NaBloPoMo: Some whining.

I have stacks and stacks of old mail that I can't file and I can't throw out in the trash. My filing cabinets are full more old receipts, paid bills, and random official paperwork. Ninety nine percent of it is just junk. I feel like I need a paper shredder.

I get twitchy when the apartment is like this. It brings up bad memories and anxiety. Fortunately, I have that magic give zero fucks pill that my psychiatrist prescribed me. I took it a few minutes ago but it'll take a little bit to kick in. The time I spend being anxious and twitchy is not as long as it was before I started taking something for the anxiety.  But the anxiety is a persistent problem, even with medication.

All pervasive dread that something awful is going to happen to myself or my family is nothing fun to live with. Fear that leaving the apartment means someone is going to arbitrarily decide that I'm a danger to myself and others because I have mental illness and I'll be locked away in a dark hole with out any opportunity to see my family again keeps bubbling up. It doesn't help how this administration is running things.

So much of their bluster echoes what I was raised with and the threats that went with it. It makes minor panic attacks pop up like clouds on a sunny day, at a frequent rate and randomly. I have essentially stopped reading the news but it's all inescapable.  It's all over social media. It's the thing that all the neighbors talk about. I try to focus on what I can do and what I can change. But the anxiety and my personal history hit me like a freight train and I just sit and numb out for long periods of time.

NaBloPoMo: What Would Loki Do?

A couple months back, Cuddle Bear got scammed out of all of his savings. (He had a good start on saving for a car.) Then the scammer harassed him for more money and started making threats. I didn't realize how bad things were until yesterday. I sat back and asked myself what would Loki do in this situation? Obviously get even, but how? Then it hit me, troll the scammer until they're back in the stone age.

A few gentle nudges and suggestions and Cuddle Bear was having a grand ol' time messing with the scammer. He was sending messages that were long and nothing but gibberish. By the end of the day, he was snickering and plotting what to do today. The scammer foolishly messaged him first thing in the morning. Maybe they were hoping to get 'normal' responses if they caught him earlier in the day. The fool.

Cuddle Bear was back at the blocks of gibberish messages. By lunchtime, the scammer went silent. Cuddle Bear asked them if they were angry. He told them to hold on to their hats because he was just getting warmed up. The scammer replied 'oh no.' The deluge of insanity resumed with the scammer begging him to stop. He finally said, "I'll stop if you send me my money back." Cuddle Bear got no response to that. He decided it was time to eat and proof read the job application he filled out in between sending blocks of random characters to the scammer.

Right now, Cuddle Bear is dropping off the job application. Somewhere downstate there is a scammer who is trying to decide what to do about Cuddle Bear's shenanigans. We're pretty sure that the scammer's already spent my son's money. Cuddle Bear's decided if he's having a bad day he's going to cheer himself up by messing with scammers.

NaBloPoMo: Exhausted.

Seasonal Affective Disorder is bullshit. The weather's gloomy and cold. My brain says that everything is awful and I should sleep until spring. I confess hearing Bing Crosby caterwauling doesn't help my mood any. I hear Bing Crosby and I want to throw things, like the radio, out the window and destroy it with a baseball bat. The 'traditional' christmas songs all irritate me. If I have to hear 'White Christmas' one more time, I might scream. And we haven't even hit Thanksgiving yet.

I didn't sleep great the last few nights, which is aggravating the SAD mood effects. My hormones are swinging back and forth, which was part of my problem sleeping. I thought PMS was bad, perimenopause is PMS on steroids. I'm pretty sure that my fatigue today is hormonally based too. Ugh.

NaBloPoMo: First Snow Fall (and a little ice)

 Yesterday, we went to visit my Mother-In-Law. The weather all day was gloomy and cold. Somewhere between sundown and when we went to the car, it started to ice. It didn't make the drive home problematic but we did have to be careful on the steps into the building. I figured it was going to continue to ice through the night. I was partially correct in my assessment. Some time in the night, it started to snow. 

When Snuggle Bug was heading out the door for school, I told him to be very careful because underneath that puffy, quarter inch of snow was a glaze of ice over everything. A little later, I went out and threw some salt down on the ice and warned neighbors on their way to their car about how slick it was out there. A light dusting of snow and a very thin glaze of ice made things look kinda pretty. I was glad we didn't get more of either because lots of trees still have leaves on them right now.

We're just to the east of one of the snow belts off of Lake Erie and just south of one of the snow belts off of Lake Ontario. The hills do a pretty good job of sheltering us from the worst of the winter storms that blow through the area. I suspect, however, that the hills are not going to be as successful as they were in past years when the next big storm comes through. It's cold enough that my joints ache and I've been wearing a shawl over my sweater.

My body does not approve of this weather. Fortunately, however, I didn't have a migraine this weekend as the system was moving in to the area. We'll see what happens when it moves out. I can say this for certain that the growing season is done now.

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

NaBloPoMo meme edition with cats!

 Judgemental cat is judgemental.

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.).