NaBloPoMo post no. 30: *Another* Migraine, argh!

 The temperature jump of 30 degrees is what set this one off. I've taken my Excedrin because medical studies are inconclusive if you can take Imitrex more than 3 time in a 30 day period. Over the course of this month, I've had four migraines because of the stupid weather. I can handle a temperature jump of 10 degrees F in either direction. If it is 20 deg F or higher, I get a migraine. Especially if there's rain coming with it or some other form of precipitation.

On top of the migraine, if we've got weather coming all my joints hurt and where I got the epidurals to have the c-sections when the boys were born, well it feels like I got hit there with a bat. It's just not a good time. I try to grit my teeth and push through but there's only so much misery I can deal with before I say I give up and hide in a dark room in a blanket fort/pile.

Stupid migraine.

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. 28: Snowmageddon missed us by 10 miles.

As many of you are aware, I and my family live in the Finger Lakes region. We're at the westernmost part of that area. Not quite Western New York, not quite Central New York, and a scooch too far north to be part of the Southerntier. We are in an awkward position geographically for people to define, unless you are talking football. Then it is everything from Buffalo east to Syracuse is "Bills Country" and even if you don't like football, you're socially expected to be part of the Bill's Mafia. Because Bills.

The Weather Channel made the usual Lake Effect that makes driving through Western New York hazardous this time of year sound like the worst ever. The snow bands from the Great Lakes can reach pretty far inland. We are in this pocket where the snow bands off Lake Erie misses us by about ten miles and the snow band off Lake Ontario miss us by, roughly, another ten miles. And then because of the weird microclimates due to all the hills, we happen to sit in a spot where we don't get nailed too badly when the big storms roll in, usually.

When we hit the latter part of the week where we are suppose to warm up to around forty degrees Fahrenheit, the couple of inches of snow that we got will probably all melt. The real problem for us is this bitter cold and the wind. It has been blowing pretty hard most of the day so far. I suspect the wind chill is about the same as it was in the morning, around 19 deg F. My sons were not happy to wait for the bus in this weather. Only enough snow for one young man to shovel and their hands were very cold despite their good quality gloves. As my eldest said when I told him he could not wait in the apartment for the bus, "I hope you'll be happy when I get frostbite in my hands." He usually doesn't fire off quips like that, but I don't blame him. It was pretty bitter out there.

I told him to wait in the entryway out of the wind. That seemed to mollify him. As someone who gets cold easily and literally hurts like it is burning their flesh, I could empathize with him. Still, I chuckle at what he snapped off. Because about ten seconds later the bus arrived and he left the entryway grumbling. 

NaBloPoMo post no. 27: Shoppmageddon tempts me.

Beloved pointed out to me that I didn't have to make everything for everyone on my list. I hear the siren call of shopping and I am doing my best to resist. I suspect in the end half of what I have planned will be made and I'll be working on a shopping list in a week or so. Because there's a lot to do to fix the disaster of this apartment. 

It is my goal to have it all clean by Yule or Mother's Night. I'm not throwing a party or anything. I just want to have this place sorted out kinda like a present to myself. I don't know how I am going to get the kids to participate in this. It may be a temporary suspension of tablet time. I don't know. Snuggle Bug is very forgetful and I have to watch him like a hawk to keep him on task. (As much as he assures me he doesn't need the supervision, he really does.) Cuddle Bear is finally beginning to step up and start handling some of the chores.

I don't know what Beloved said to him in that conversation, but it's made for a turnaround in his attitude towards housework.

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.

Nablopomo post no. 25 - So. Many. Carbs.

I've been trying really hard to watch my carbohydrate intake. Yesterday, I was stress eating leftovers. I saw there was a small amount of bread based stuffing and thought it'd be ok to eat it. After all, it was lunch time and that's the time of the day where I am supposed to eat the most carbs out of the whole day. My range is 35 to 40 carbs per meal and 10 to 15 carbs per snack (3 snacks a day).  I ate my dark meat turkey and this small bit of stuffing. Two hours later my blood sugar was way high (275 mg/dl) and I felt awful.

Pretty much everything on the table except for a small salad and the dressing that Beloved made was high in carbs. So I took only meat and the dressing that Beloved had made. I didn't have any salad because I wasn't in the mood for it. Also, it was a really small bowl of salad for 12 people. But, I was good, I had one serving of the dressing and a generous amount of meat. I think I was successful at balancing my carb load against how much protein I needed.

I did my best to ignore the rest of the food on the table despite people waxing poetic about it. I did my best to ignore the fact that there was mulled cider, regular cider, and wine to drink. I stuck with my bottle of water (which is kinda big). I'd have loved to have had a glass of wine or a glass of cider. But the wine would mess with my psychiatric medications and the cider is basically liquid sugar. There were four different kinds of pies. That was plenty of temptation right there. The only indulgence I allowed myself was a sliver of the most diabetic friendly pie of the bunch, apple crumble. It was unsatisfactory and left me fairly disappointed. Not because it was a bad pie, but because I couldn't have more.

Cue lunchtime yesterday. I told myself that I was only going to have a little bit of the stuffing. And I did, approximately the equivalent of two slices of regular bread. Like a fool, I forgot that two slices of regular bread is, on average 60 carbs. About twenty minutes later, I felt awful. And that was when I went 'oh no, I screwed up.' and checked my blood sugar. It was high. I reminded myself a more accurate reading will be in an hour and a half. I took my blood sugar then and it was still quite high. So, I started drinking a ton of water to get that sugar out of my system. It took me about 3 hours to get it down to a semi-acceptable number.

After that fiasco, I warned Beloved about the high carb load of the stuffing. He heaved a sigh. I knew exactly how he was feeling. He had been looking forward to it because he didn't have any, and now he might be forced not to have a bite of it. He got diagnosed with type 2 diabetes a few months ago. He was rather despondent for a while but then he started looking around for recipes he could adapt, hence the pumpkin pie a little while back. He has jumped into cooking with both feet and is finding a good amount of success.

It helps that he's an engineer and approaches it as one. He views the recipe as an experiment and learns from what doesn't work. I think it's a rather brilliant way to do it. Now that we're playing around with sugar substitutes, it's like we're doing chemistry or alchemy, I'm not sure which.  

Nablopomo post no. 24: Thank gods, THAT is done!

 Turkey Day was not a complete fiasco. The old goat wasn't quite as goatish. He didn't have snide comments about the diabetics at the table this year. I think it was because there was three of us instead of one. Dinner was well tolerated. No one got snippy over my boys not having much of an appetite. Beloved and I did our level best to not get into the food with too high of a sugar content. My red lipstick didn't transfer to anything (except when I blotted the corner of my mouth, then it transferred to the napkin, but it was the same color as the cranberry sauce, so I think I'm safe).

The Boomers were happy to talk among themselves. The Gen-X crew was washing and cleaning up from dinner on the sly to irritate the old goat (whose hobby is washing dishes now). And the Gen-Z kids were on their tablets giggling at cat videos.

I got absolutely no knitting done, but I expected that. I did get started on a soap sack for Beloved. I brought two projects with me so that I had something to keep my hands busy while everyone else was twirling around before dinner with setting the table and cooking. It also worked pretty well to keep me out of conversations I didn't want to be involved in.

Nablopomo post no. 23 - Ah gods, it's Turkey Day.

 It is 0436 and I have been up since 0230. My stomach is all knotted up and I feel nauseated. I know that I'm going to be exhausted later today because I've only gotten 4 and a half hours of sleep. I am not looking forward to today. I just want to avoid the world and sleep. But I can't sleep because of how my stomach is roiling. I've tried drinking water. I've tried a cup of tea. I've tried Gas-X and antiacids. Nothing is working.

I don't know if this is a side effect of the Trulicity showing up at an inconvenient time. I don't know if this is my anxiety. I just know I feel rotten at the moment. 

Everyone in the apartment is asleep but I. I spent about a half hour doing crochet by relatively dim light. Because I couldn't accurately count rows, I set it aside and said to myself "I have blog posts to catch up on. I can do that because my keyboard is quiet and the angle of the room with where I positioned my desk lamp means I won't wake up the kids.

I had a migraine that lasted for two days. This is part of the reason why I didn't post. It's hard to brain up words when you feel like someone is trying to pry your skull apart and light is stabbing you in the face. Yesterday, I was post migraine but still feeling horrid. That was because I had a terrible night's sleep the night before because of the migraine.

Looking at the weather and the dramatic temperature drop expected, I'm probably going to have another migraine. I don't know if this sick feeling is aura symptoms, because that happens if I'm going to have a really bad one. All I know is that I can't take the Imitrex because I've already taken it twice this month. So, Excedrin is going to be my go to today.

I'm not looking forward to talking politics. I'm not looking forward to snide comments about the food that my FiL doesn't think looks tasty or his bitchiness about the idea of people having food sensitivities or allergies. I'm really hoping I don't have to sit next to him again. It was really hard to resist the urge to stab him with a fork as he was going on about how there were too many vegetable dishes.

I kinda hate that man between his politics, his opinions on child rearing, and his sense of entitlement to dictate how other people should be. His wife is sweet as pie and I adore her. We have a lot in common. We could natter on for hours about shared hobbies and projects we're working on. I don't talk to him unless I absolutely have to. I fear it will be necessary to talk to him today. This is going to suck.

Nablopomo post no. 22: Deb vs CPAP -round 3 (It didn't go out the window, yet.)

 This confounded thing keeps turning off in the middle of the night. Not just turning the screen off but the entire damned contraption. I've tried a number of things. All I can do is wait for the power to cycle (a half hour) and then I can go back to sleep, but by then I am awake.

On top of that the neighbor's dog has been whining and howling since 0100 and it is 1410 right now. And at 0100, there was a screaming argument next door. Sleep was not my friend last night. And at 0500, their parrot started squawking. As Beloved said last night when he got home from work, that apartment is a literal circus now.

I thought about putting on the CPAP to take a nap around 1300. But that was when a screaming argument broke out between the neighbor in apt b and some other neighbor in the building. They were told they should be more like us, it wasn't vindicating. It was just another irritation for me. I'm exhausted with the noise last night and the CPAP being wonky. My brain is still fuzzy between mild sleep dep and the lingering effects of the migraine. Too bad the CPAP didn't help with the migraine. But, I guess there's only so much it can do.

Nablopomo post no. 21 - Trulicity Week 2

 Some of the side effects of nausea and belching are present. On average, however, my daily fasting blood glucose has come down by 20 points. I've been a fool a few times over the last two weeks and ate like I didn't have diabetes. My blood sugar went high and I felt like garbage. Thus, Trulicity is not a cure all, like the ads like to make it out to be.

I'm a little nervous about Turkey Day. That's going to be a wide range of food, with a good amount of it not exactly carb friendly. Now approximately a third of the adults at the table are diabetic. I am wondering what my curmudgeon of a FiL is going to say about the dishes we put on the table. If he complains there's too many vegetables, I might stab him with a fork. Last year was a close call when he made that comment with out even trying what I had cooked.

He tries to come off as a bafoon but sounds like a spoiled brat. It makes me angry when he comments on my cooking and doubly so when he comments on Beloved's cooking. This is part of why I am dreading tomorrow.

NaBloPoMo Post No. 20: I hate this weather rollercoaster. I want off.

 I am on day three of a migraine. Days one and two I was non functional. Today, I am semi functional. I think this means it is going away. On top of the migraine fun, I have had my joints killing me (thanks, arthritis) and the stress of using this confounded CPAP troubling me. I'm convinced I am doing something wrong. I can't figure out what. The manual is word salad to me right now because I'm still having trouble reading from the lingering effects of the  migraine. This may explain why my typing here is a bit off kilter. I'm trying but it feels like it's not working out. Ugh. I hope I'm better by tomorrow.

Nablopomo post no. 19: Playing around with make-up

 It has literally been years since I've worn make-up. It was a part of my LARPing stuff and going out to be social. Yesterday, I went through all of my make-up and nail polish. I discovered in there some funky lip gloss. It is from L'Oreal (I think) and it is called Adrenalyn. It's this really dark navy blue with a tiny bit of gold sparkles in it. 

It transfers to cups really easy and is difficult to get off unless you are using baby wipes. (I swear those things can get everything clean if you are gentle and patient enough. They're magic.)

Still, I have decided I am going to start wearing make-up on a regular basis. I just have the lip gloss on in the picture above. I thought it was kinda cool that it sorta color coordinates with Eeyore. This make up stuff is hard for me because I'm not that great at it. I learned a lot from my late friend R. She encouraged me to be extravagant and spectacular with my make-up. At that time, I was still a bit nervous about that. So she decided to give me a make over. When I saw what she had done, I finally understood the purpose of make-up. It was to accentuate your features and to have fun.

For a really long time, my relationship with make-up was pretty rocky. I could to a passable job of applying lipstick and subtle tones to highlight my face. But I always worried that I did something wrong or that my color choices were all wrong for my skin tone. Growing up, I was mocked horribly by peers and my immediate family for wearing make-up. When I started going out on dates, my mom insisted on doing my make up for me because she decided that I was going to be leaving the house looking like a clown left to my own devices. Instead of looking like a clown, mom's heavy handed application and choices made me look like a cheap whore. It was awful and made me swear off of wearing make up for a few years.

It was hard to trust R. to give me that make over. But the end result was entirely different from what mom did. Yes, the lipstick was dramatic. Everything was tastefully dramatic (which fit the character I was playing to a t.) and I felt beautiful. I hadn't expected that. R. gave me tips and pointers on how to recreate the experience. It helped that she had gone to cosmetology school. (My mother did not.)

So, as I am doing the goth thing, I'm realizing I can have lots of fun with my make up just on a daily basis. Because it all washes off at the end of the day. I'm not brave enough to do eye liner yet, but some day, I'll get there.

Nablopomo post no. 18 - Deb vs. CPAP round 2 (I might hate this thing.)

 I got to bed late because the day was just bananas. I put on my CPAP mask and lay down to sleep. Trouble started first thing. I couldn't get a good seal around my mouth at first and I had to adjust the mask. The seal around my nose was uncomfortable but I hate having my nose covered with anything. It just wakes up an atavistic fear of drowning. Why, I have no idea, probably due to some unresolved trauma from my childhood or something.

So, I go to sleep for an hour. I wake up with a super dry mouth and a powerful thirst. I turn the CPAP machine off, finangle the mask off my head (which is hard because it is fitted tightly to keep those seals tight), and get a drink of water. I come back and check my stats only to discover the machine is leaking air. 16 liters of air per hour. I check all the hose connections, I inspect the mask and the mouth piece, and everything looks ok. I hope and pray that this isn't a sign of a problem, and I wriggle the mask back on, almost poking myself in the eye in the process.

At 0400, the confounded machine turns off. The power didn't go out. It was still plugged in. It was supposed to still be working but it wasn't. Every time I tried to reboot it, I watched it turn itself off. Fortunately, I got my mandatory 4 hours of sleep minimum for insurance purposes. But, now I have to call tech support before I throw it out a window in frustration.

To make matters even worse, I can not sleep in a comfortable position with out disrupting the airflow of the machine or breaking the seal of the face mask. If I yawn too much, it breaks the seal. It's maddening. I dislike sleeping on my back, it makes me feel vulnerable. That triggers bad dreams. And I can't use my big fluffy pillow that I just purchased last month because it messes with the CPAP's airflow through the mask.

I think I might hate this thing and it's only been a week (feels like a month, though.).

Nablopomo post no. 17: Deb vs CPAP round 1

 Last night, I slept horribly because my CPAP wasn't working correctly. So, this morning I attempted to service it as I should once a week. First I looked at all of the stats. The  mask was working properly and fitted correctly. The humidifier was working correctly as well. Then I scrolled into the more arcane details. That was where I discovered it had a 12 L leak per hour. I did what any one would do, checked the obvious. The tubing was all securely in place and it wasn't pinched anywhere. The face mask didn't have any obvious damage and the 'cushion' aka mouth piece fitted properly.

That was when I checked the air filter. It looked like swiss cheese. It is not supposed to look like that. So, I replaced it and threw the old one away. I am hoping that all of this resolves the leak problem. If not, I am going to call tech support, tell them everything I did, and ask them what I forgot. I still haven't RTFM. Because that would make things easier and possibly make sense. Such a silly concept, I can't be making sense, now can I?

Nablopomo post no. 16 - Slow progress is still progress.

This confounded sweater for Cuddle Bear is taking forever. I honestly don't know if I'm going to have it done in time for Yule. I just finished the table mat for the tea cozy set pattern test. I need to buy more yarn because I don't have the right color to make the two that I want to in addition to this pattern test. 

Now, you may wonder why I am doing a pattern test. Because the last time I took a pattern for granted, the gauge was all wrong and I had to rip the whole thing out. It was a headache. I'm fairly sure that I need to get more buttons as well to finish the tea cozy itself. Heck, I think I need buttons to do the button joins for Snuggle Bug's stuffie.

I have buttons but they're all the wrong shapes. All I need are simple, round buttons and I have none. You want stars, flowers, or hearts, I've got it. But no basic buttons are in my button jar because I have used them up repairing things. Large heart buttons could be fashionable on a pair of pants, but they'd be useless because they wouldn't fit through the button hole. Ugh.

I am at the point where I am questioning if I'm going to get any of this done. I always do, but I have my fits of uncertainty and stress.

Nablopomo post no. 15 - cleaning marathons and rest days.

At one point I was a devotee of FLYLady's method of cleaning and keeping house. I found I had to keep adapting it and adapting it yet again to fit my lifestyle and schedule until it looked very different from her program. Instead of going by the Julian calendar for the basis of my cleaning schedule, I switched to the lunar cycle. There's more consistency in the lunar cycle than there is in the Julian calendar, which makes things easier for me.

I have four major living areas in my home. I was including the entryway but because I wasn't getting paid for the work and it still looked awful when I was done because of dirt ground into the paint, I gave up. Nowadays I sweep the space with a glance and just go out of it. Between filthy neighbors who throw their trash everywhere and the fact that I can't get it truly clean, there's no point. (My eldest son did me a big favor pulling the trash the neighbors dumped into the garden out of there last week.)

My four living areas are the kitchen, bathroom, bedrooms, and the living room. The week after the new moon, I work on the kitchen. The week of the waxing gibbous moon, I work on the bathroom. The week of the full moon, I work on the living room. And the week of the waning gibbous moon, I work on bedrooms.

To some this may look like madness and that I'm engaged in panic cleaning for the whole month. But that's not completely true. The three days around the new and the full moon, I have a rest period. If a holiday falls during the week, I take a day off from cleaning to observe it. And I'm not spending all day cleaning, just 15 to 30 minutes. I have been trying to get my sons in on this. My eldest is finally starting to fall into the rhythm of it. He's been helping out with daily chores like dishes. We work on them for 15 minutes and then he's done. My youngest is still very scattershot about cleaning. When he focuses and stays on task he does a great job. But that ADHD makes it hard for him to focus. Beloved and I think it is a maturity thing and over the next two years he'll make some leaps and start falling into the cleaning rhythm too. 

Nablopomo post no. 14: My thoughts on Trulicity at this time.

 Sure, I messed up my first dose. I am not familiar with injecting myself with anything. I watch very carefully when the professionals do it. I do my very best to follow their directions on this self-service angle. I'm trying to keep my dear Beloved out of this process because he has a mild phobia of needles. (Hence why we're both hoping that neither of us are going to need insulin at some point living with type 2 diabetes.)

Even with a partial dose in me, the Trulicity has done wonders. I'm not starving all the time. As a result, my anxiety levels have dropped significantly. I just about cried when I finished a meal and I didn't feel the need to eat a second one. I am so full of gratitude. 

Growing up in a household where you were starved and beaten for 'sneak eating', you eventually fall into an unhealthy cycle of gorging when you're allowed to eat and starving when you're not. This has permanently messed up my relationship with food. It's part of the reason why I'm going back into therapy. The Trulicity has helped a great deal but it's a band aid over a gaping wound.

Nablopomo post no. 13 - Pumpkin Pecan Pie is Delicious.

 As Beloved were working on our plot to basically take over thanksgiving cooking so that all his parents had to do was sit and enjoy themselves, he discovered the cook book my Aunt and her wife made back in the mid-1990s as Yule presents for the whole family. He drooled over many items and then he saw the Pumpkin Pecan Pie. It had been so many years since I had a slice I couldn't remember the taste of it. He decided that aside from the diabetic friendly dressing that had been requested, we were going to make a diabetic friendly version of that pie.

He took his first crack at it right after learning how to make a pie crust from his Mom. I warned him that sugar subs. lie when they say you can measure them 1:1 for sugar in baking. It's a 1:2 ratio. I found that out the hard way a few years back trying to make cookies. We agreed that corn syrup is liquid sugar and we should try to avoid it. The attempt to keep the pecan topping to one side of the pie didn't exactly work. I blame the corn syrup. So, now I'm on the hunt for a sugar free/low carb replacement for corn syrup.

We each had a sliver of the pumpkin half of the pie and it came out great. Then I mentioned that I found a recipe for crustless pumpkin pie and that apple crisp is actually diabetic friendly. Beloved's mother said we had to bring the crustless pumpkin pie too.

So, I think I need to buy a new pie plate. lol

Nablopomo post no 12: Embroidery

 I started this project back during the summer to keep me from being bonkers with stress. It's a quote from the Filianic scriptures. I designed this freehand.

The lettering and the centers of the flowers are done using DMC's floss no. 799. The petals on the blossoms are using JP Coates 158. The hearts are a variegated red-pink from Designs for the Needles with out a dye lot number. And the leaves and stems are worked with Designs for the Needle's number 826.

This is a sample of sorts. The lettering is running stitch. The stems are too. The centers of the blossoms are Rhode's stitch. The petals are satin stitch. The leaves are closed fly stitch. The hearts are satin stitch. The one on the upper right is properly done satin stitch inside a running stitch border. The one on the lower left was just randomly laid satin stitches inside a running stitch border. I should have gone with proper satin stitch.

Nablopomo post no. 11? - almost a week behind, ugh.

 It has been an eventful several days, namely between my shoulder acting up and medical crap. I got a phone call from the CPAP monitoring people associated with the pharmacy/medical supply group that I picked it up at. They said that I had to use it a minimum of 4 hours every night for insurance purposes. I explained that we were still rearranging furniture in the smol bedroom that I have so that we could set it up. Last night, all of that got sorted out and we set up the CPAP. 

It was supposed to help me sleep. It did not. I woke up several times with an exceedingly dry mouth and just feeling rotten. The sleep report said that the mouth seal of the mask was bad. I kept trying to adjust it when I woke and nothing seemed to work. I literally have no clue what I'm doing. What I do know is that the humidifier on the thing is just about empty after one night's use. The air in the apartment is too dry. I have an ancient room humidifier that I could put in the living room to get some more moisture in the air, but I don't know how well that will work.

Liberal application of icy hot and gentle stretches of my left shoulder seems to be helping. It's been an uncomfortable last few days. I started the Trulicity Saturday morning. I don't think I did the injection right because I heard some kind of a squirting noise as I removed the needle. I have a feeling that a good portion of the medicine ran down my stomach because I have been seeing my blood sugar creep higher. I still am not feeling like I'm starving, so I know it is in my system. But the higher blood sugar makes me exhausted.

And did I mention I had to cancel the boys' therapy appointments today because of a migraine. It's not been a good day. I wanted to get some writing done and get caught up. I don't think getting caught up is going to happen.

Nablopomo post no. 10 - Not again!

 The bursitis in my right shoulder is healed up. I can move it easily and comfortably. I can even sleep on that side. But now my left shoulder is cramped up like nobody's business. I've been applying heat and cold to it in the hopes that it would loosen up. It's not really doing much and my range of motion is a bit limited. I know, however, this is all muscular because it hurts in the muscles, not the joint.

I tend to carry my stress in my shoulders. I have a lot of things health wise to be stressed about. I'm starting a new diabetes medication tomorrow morning. It's called Trulicity and it is supposed to help keep my appetite in check and help me lower my A1C. I simply can't push through this on will power alone. It's bringing up terrible memories from when I was a child and my parents were starving me because the worst thing I could be was fat. It's bringing up very old habits that are not good for me. 

Sneak eating and binging followed by fasting is pretty much what I did as a kid. I didn't have the hallmark symptoms of anorexia but I had the behaviors. I wasn't afraid I was fat. I didn't think I was fat when I looked in the mirror. I was terrified that my access to food would be revoked because it was treated as a privilege that I had to earn. There's a lot more horror to this particular story but I'm not going to put it down here because I don't want to trigger anyone else who is recovered or struggling with an eating disorder.

I have been psychologically struggling for several months now. It's been particularly brutal when I realized I was falling back into sneak eating. No one was going to beat me for having a healthy meal. No one was going to slap food out of my hand and call me a thief. I have times where I dissociate and stare at our pantry with deep despair. So, my butt is starting therapy again. I have to process this abuse and somehow make my peace with it.

Nablopomo post no. 9 - Planner Pages!

 

What I am holding in my hand is the heart of how I organize things in my life. When I forget to do this, everything turns into disarray and I have the one-two punch of more anxiety and more depression. October was a hard month, as was September, because I was sick and I kept forgetting to keep up with my planner. Let me tell you, before I started using this, I was a mess. I was overwhelmed by everything and panicky a lot. Prior to the templates that you see here, I was drawing out boxes in a notebook and getting pretty intense hand cramps by the time I was done setting up one month of pages. Then Beloved said, "Let's make a template, that'll make the planner easier to use." Trust an engineer to find the solution that streamlines an arduous process. They're good at that stuff.

At the top of the forward facing page is space for me to note the date in a liturgical calendar I follow (part of the whole Filianism thing I have going on), space for me to note the date in the Julian calendar that everybody else uses, and a space to note the day of the week. The column on the right side of the page starts with a reminder/record of how much water I need to drink on a given day. Below it is a reminder/record as to if I had taken all of my daily pills. 

There isn't a checkbox for each pill because I take 12+ medications and it changes on occasion. Following the monitor of medicine compliance, I rate my mood for the day and then I rate my anxiety level for the day on a scale of 1 - 10. A one is horrid and a ten is horrid in it's own way. My goal is to be around a five on the mood scale. On the anxiety scale, I try to be around a five also, because one is apathy and ten is I'm so anxious I am vibrating through space and time as well as seeing sound.

After this comes what is probably the most important thing to track in here, my fasting blood glucose reading. I'm kinda lucky that I just have to check this in the morning. The problem here is forgetfulness will have me go a week either forgetting entirely to take the readings or forgetting to write them down, because my brain just doesn't work quite like it did before and I have memory problems.

The check boxes and lines on the left side of the page are for tasks, errands, appointments, etc. I use it in a fashion that is really similar to Ryder Carrol's Bullet Journal method. I reserve the last line for writing down what we're going to eat for dinner that day. The lined back of the page is for recording notes and a bit of micro-journaling.

Nablopomo post no. 8 - What does this thing do again?

 I had a sleep study done back in September. During the study, I had 11 events per hour. Translation: I stopped breathing 11 times every hour. According to the doctors, when you do that, you briefly wake up to full consciousness to breathe and then fall back to sleep, not even remembering it because it was that fast. The sleep specialist prescribed me a CPAP machine. I wasn't sure if they were big and bulky still, like the ones advertised in the 90s. I wasn't sure about pretty much anything except for the fact that if I was having problems breathing then I need to do something about it.

I picked it up today. I was surprised that the health insurance didn't make a stink about the fact I was getting some medical equipment. The way they get over my prescription medication, I figured this was going to functionally cost an arm and a leg. It was a pleasant surprise that the cost of everything could fit into my budget because of how much the insurance covered.

CPAP is an acronym that stands for continuous positive airway pressure. Basically, I put on a mask (no, I didn't come out looking like Darth Vader) and the machine continually blows air into my airway. This prevents things like my tongue blocking my airway. I look rather silly with the whole get up on but it was shockingly comfortable. I was given a brief lesson on how to service it and what to use to clean it. There are parts I clean everyday and parts that I clean every two weeks. It was all rather interesting. The sales person basically disassembled the entire machine and named all the parts, told me how they work, and how to take care of them.

There wasn't any pressure (ha, stupid pun is stupid!) to purchase anything. If I had gotten up and walked out with out the equipment, there'd be no hard feelings. Confusion, yes, but there wasn't the typical sales attitude that you encounter in so many other specialty shops. That right there convinced me that if I am in need of other specialized medical equipment at some point, I'm going to work with these people. The emphasis of the whole experience was explaining how the equipment worked, what to expect out of using it, and things to take into consideration during use. I was expecting things to work differently and not be so ... pleasant.

Nablopomo post no. 7: Halp!

 I have six other blogs to update. O.O

This is what I get for being an overachiever.

Nablopomo post no. 6 - I hate menu planning.

 I seriously have come to hate over the last six years of having diabetes menu planning. And yet, here we are attempting to plan Thanksgiving dinner for three diabetics and a host of non-diabetics. This started out as Beloved attempting to plan everything so that his mom didn't have to cook. Not a bad idea when she's been struggling with balance issues for a few months now. (Her doctors are mystified, she's just accepted it as part of growing older.)

Unaware that the other relatives were planning things as well, we almost had a complete menu put together for his mom to approve. It has now turned into we're making the sides and desserts for us diabetics (and a special pie for his mom). I have been scouring my cookbooks and getting rather vexed. Portions are tiny. Much of it is not very appetizing. I just want to yeet the books out the window and call it done. Looking on the internet is even worse. I'm sorry but corn syrup is not a diabetic friendly sugar sub. It's liquid sugar!

Then there are the misfiled recipes that are for people with heart disease rather than diabetes. I suppose they could be useful. If they hit both the categories, it'd be perfect. Because there are more people at the table with heart disease than diabetes. But those recipes seem to be impossible to find. *headdesk*

Nablopomo post no. 5? Election day! My birthday! My migraine!

 So, it's election day and I would have gone to vote but this insane weather we're having triggered another (somewhat less severe) migraine. If this is how autumn is going to go, it's going to be awful. My birthday just feels like another Tuesday because of the migraine and all the work I have to get done. It's ok, though, because Beloved and I did something special on Sunday. With how well that went, I'm starting to think that maybe we can do a date night once a month.

The kids just were fantastic about following the rules. They were particularly happy that they got to have extra tablet time while we were out. And, of course, they enjoyed the pizza from their favorite place. Now we have another challenge with the kids and today kinda encapsulates it.

We have been trying to get them to do work around the house (helping out with dishes, folding towels, picking up the floor of the living room so that someone can vacuum it etc.). They just won't do it. This is not a new development. I've been fighting with them on this since they were toddlers. At first they did help out and the novelty wore of in about a month. Since, they just don't help. I've tried making it part of the schedule. I've tried doing group chores on a given day of the weekend. I've tried bribing them with money and food. Nothing works. 

Beloved is going to sit down and have a conversation about how they have to contribute. I've tried having that conversation and it goes in one ear and out the other. Maybe he can reach them. I am really hoping he can. At 14 and 16, they really should be doing some of the chores around here. It's exceedingly vexing. I have a migraine and the kids expect me to carry all the load so they can spend their time playing. It just can't work that way.

Nablopomo Post No. 4 - The Weekend Sucked.

 Both Saturday and Sunday, I woke up stupid early (i.e. 0230) and couldn't fall back to sleep. I wound up knitting for an hour Saturday in the small hours of the morning, hoping it would bore me to sleep. On Sunday, I was doing crochet for an hour. Neither settled my mind and relaxed me enough so I could go to sleep. I resigned myself to being awake for the day at 0330, approximately. Well, Sunday it was again 0230. Either way I was highly annoyed.

The kids behaved well. I felt physically weird and couldn't figure out why. The bursitis in my right shoulder had cleared up, thankfully. But I just didn't feel right and was extra hungry for no apparent reason. Sunday morning that reason became clear - I had a wicked migraine. This shot down Beloved's plans to hang out with his mom and learn how to make a pie crust. He had been looking forward to this for about two weeks.

I spent half of Sunday curled up in a dark room with a blindfold on just to make sure no light was going to stab me in the face. This was one of the rare moments that I was glad the bedroom has no windows. I guess it was around 1600 when I woke up and the Imitrex had worked it's magic. I was so brain fried, however, I just wandered around the apartment.

There was a bright side to the weekend. Beloved took me out to dinner and gave me two presents for my birthday. One was a book about fairytales, folktales, and myths. The other was the accompanying deck of tarot cards. The spot where the old Greek restaurant was is the new location for the Mexican restaurant that we really enjoy.

We happened to sit by chance in our old booth. Things were a little slow because they were busy, but we managed to make it a bit of a romantic moment reminiscing about the early years of our romance. And, for bonus points, the kids did well hanging out at home with a pizza. So, maybe we'll do this again. As long as I don't have a migraine kick my feet out from under me.

NaBloPoMo Post No. 3 - Election day is my birthday?

Yep, you read that right. My mother resented (probably still does) the fact that she didn't get to go vote in her first election because she was in the hospital with me. When I missed election day because I was out of state, she called me to crow about it. I rolled my eyes and hung up, saying I had to study for a test. There was no test the next day.

That said, as a favor to me, please consider the following next week.

 

NaNoBloPoMo Post No. 2 - Why am I exhausted?

 You know how when most people lose a few nights of sleep, they get bags under their eyes? Well, I have a full set of luggage and it isn't quite complete enough to look like I got in a fight. This August marks three years of awful sleep for various known and unknown reasons. We've gone through several neighbors in that next door apartment. Each of them has been loud, with a tendency to fight at full volume at all hours of the night, and had a large dog that howled for them when they weren't home. The noise enough screws with my sleep. It doesn't help with my cptsd. 

I struggle to get back to sleep whilst having flashbacks to my parents fighting over money from when I was a small child. Between their fighting, telling me that I was the reason they were poor, and a lot of other ugly stuff that was said, I guess I was around eight thinking that I'd be more valuable being sold as body parts on the black market and the money funneled to them. Pretty screwed up, eh? So, here I am about two score years later, with those thoughts running around in my head and fear that my parents are going to catch on that I heard them and they're going to beat me for it.

Now, putting that horror aside, I'm in perimenopause. The hormones screw up your sleep cycle there too. It seems like my body is looking for more ways to hate me because I just got a diagnosis of sleep apnea. I get the CPAP machine next week and I'm hoping it helps with that. And that heavy blanket that helps me feel safer at night, it's a weighted one that weighs almost as much as a toddler, seems to be making the sleep apnea worse. So, I may have to give that up. I don't know what a good alternate solution for my night time anxiety will be. 

My psychologist has been a champion through all of this. He's been carefully tailoring my psychiatric medications to try to help with out interfering with my other medications. He's a bit at wits end on this matter to. So, when I got prescribed a sleep consult with the clinic up in the city, he immediately began telling me what to expect (because I was anxious) and about his experience. He also was so kind as to explain what a CPAP machine does and how it has helped him. I came away from that discussion reassured and ready for the video conference with the sleep doctor's PA. 

In that video conference, I got my diagnosis and a very through explanation of everything from what is sleep apnea to how a CPAP machine works. With the discussion of sleep apnea, there was an explanation why I could sleep a whole night through and wake up exhausted. I'm hoping the CPAP machine is the silver bullet on this one.

NaBloPoMo Post No. 1 - Just rambling about bursitis. It sucks.

 I'm not entirely sure what to write in here today. Yesterday was a rotten day. The weather was cold and rainy. We had appointments at opposite ends of the county that I barely got us to on time. I had slept awful the night before because of a persistent ache in my shoulder that started that night. I figured I had shoulder checked a door frame and popped my shoulder out of place again as they day went on and the pain grew worse.

So, after we picked up Beloved from work, the kids were allowed to hang out at home as long as they behaved. (They did, but they completely forgot their bed time routine with the novelty of having the run of the apartment for an hour and a half.) Beloved brought me over to the Urgent Care clinic in the next town over. After some gentle poking and prodding, it was determined that I have bursitis in my right shoulder. This makes things challenging.

My right arm is my dominant arm. While I have this bursitis business going on, I am limited in my range of motion, but I can't wear a sling or I'll wind up with a frozen shoulder. I am finding out the hard way that I can't do things like pick up a full jug of milk. And reaching to the top shelf in the kitchen cabinets is painful. And getting out my cast iron to make dinner ... that's a tactical NOPE there, Ghostrider.

The most frustrating part of this is the fact that I can't do much more than write in my journal or type on here. My kitchen is a straight up disaster from the fact I was sick for two and a half months. I've got a ton of laundry that needs put away. And it doesn't count the other tasks that I have to get done. I tried washing some dishes. I did light stuff, like plastic and silverware. Now my shoulder is registering a formal complaint at full volume. Capslock is my body's native language. Ugh.