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.

All Hail Air Conditioning!

 It is hot and humid outside. We just closed the windows and turned on the AC unit. It's buzzing loudly but it is making a distinct difference in the comfort level of the room immediately. The AC is drying out the air and that makes it feel cooler in here. The temperature before we turned on the thing was 77 deg F in here. The AC is set to 75 deg F, as to avoid making it work too hard. It is an older unit, but still functional.

I figure if I want to listen to my music, I have headphones I can use. It is buzzing loud enough that listening to music off the television is not really an option unless I turn the television up obscenely high. I'm not going to do that because I don't want to blow the speakers. Maybe this weekend, Beloved will help me set up my new(ish) radio that's been sitting in the box for the last year and a half.

Took Cuddle Bear out for a driving lesson and to take care of our recycling run. He did pretty good. I completely empathized with him when he started swearing at the other drivers for cutting him off as he was turning. There's a corner in the next town over that has to be one of the worst in the whole town. It is another 5 point intersection, just like at the end of our street. To make matters worse, it's at the apex of a hill, so in one direction, you really can't see people coming up the hill until they're right on top of you. And everybody wants to speed through the intersection. I'm surprised the town hasn't put a light there yet.

In that next town over, they have gathered at one of the busiest intersections to protest the current administration. Each protest is more organized and bigger than the one before. This impresses me given how Republican dominated our county is. More people are getting ticked off with the government's bullshit and making themselves known. My son and I briefly talked about stopping to hang out with them and lend support. But we have a lot to do today so that didn't happen. One of these days, however, we're going to make a point of participating in one of these No Kings protests.

Garbage plates and stuff.

Beloved has a health screening today. He is found to be healthy. In preparation for the screening, he was on a liquid diet for most of the week. He was insisting he had to have a garbage plate after his screening. So, I drove him up to the city to his favorite hole in the wall to get one. Because he had been raving about how good their garbage plate was, I had to try one. End result, I have a new homefries addiction and I'll be getting this again. Obviously, it was greasy, carb laden and not healthy in the least. But their homefries were perfect and I found myself reminded of the diners that I spent hanging out in during college with my friends.

The weather has been beastly this week. The humidity has been awful and driving up the heat index into the 90s several days in a row. Beloved put in the air conditioner last night. I was surprised there wasn't a spider living in it. Snuggle Bug didn't move at all as his father moved the couch around to fit the unit in the window. He didn't even look up from his chromebook. At almost seventeen, I figured he would at least offer to move something out of the way for his father. Nope, just kept clicking and clacking away on the keyboard playing his game.

The kids were disappointed that they couldn't go over to Letchworth and watch Union Pacific's train Big Boy 4014 go over the bridge. They tried to talk me into heading down to Hornell (a few hours south of us) so they could see it at the next stop on the line. I knew that there was no way we could make there in time for the train's stop, even if I floored it. The appointment in the morning just ate up too much time. They were in luck, however, because someone had a live stream on Youtube of Big Boy rolling into Hornell. Sure enough, about fifteen minutes after they asked to go to Hornell, the train showed up on the live feed. That was yesterday.

Today, Beloved had his appointment in the morning and we had lunch in the city. Now I'm trying to prioritize what I have to do for the rest of the day and resisting the urge to nap. Because all those carbs in that garbage plate were tasty.

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.

Monday Menu

day	breakfast	lunch	dinner
M	yogurt granola coffee	veggie tray h2o	hamburgers cheese h2o
Tu	yogurt granola coffee	chicken salad sandwich h2o	tacos roasted chickpeas h20
W	yogurt granola coffee	salad cheese h20	meatloaf mashed potatoes h2o
Th	yogurt granola coffee	veggie tray h20	hotdogs deviled eggs h2o
F	yogurt granola coffee	salad cheese h2o	pasta w/ meatballs h2o
Sa	yogurt granola coffee	chicken salad sandwich h2o	take out h2o
Su	yogurt granola coffee	leftovers h20	TBD