's not really any income coming in from that direction. I just can't sell things to save my life. I don't know how to market things either. When I was doing tarot readings, that was going ok. Then the company that was handling connection with clients and advertising hiked up their rates to the point that they were taking 51 cents off of every dollar I made. And I'd still have to pay taxes on that dollar. To say the least, I stopped working with them.

No Menu this week.

 I have been going in circles trying to get things clean. It's not working that great. I have been feeling a sense of pressure to get my home tidy as the snow melts outside. A part of me says I should be scrubbing things and putting warm clothes away for the season. It is distracting, to put it lightly. I wish that my anxiety would calm down a bit, but that is why I take medication for it.

The geese have been loud and flying overhead a good deal. Living in spitting distance of a lake makes this a regular thing every year. At the same time, it was confusing a few days ago to see a large flock of geese flying east to west. Beloved and I were impressed by the number of birds there were. It was easily a hundred of them up there. Not enough to be like the murmations that were recorded by the colonists, but it was far larger a flock than either of us had seen in a long time.

The constant noise of the geese is annoying. That said, I prefer it over the noise of the neighbors fighting. With the weather warming up, however, I know that is coming. I honestly don't know what the deal is with that. It seems like whenever the weather is above freezing, the neighbors come out into the parking lot to have their screaming matches. I rather dislike this feature of living here but there's literally nothing I can do about it.

I have been having a hard time getting myself organized over the last few days. I believe it is directly related to the fact that I am having some difficulty sleeping. The business of these night sweats wakes me up several times a night. I tried looking up some home remedies but that led to an anxiety attack. Never ever look up your symptoms because Dr. Google will tell you that you have cancer or something else equally awful. But being disorganized has lead to my winging it on how food is going to go this week. 

We had burgers for dinner tonight. I'm thinking about soup and sandwiches tomorrow. I'm not sure what I'll make later this week. I know I'll figure something out. If anything, I have cookies to bake and potatoes to make.

Rambling and such.

 On my last fiber fluff post, the one where I shared my current shawl project, I forgot to note what size needles I am using and the weight of the yarn. I am working that shawl up on size 8 circular needles and in worsted weight yarn. I haven't touched it all week because I have been busy with things like housework. I have managed to find the floor around the desk and a big portion of the floor before the couch. I am also almost completely caught up on dishes.

It is my hope that if I get them all done, Cuddle Bear can start from a fresh slate and we can figure out what's not working right with his technique to scrub pots. He's been putting stuff with food on it in the drain board. It's made for a heap of extra work, but once it is all done, I think we can put things to rights again.

I was so tired over the last couple days that I didn't get a bunch of things done, including making my menu for the upcoming week. I am going to try to get that done today. I am happy that Beloved picked up some cinnamon apple instant oatmeal for me to have for breakfasts this week. I think my rolled oats have expired. Expired oats smell funny and I have been assured by the internet that they taste worse. It's funny but I never thought of oats going off like that. I suppose there's a first for everything.

I didn't get as far as making brisket last week. Beloved shied away from the $15.00 cost of it. He talked me into just buying some smoked brisket from the barbecue place up the street later this week. I don't know how well it will work for making Ruben sandwiches, but I know that it goes well on a salad. 

It was a big disappointment to learn that the diner that we loved going to up in the city went out of business. We're not sure when it happened but they had the best Ruben sandwiches. I have a recipe to make a Ruben casserole that I am going to make again. The last time I made it, Beloved seemed to really enjoy it and the kids tolerated everything except for the sauerkraut that went into it. But my craving for a Ruben sandwich has been strong and the entire reason why I wanted to make corned beef brisket last week.

Monday Menu

 I haven't been doing the shopping since I developed this hernia. I had an abstract grasp on the price of eggs going up. But I didn't really feel the full force of it until I walked into the local grocery store (not Walmart) and discovered that a dozen eggs was almost $10. I know the bird flu has wrecked havoc on farms across the nation. At the same time, it was a shock to hold a dozen eggs in my hands and see that the price had tripled. The cost of chicken has gone sky high too. 

I think Beloved is right when he says that it is going to take farmers some time to recover their flocks from the bird flu and for prices to come back down (if they do). I suspect that we're on track for the price of chicken to jump higher than the price of beef, where it used to be less expensive because beef is more popular here in the USA. Looking at the economic things happening on the world front, I am seriously thinking about doing a kitchen garden at my mother-in-law's property. There is three raised beds that I am considering taking over this year to grow produce. 

She's amenable to the idea. I am also seriously thinking about going back to my roots (ha! pun!) and doing food preservation. My mother and my late grandmother were certified by the Cornell Cooperative Extension as Master Food Preservers. They taught myself and a number of other people how to preserve food in years gone by. I have forgotten quite a bit, but I know that the Ball Blue Book will kick start my memory and I have grandma's recipes. If anything, it'll be nice to make a batch of watermelon pickles. (The watermelon will be sourced from a farmer's market because they produce like zucchini and take over the yard.)

Day	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner
Sun	yogurt with granola coffee	pb&j tea	meatloaf mashed potatoes water
Mon	yogurt coffee granola	quesadillas flavored water	hamburgers quick salad water
Tues	yogurt coffee granola	leftovers flavored water	spaghetti & meatballs water
Wed	yogurt coffee granola	taco salad tea	tacos water
Thurs	yogurt granola coffee	leftovers water	chicken patties water
Fri	yogurt coffee granola	pb&j tea	corned beef cheesy potatoes water
Sat	yogurt granola coffee	roast beef sand. tea	take out water

Fiber Fluff: Stalled on the Shawl

 Hi everybody!

I have two shawls that I currently have set up for working on. They're both stalled because life has gotten in the way of spending time on serious knitting. One is the Lady in the Woods pattern which I am making in magenta with a black border. One is the pattern that I've winged together as I was going along. Both are not complicated patterns. They're straight up stockinette stitch (well, technically the Lady in the Woods is garter stitch but that is boring).

I haven't done any spinning in a while. I'm going to try to get to it again today. I'm half way through a ball of grey alpaca pencil roving. The cop on my drop spindle is half full. I think if I focus, I can finish it off over the next two weeks. The hard part is going to be spinning the third ply for this yarn. It is 2/3 alpaca and 1/3 acrylic. I have no idea what the staple length on the acrylic is. The ball of chunky yarn (which I'm going to unspin and have roving out of) claims it to be almost 300 feet long. If the staple length is 300 feet, I'm going to have to cut it up to make it easier to spin. According to my research, spinning acrylic is a lot like spinning silk. We'll see if I need one of my light weight spindles for this or not. I'd like to use the same spindle for all the plies and then spinning them together to make the final yarn. Everything is in the same colorway, so I don't need to chain ply to keep colors organized.

The crochet preemie hats project is on pause right now. I have about 80 preemie hats done. I just need to get myself organized to figure out how to get them to the rural hospital in my area. When the big project was done through the spinning guild I used to be a part of, the hats all went to the big city hospitals. I didn't think that was fair once I realized that. So, I have to do a little planning to get these hats to local rural hospitals so that they have something warm and comforting for the little ones there.

Book sales have slowed down, but my yarn stock pile is still pretty hefty. I am still drawing from the yarn that was donated by kind souls. Some of these hats look pretty funky but they work up super quick. I am branching out from hats for micropreemies into hats for babies a bit bigger to use up the yarn faster. I keep telling myself it's slower by the hour but faster by the week. I am debating if I should make thumbless mittens for the babies to match their hats. The last time I did that, it went over really well. 

No Monday Menu this week.

 It has been one heck of a weekend. Friday, Beloved was sick with the flu. The rest of us fell like dominos over the course of Saturday. Today, the neighbor's kid who came to visit Thursday has come down with it. I feel bad that he's caught it but there isn't much I can do about it. I may offer them what's left of the ginger ale to help settle his stomach. But if it goes like it did over here, they're all going to have it in short order.

Thinking about food is making my stomach roil still. I'm no longer getting sick to my stomach, thankfully. The kids have started keeping solid food down. It makes things easier. Beloved is just about fully recovered with the exception of some stomach misery and a lot of gas. We're all hoping that nothing was caught by his parents with respect to this.

As logically as I can figure it out, we picked it up when we visited the hospital for the kids to see their grandfather. Because all week last week during the kids' winter break, that was the only place we had gone. At first, we thought that Beloved had food poisoning from a bottle of flavored milk that had gone off. Then the rest of us got sick. It's made things exasperating. I have two sinkfuls of dishes to wash, food to prep for Beloved's lunches this week (one of his favorite things is tuna salad to have for lunch), and another pile of dishes to take care of on the stove.

I also have to still clean out the fish tank and get rid of the fish's corpse. I was waiting until the garbage went out this way the kids didn't get upset seeing Snap laying in the garbage. But it's going to be a challenge to catch up on this stuff. A part of me says that making two pans of brownies last week was a poor executive decision. But there was no way I could have known that we were all going to get sick. I'm trying to give myself a bit of grace and just be reasonable about it all.

Dinners this week are going to be tailored to what people can keep down and what will keep the blood sugar stable for us diabetics in the household Beyond that, who knows the things I'll be putting together. If any of it comes out particularly good, I'll make a post here.

Since the cat is out of the bag ...

 My husband's parents are not doing well. We've been doing our best to offer support and help out. But there are something that you can not avoid, help, or otherwise make go away. My father in law is actively dying of liver failure due to fatty liver disease. Now that I am aware that this runs in Beloved's side of the family, I can educate the kids about it. I'm probably going to wait until everything finishes unfolding for my father in law, to be honest.

So far, Beloved is doing ok handling complicated feelings about his father. I am doing my best to hold space for him and support him in whatever way that I can. I understand the complicated feelings that he's going through, having gone through them myself when my own father got a cancer diagnosis. (Dad's in remission thanks to an experimental treatment and will be declared cured if he doesn't have it come back by August.) It is rough to hurry up and wait for someone to die.

It doesn't matter how much you're angry with them, how much you hate them, or how you feel on any front. It's still unpleasant and difficult. You see the suffering of the people who love them and it gets to you. Or at least it gets to me. Grief isn't easy. Grieving someone as they're still technically alive is a paradoxical experience and painful.

Right now, my father in law is spending a lot of time sleeping and getting pain medicine. He fell last week and was in the hospital with respect to that when it was discovered that his liver enzymes were high. The old goat refused treatment after a few days because he was just sick of the side effects. Not long after that, he started spending a lot of time sleeping. The doctors think he has anything from a few days to a few weeks to go. 

It's odd. The idea that it can be that uncertain is just strange to me. Then I think about acute liver failure and how it kills you in 24 to 48 hours. It's been a surreal week. I feel like I should have more empathy for the grieving that my sister in law is going through because she is close to her father. I don't, however. I kinda feel like a bad person for that.

I have spent a fair amount of time thinking about death and coming up with no good ideas on how to talk about it. The fish died on Tuesday. I haven't been able to clean out the tank yet because of all the stuff stacked around it right now. As the fish had been acting strangely for about two weeks and he was old, the kids were prepared for it to happen. There wasn't really any wailing and gnashing of teeth like the last time we had a fish die. The kids were disappointed and sad, but they accepted it as a natural part of life. They've agreed that death is not cool and that it's a sad thing. By letting them come to their own conclusions about the matter, I have done my best to keep my opinions out of it.

Looking back on the last week, I think that the death of the fish prepared the kids for the coming death of their grandfather. My only concerns about all of this is how to help my immediate family navigate this process. Beloved, as I said, has conflicting feelings about it all. He has a bad relationship with his father for much of the same reasons why I have a bad relationship with my parents. But we're standing behind the kids and doing our best to guide and support them through this, because they have a relatively good relationship with the man.

My mother in law is obviously distraught. It has driven her blood pressure up and she's had medication changes which have impacted her in various ways due to it. I suspect her doctor didn't fully consider her situation when he made the change and put her on a high dose rather than titrate her up to it. Hopefully as the medication is adjusted, she'll be doing better. But her cognition isn't the best right now for a number of reasons. This has kickstarted my anxiety again about myself developing dementia, because that's in my side of the family.

I try really hard not to think about it but watching my great grandmother H. lose her mental faculties scared the hell out of me. It was somewhat traumatic to watch from the side lines as a kid and it instilled in me a deep fear of losing my memories. Hence why I started journaling to begin with. My thinking was if I wrote everything down, I'd have reminders about the important things as my mind started to go.

Then bipolar happened to me. After living with the facts of how bipolar effects my cognition, I have come to recognize that my frantic urge to save as many memories as possible is futile. I still journal. It helps me to get a handle on my brain and sort through my feelings. But the anxiety about preserving everything just kinda got pushed aside in the light of how this last depressive episode really messed with my memory and stuff. And realizing that the next depressive episode will likely do the same.

Huzzah! They found nothing!

 I had that colonoscopy and I was told it looked text book perfect. It was a surreal experience to be laying on my side, watching on a screen what the camera was showing them and knowing that it was in my guts. One of my hands was laying against my stomach and I felt the camera moving under my hand in ways that reminded me of carrying babies in my belly. I am relieved and amused with the fact that even my hemmroids looked text book perfect. I was so afraid that they were going to find something pre-cancerous that I just was too busy watching the screen to ask my usual battery of questions of the doctor and the tech doing the procedure.

Since then, I have had so much gas that the kids (specifically my youngest) refuse to sit by me. It's kinda funny. My sinus infection cleared up just in time for the weather to get stupid and give me a migraine. The week has been one long headache of varying strength. As of right now, I feel off and somewhat floaty. I know that some of the side effects of the migraine medicine includes that, but it's been a day so I think that it should have stopped by now. Checking my temperature shows that I have a low grade fever but I still have a cold. Because nothing this time of year is complete with out a cold to go with it. The coughing has cleared up. Now, I am waiting for my nose to stop running. 

One may ask how I know the sinus infection is gone. The effluence of my sinuses is no longer tainted with blood or given to odd colors. More detail than you wanted, I'm sure, but it was more than a crushing headache that lead me to seek out the doctor. Who I offended by telling him that my normal temperature was 96.8 deg F. He insisted that my thermometer was not calibrated properly and that everyone's normal temperature was 98.6 deg F. Every thermometer I have used in my life, and I have checked my temperature so many times it's beyond my ability to count, has read that when I was healthy or at least devoid of a fever. So, when the thermometer reads 98.4, I feel like most people do when their fever is reaching towards 100 deg F. I am tempted to go in there when I am healthy and the weather is not stupid, just to prove the point. I kinda feel like I'd be wasting everyone's time, however, so I probably won't.

Now, if I could just not feel loopy that'd be great. I do recall that the side effects of the Imitrex that I take for my migraines can make me feel this way. It's probably what's driving this because my temperature is not high enough to make me feel this way. I am in no way fit to drive. It's a good thing that Beloved usually drives and I ride shotgun. Today, we're going to visit his parents. I don't know what to expect. I am hoping for no discussion of politics. I have, however, a bad feeling that's going to happen. But, if distasteful topics of conversation are the worst that happen, I still win. 

It only took till January.

 I can barely remember the last six months. Between depression, medication changes, and various other stressors, my brain has NOPED out of recalling all but the most important details of the last six months. During that time, I struggled to write. I stopped writing, to be honest. The persistent sense that what I had to write was fundamentally worthless was all but impossible to shake. I still have it whispering in the background that I should delete this thing and go fold laundry or something. I am endeavoring to do my best to ignore it.

My father got diagnosed in late July with lymphoma and that's when all writing (even keeping track of things in my dayplanner) ground to a halt. I struggled for months with my feelings over it all. I am still angry over my youth and how things happened. At the same time, I do love my father dearly. My mother, let's just say I am ambivalent and angry towards right now. I worked with my therapist and wrestled with my feelings before calling him last week. I wrestled with my feelings from as soon as I got the news until last week when a reckless sense of 'what's the worst that's going to happen?' struck me and I called. I half expected to be hung up on by my mother. When my dad answered the phone I was relieved to hear his voice. He told me that he's part of an experimental treatment's study phase. He's currently in remission and if he remains in remission for eight months, he'll be declared cured. Then I was buried under family 'news' (aka gossip) about the rest of the family. Relatives that I expected to be retired were. Relatives that I guessed had changed careers had. Other relatives were still chugging along with their lives as I had figured they would be.

I was cautious about how much I shared about my life in return for that info dump. I mentioned that I was surprised by how complicated the preparations for Cuddle Bear to graduate are. My dad laughed and told me to wait for college entry preparations. I mentioned that my father in law and mother in law were in declining health. My dad mentioned that he had seen my father in law at the grocery store and he looked to be in really rough shape. I agreed with him. We cycled back to the school angle and I mentioned that the kids are doing well this year. Dad asked how Beloved and I are doing. I told him that we were getting by. Because there's not a whole lot to add to that statement. Every day it's chop wood and carry water, as the Zen koan goes. The conversation wrapped up with my dad telling me that I could call him anytime for any reason. I am pretty sure he misses me. When I bump into him at the grocery store, he lights up with a big smile.

My father in law, on the other hand, is still a surly cur. He's got this bad habit that I'm familiar with of tending to ignore his health. This lead to him going to the hospital right before Yule. He was there for a week as they drained the ammonia that had built up in his system. By the time he came out, he was somewhat shaken by the experience and deeply thankful to Beloved, my brother in law, and his wife for 'saving' his life. Beloved and I agree that the credit lies with his brother, but his father wasn't exactly in a clear mental state as everything went down. The holidays were the holidays. Extra weird this year with that near death experience looming over things. I described it to Beloved as it felt like a hostage crisis and we were dependent upon Cuddle Bear's ability to talk non-stop about trains to get the good outcome. Like I said, extra weird. There's always a little weirdness because our family unit is atypical but this went beyond it in ways I can't quite describe.

As I was trudging through the year, last year, I managed to set up services to help my boys transition from school to life in the 'real' world. There's still a lot of learning that needs to happen and I can't seem to managed to get it done. As such, I was really thankful when the school recommended us to Catholic Charities for services. Each kid got a skill builder and there's been focused work on skills like anger management, emotional regulation, how to look for a job, and social skills. Cuddle Bear has finished his sessions with his skill builder as Snuggle Bug is still working with his. So far, I have nothing but good things to say about Catholic Charities and the assistance they've provided us. I'm still working on getting things going with the Office of People With Developmental Disabilities (OPWDD). It's a long process, but I think we're going to get things nailed down for Cuddle Bear before his 18th birthday.

Speaking of biting the bullet and getting help, I have decided to try again for disability. There have been hoops to jump through and a whole lot of hurry up and wait. But progress seems to be happening. The therapist that I've been seeing works really well with me. It has lead to a good deal of progress on things that I have always struggled with. I am pleased with this and hope to continue in this fashion as the year goes on. Some time in September, I gave myself a hernia. Our family doctor does not think it requires surgery at this time and gave me a list of activities I should limit. I am not pleased with this, but it was a result of my pushing myself too far. A bad habit I have. Next week, I get to experience the joy of a colonoscopy. I'm not looking forward to it. I am concerned they're going to find something pre-cancerous. The whole business of my grandfather and my father having cancer scared me. My doctors all reassure me that the likelihood of my having cancer isn't as high as my anxiety tells me it is. My therapist is talking me through the anxiety of it all. So my professional support system is working fairly well.

That pretty much wraps up how things are at my end of the internet. I am going to do my best to get back to writing. It feels like I'm missing a limb or something with the fact that I haven't been writing. Posting this helps with that feeling, I hope I can do more.

My celebratory post was a bit premature. Oops.

I am on a run of almost a week of being awake for the majority of the day. It was not easy because the dosage of my new medication went up right after my last post and I was drop kicked back into the land of Nod. It was exceedingly frustrating because chores piled up, appointments were missed, and projects lay idle. I was grumpy and unhappy. I am feeling more alert and much better today.

I am really hoping that holds. The magnitude of the shift in my brain from this time two months ago is pretty huge. I was on the verge of suicidal depression in March when I talked to my psychiatrist who initiated this medication change. The last two months have been exhausting. Which is pretty ironic considering that I was sleeping most of the time. But, it was exhausting and uncomfortable. I was sleeping so much that my body was getting sore which ever position I slept in. I needed to be upright and moving to feel better but I simply couldn't do it. 

I am trying not to be resentful of all the stuff that didn't get done, appointments missed, and such. I am attempting to focus on gratitude and moving forward. I was having a really hard time summoning up the will to write a damn thing when I was awake. As such, blogs and journals were not updated. It is not a thing most people feel much about but I feel pretty bad about that. I feel like I let down my readership and I was failing to keep record of what going on in life around here.

At one point I had a therapist ask me why I keep a journal and a daily log of activities in my planner. I joked that I worked for the redundancy department of redundancy. Namely, I am terrified of losing my memory. The fact that my brain is an unreliable narrator is horrific enough. The idea that I would lose my memories and forget who my family are is bone chilling. I watched dementia consume my great-grandmother Hazel. I will never forget the day that I came to visit her at the nursing home and she didn't recognize me. My heart broke. I promised myself that I wouldn't let that happen to me.

Thus, I kept a scrapbook through middle school, high school, and part of college. And when it was safe to keep a journal, I wrote in it religiously about almost everything. Trauma in my life and my psychiatric illnesses have robbed me of memories that many people take for granted. I have spotty memories of my children's early childhood. If I were asked when they said their first word, I wouldn't be able to answer the question or necessarily tell you what it is on a given day. I rely on my journal to be my memory keeper. 

That said, I have spent most of the last two months sleeping and I'm hopeful that I will be only sleeping at night now. We'll see.

Nightmares suck, night terrors suck even more.

Sleep last night was not my friend. Two reasons: I am still getting used to the damn CPAP machine and trying to fit the mask properly, and I had some vivid nightmares. I think the nightmares means that my traumatized brain is attempting to process what happened to me when I was younger, but I'm not sure. Last night, it was more like memories coming up with a combination of staircase wit. I woke up on the verge of crying, furious, and with the words in my mouth to scream at my mother over her accusation that I seduced my father to get him to sign on my student loans. I literally lost count the number of times that she had accused me of being sexually involved with my father, going all the way back to when I was in my single digits. I was horrified, disgusted, and embarrassed by it. It wasn't my father that molested me, it was my paternal grandfather and a few years later, my younger brothers.

But if I said any of that, all hell would have broken loose. Arguments between my mother and I consisted of her screaming insane accusations at me, as I stood with my head hung down, waiting for a beating to commence, and mumbling that I didn't do anything she had accused me of. It was awful, degrading, and left me scarred in ways that I am still trying to figure out how to process (the Aspects/personalities/insiders).

It wasn't safe in my parent's house to express myself. As such, when each little bit of me split off, it went down inside where it'd be safe. Now that I am safe, it's confusing when they bubble up. My psychiatrist assures me that trauma is a spectrum and that my having these experiences does not mean that I have an additional diagnosis only that I was deeply traumatized.

At least I am not having night terrors right now. The weighted blanket helps prevent that. I worry about having them again. Once the CPAP machine entered the picture, sleep sort of improved despite how uncomfortable and awkward the mask is. But the mask reminds me of when someone in my parent's household tried to smother me. It's not good. It makes me concerned that I'll be having them again because these memories are coming on so strong.

We survived but presents are not done. Gods help me.

The holidays were stressful as per usual. No one was seriously sick in our household but the in-laws were. It made for awkward times with the kids. They wanted toys and they got books. For a moment we thought they were going to explode but they immediately sat down and began reading. I kinda feel like we dodged a bullet there. It's going to be a gradual process to transition them from eagerly looking for the latest toys and more mature items. But, they are getting older and this is part of growing up. They'll still get little stim-toys and candy via the 12 Yule boxes. But things like clothes, educational material about their special interests and what not is what's coming down the line for the next few years.

I have blocked Cuddle bear's sweater. I'm afraid to take the pins out and watch it shrink. I really have no idea what I'm doing with this sweater. I have two seams to sew and ends to weave in, then it is finished. Snuggle Bug's bear is ... in parts with my still crocheting more parts. I am wondering if this was a poor executive decision. It has been stressful to say the least.

Now that we're into the beginning of the secular year, the teachers at school have been pressuring Snuggle Bug to make New Year's Resolutions. We don't do that here. In fact, we discourage it. Our feeling is if you want to improve yourself, you can do it at anytime. The social pressure of doing it now is high and the lad is not happy. He's struggling. We've done our best to give him guidance on resolutions he can make that are not school oriented but appropriate. 

We'll see how that goes.

I will have to walk into the maelstrom to get things, oiy.

 My last week has been spent on knitting feverishly on this sweater. (40 rows before the final edging.) I haven't even started the bear that's been requested of me. I'm starting to think I might not get it done at all. I'm crocheting just as feverishly on a mobius cowl. I think I made a mistake thinking it was going to be easy to get done quick. Large yarn and large hook is faster than small yarn with a small hook. But 200 stitches per round is still alot. And I worry it won't be large enough or wide enough with the yarn that I have. 

I was planning on baking cookies from scratch but now I think the best decision is to buy packaged dough and go that way because I'm running out of time. I think the school pictures (that initially I thought weren't going to happen) showed up. That means picture frames and such. Aside from going into Shopmageddon to buy picture frames, I need to acquire things for the 12 boxes of Yule. I also need to locate books for the holiday eve book giving that I've started doing. And there are people that I can't  make things for because the pattern I was testing had the gauge all messed up. I don't have time to fix that and then make three versions of that pattern. So, I will have to brave the crowds to get stuff for them.

As a person with social phobia, Shopmageddon is not my favorite time of year. As a matter of fact, it is my least favorite time of year between the crowds and all of the canned holiday music that hasn't changed since 1950. I loathe Bing Crosby's voice because I've been over exposed to it. And they start playing it earlier and earlier with each year. I heard holiday music in one store back in August and they were setting up some of their holiday displays. Ugh.

NaBloPoMo post no. 29: I think I caught my son's cold.

 Cuddle Bear has had a wicked cold for a little while now. He's finally recovering from it. Now I am showing symptoms and I am highly annoyed. I have been sick so much of the year that it took a serious bite out of my productivity. I had pneumonia for two months. I had bursitis in my right shoulder for a week after that. Then the left shoulder got pissy for a week and only ice worked to make it hurt less. Earlier in the year was the three day migraine. Just about every month, on average, I've had a migraine due to the weather. It's been pretty awful because I'm basically out of commission for three days for each migraine. The day before, I am scatter brained and succumbing to food cravings like a fool. The day of, I am functionally useless between the light and sound sensitivity. And did I mention the nausea. It all together an awful experience. The day after, I'm just as scatter brained as I was the day before but I am exhausted too. It's not fun and I don't recommend it to anyone.

I'm frustrated. And I'm tired despite the CPAP machine helping me breathe in the night. I just don't feel great and I have no good news or wonderful announcements for y'all today. Just hang in there like the cat on the window screen and we'll all get through this.

NaBloPoMo post. no. 26: I guess I wake up at 0400 now.

 Since using the CPAP machine, I have been consistently waking up at 0400 and taking a one hour nap at 0800. This isn't a huge problem just bewildering. I can't figure out what is waking me up at 0400. The neighbors' pets are typically rather quiet at that time. They haven't been fighting at that hour in a couple weeks.  Maybe my body is just telling met it is time to get out of bed and do stuff.

I have spent most of my morning reconciling my daily planner with my journal. I got to a point where that became mind numbing and I ate breakfast about an hour early compared to what I usually do. I was good, I wrote everything down in my food journal. I hate monitoring my food intake. It brings up ugly memories of my youth and the feeling that I am eating too much when I am not, I am eating exactly what I should. I have a lot of anxiety surrounding food, bad habits of restricting intake, and similar garbage behaviors that go back to when my mother was starving me because the worst thing I could be was fat.

Thoughts about things like that will keep me up at night trying to figure out wtf is wrong with an 8 yo having a few extra pounds on them. I was an active child and I burned off about half of what I ate running around the farm. Considering that I get cold easily, like dangerously fast, a few extra lbs would probably have done me some good as a child. But what to I know. That is in the past and I really need to leave it there.