Slouching into the new year.
Jan. 7th, 2015 03:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chrysillaOh yikes, well that was certainly a lull.
Since my last posting, I've had two more sinus infections and two more rounds of antibiotics. My allergist is almost more stymied than I am about all this, so she was more than happy to give me contact info for an ENT she knows. Didn't manage to see him until after the second s.i., which ruined Turkey Day and the whole week after. From what I told him about my "aggressive" allergy regimen, all he can really do is surgery, but he can't commit to that until I get *another* s.i. so he can give me a ct scan while its happening, and see what's wrong with my insides while I'm sick. But at least he's nice? And liked how I just handed him a printed list of all my meds, diagnosis, and lifestyle tweaks.
I think I might make some kind of medical CV, to keep track of all-the-things for future. And I did remember to make an appointment with another internist at Continuum (mine moved away last year) for my yearly checkup/shrugoff, so there will be someone to read it.
I did manage to go to the Boston MES NWoD weekend in November, which might be where I picked up a germ rather than an allergen, but while I was there it was lots of fun. The Requiem game was fun to play first while I was awake, and their new Accord VST + minions have a good plot system going. The bus trip was super frazzling, as Bolt is much better with a/c than HEAT, so instead of going out that night I stayed in with my hostess and watched geeky indie movies. Still much fun :-)
There was temptation to go back to Boston for their games in December, but at that point I'd just finished my last round of antibiotics, and my body was just NO. F#$% YOU, NO. In fact I was super crashed out for pretty much all of December. Holiday gifts didn't get made, sewing projects didn't get worked on. I was just burnt out and barely functioning.
I took an extra day off of vacation time, so I had almost two solid weeks of winter break except for the first Monday (which is hard for my office to reschedule for me b/c its the evening shift), and that first Saturday body and mind just checked out completely. It was all sleeping and spacing out, really kinda awful actually. Could not focus or be in any way productive. Yikes. And despite the elation of not having work after Monday, I just couldn't break out of it. Although not sleeping Tuesday nite didn't help. Luckily, Xmas was very low drama, and was able to come back home to the Chantry on Friday night to ... continue being lazy and unproductive.
Did manage an extra trip to Costco on Saturday, but then more lazing. A little bit of sewing stuff happened Monday, but then Monday night my toilet randomly stuffed itself up and flooded 1/3 of my apartment, so the next two days was spent cleaning up and replacing damaged stuff. My brain made it seem a much bigger job than it was, tho, luckily I'm so afraid of mice and roaches that I don't leave much stuff on the floor anymore. And the things that did get too waterlogged to fix were already broken (my tiny suitcase, slippers, etc). It just would have been nice not having to use *that* many Xmas gift cards to replace flood casualties right after Xmas :-P
Had already mostly decided to stay in for NYE, but the flood cleanup pretty much clinched it. I was more interested in saving spoons for the gamer weekend than standing on a subway platform for two hours with hundreds of obnoxious drunk people. Why party on someone else's schedule? I treated myself to duck, cut out the pieces for my new Arisia costume, and listened to the Good Omens adaptation on BBC Radio 4 online. Watched the ball-drop online so I wouldn't have to hook up the TV, it seemed very trite. I know one year I had to miss NYE b/c I was sick, and I was super frustrated about that, but this time it was my choice and I didn't feel bad at all.
Although all the flood-drama caused me to succumb to online shopping, plus fabricdotcom finally had that pleather I like back in stock, so I ordered that, some plain black knit, and a couple of patterns that were on sale. Will probably be mixing both materials together in some projects. Y'know, in addition to ALL THE OTHER PROJECTS I still have :-P I'd already ordered some new leggings with an Xmas gift certificate, tho now its even too cold to wear skirts with leggings. Whups.
By the end of the weekdays I had a much cleaner apartment, two sewing projects that (still) just need to be hemmed, and really didn't want to go larping. But some friends from CT were crashing with me on Friday nite for the MES weekend, so I went anyway. And had a good time, tho I'm still having trouble getting into my Lost PC. Accord and Requiem were also fun, but despite having a week of not-working I was still super frazzled by Requiem and unable to get my goals done, and then the diner was using superbleach to clean up towards the end of 'afters, and Sunday I'm super hung over and sleep deprived despite taking a cab home.
So lesson learned, I just can't do three larps per weekend. Not enough spoons no matter how much I try to rest up beforehand. From here on in I'll try to keep up with my Lost downtimes better, and each month decide whether I'm doing Lost *or* Accord depending on lead-in plot cookies. Requiem is the priority, since its the game I came back to Cam/MES for. I might keep up more with larping Lost b/c there are SHO MANY Accord games on IRC. I was actually too sick to attend my local games in December and still hit my XP cap for Accord, yikes.
I think at this point I've had more sinus infections than I've made Things for 100Things. So I refuse to feel guilty about that, I can't just stop one of those nasty things from happening to me. I think? So that sadly did not work out. Not sure whether I should try it again, maybe make it 100-Things-By-My-Birthday. But I'm just not feeling the jewelry or the polymer clay these days, my brain is just too fried. Sewing is OK but for me is less creatively demanding. Maybe I'll just focus on finishing that sewing to-do list by my b'day.
Also trying to figure out resolution-type things, but the synergy of New Years causes those to fail across the board, so meh. Considered another cleanse/diet thingie, but then decided I'd rather use this year to make my life *easier* instead of more difficult. I've re-started my Superbetter game, and put the button on my various browser toolbars so I don't forget about it this time. It wouldn't hurt to try and get back to live-journaling every week too.
Strattera doesn't seem to be hurting me, but I can never get a level playing field to try it out on given all the extra illnesses last season. My body seems to have adjusted to it for the most part, I guess we'll just have to see what happens. *shrugs*
Would also like to focus more on fixing the sleep problems, so Ima talk to my psych about anti-anxiety meds that might help with my AWI (cuz I don't want to take clonopin every nite), and ask my new internist if he can point me towards someone who can custom mold me some earplugs (the spongey ones hurt for some reason :-/). It all comes down to being tired and fatigued all the time, whereas other symptoms come and go, so I'm putting my $$ on the sleep disorder.
One ongoing behavioral problem in the way is how much time I spend spacing out on the internet in the evenings after work. I wonder if I should push myself to do something either more active (sewing, cleaning, etc), or *completely* inactive (tv + couch). Internet browsing is this strange in-between space that is just active enough to keep me clicking the mouse button, but I don't really accomplish anything. Its not even entertaining enough to remember what I was looking at the next day. It causes me to lose track of time, and then I miss out on more sleep.
This week has been weird energy wise. I got to bed a bit late Monday night, so was a zombie Tuesday morning and actually starting to fall asleep on the circ desk before lunch. But then lunch perked me back up. Last night I got to bed on time, but the possibly abusive next-door neighbors started a screaming match a half hour later, and despite taking clonopin to get to sleep after that it still took a long time. So once more: almost fell asleep on morning circ desk shift, then lunch made me entirely functional again. Will do my darndest to get to bed early tonight and hope the neighbors don't have another screaming match.
Tho I'll also be calling child services, now that I know how, and see if anything can be done. Cuz I'm not sure why else a nine year old girl would be screaming like that between 11pm and 1am :-( The co-op hasn't done anything since I last complained, and security hasn't been helpful at all. The office did suggest I log all the disturbances, but that's about all I have, and its my word vs theirs. Not sure if I should try the co-op again, but it *is* a frequent noise disturbance even if it turns out to not be an abusive family.
Financially... still kind of a mess, and sickness and sleep dep don't help me to be mindful enough to fix it. Large purchases, like fabric and BPAL, keep popping up out of nowhere to tempt me into being silly. Tho I'm a lot better at hacking down my BPAL wishlists than I used to be. But given the state of my sinuses I really shouldn't be ordering this stuff until I'm fixed.
On the other hand, if I should trigger another s.i., it does give my new doc the chance to see what happens (hopefully) to make me stay sick so long and so often. So Ima do my best to not break my sinuses before Arisia, no more cleaning or perfumes or nothin if I can swing it, and then afterwards see how far I can poke my system with pretty smells. Assuming I don't just come home with con plague. And by then I should have more sick and vacation time accrued again so I'll take less of a financial hit.
Also booked discounted train tix for the Boston MES games... on 2/28. Kinda far in advance, but it means it only costs $30 more round trip than the bus, and train is far superior (and less stressful) to bus, especially in the winter. And so far the DST says there's no reason game wouldn't be that weekend. If I'm less frazzled when I arrive, maybe I can finally hang around out-on-the-town with people the night before game. And there was enough in my "MES Travel" account to cover it, and then some. So yay for that. And yay for seeing some of my Boston friends at Arisia too :-)
So this week I feel gross, despite just having come off winter break, and I'm not planning any social stuff for the rest of the week or the weekend. I need to do the laundry, make the monthly grocery trip, finish an MES pc, and hem one dress for con, but otherwise Ima do as little as possible to save spoons for Arisia *next* weekend.
Still want to be more social in general, but it will have to wait until after con. The next con after that at best would be Dexcon, b/c monies. But I've been bad at getting myself to Dexcon, and I tend to be sickly in July, so if not then I can save that for more cons next year. Or skip Dexcon so I can use that $$ to refill my emergency savings instead (I have sucked at that plan so far, yeesh). And then definitely DCon, but I'm not sure if I can keep going to that one. It may be my last consecutive year, unless its remarkably better than the last two.
<3 Chrysilla
Since my last posting, I've had two more sinus infections and two more rounds of antibiotics. My allergist is almost more stymied than I am about all this, so she was more than happy to give me contact info for an ENT she knows. Didn't manage to see him until after the second s.i., which ruined Turkey Day and the whole week after. From what I told him about my "aggressive" allergy regimen, all he can really do is surgery, but he can't commit to that until I get *another* s.i. so he can give me a ct scan while its happening, and see what's wrong with my insides while I'm sick. But at least he's nice? And liked how I just handed him a printed list of all my meds, diagnosis, and lifestyle tweaks.
I think I might make some kind of medical CV, to keep track of all-the-things for future. And I did remember to make an appointment with another internist at Continuum (mine moved away last year) for my yearly checkup/shrugoff, so there will be someone to read it.
I did manage to go to the Boston MES NWoD weekend in November, which might be where I picked up a germ rather than an allergen, but while I was there it was lots of fun. The Requiem game was fun to play first while I was awake, and their new Accord VST + minions have a good plot system going. The bus trip was super frazzling, as Bolt is much better with a/c than HEAT, so instead of going out that night I stayed in with my hostess and watched geeky indie movies. Still much fun :-)
There was temptation to go back to Boston for their games in December, but at that point I'd just finished my last round of antibiotics, and my body was just NO. F#$% YOU, NO. In fact I was super crashed out for pretty much all of December. Holiday gifts didn't get made, sewing projects didn't get worked on. I was just burnt out and barely functioning.
I took an extra day off of vacation time, so I had almost two solid weeks of winter break except for the first Monday (which is hard for my office to reschedule for me b/c its the evening shift), and that first Saturday body and mind just checked out completely. It was all sleeping and spacing out, really kinda awful actually. Could not focus or be in any way productive. Yikes. And despite the elation of not having work after Monday, I just couldn't break out of it. Although not sleeping Tuesday nite didn't help. Luckily, Xmas was very low drama, and was able to come back home to the Chantry on Friday night to ... continue being lazy and unproductive.
Did manage an extra trip to Costco on Saturday, but then more lazing. A little bit of sewing stuff happened Monday, but then Monday night my toilet randomly stuffed itself up and flooded 1/3 of my apartment, so the next two days was spent cleaning up and replacing damaged stuff. My brain made it seem a much bigger job than it was, tho, luckily I'm so afraid of mice and roaches that I don't leave much stuff on the floor anymore. And the things that did get too waterlogged to fix were already broken (my tiny suitcase, slippers, etc). It just would have been nice not having to use *that* many Xmas gift cards to replace flood casualties right after Xmas :-P
Had already mostly decided to stay in for NYE, but the flood cleanup pretty much clinched it. I was more interested in saving spoons for the gamer weekend than standing on a subway platform for two hours with hundreds of obnoxious drunk people. Why party on someone else's schedule? I treated myself to duck, cut out the pieces for my new Arisia costume, and listened to the Good Omens adaptation on BBC Radio 4 online. Watched the ball-drop online so I wouldn't have to hook up the TV, it seemed very trite. I know one year I had to miss NYE b/c I was sick, and I was super frustrated about that, but this time it was my choice and I didn't feel bad at all.
Although all the flood-drama caused me to succumb to online shopping, plus fabricdotcom finally had that pleather I like back in stock, so I ordered that, some plain black knit, and a couple of patterns that were on sale. Will probably be mixing both materials together in some projects. Y'know, in addition to ALL THE OTHER PROJECTS I still have :-P I'd already ordered some new leggings with an Xmas gift certificate, tho now its even too cold to wear skirts with leggings. Whups.
By the end of the weekdays I had a much cleaner apartment, two sewing projects that (still) just need to be hemmed, and really didn't want to go larping. But some friends from CT were crashing with me on Friday nite for the MES weekend, so I went anyway. And had a good time, tho I'm still having trouble getting into my Lost PC. Accord and Requiem were also fun, but despite having a week of not-working I was still super frazzled by Requiem and unable to get my goals done, and then the diner was using superbleach to clean up towards the end of 'afters, and Sunday I'm super hung over and sleep deprived despite taking a cab home.
So lesson learned, I just can't do three larps per weekend. Not enough spoons no matter how much I try to rest up beforehand. From here on in I'll try to keep up with my Lost downtimes better, and each month decide whether I'm doing Lost *or* Accord depending on lead-in plot cookies. Requiem is the priority, since its the game I came back to Cam/MES for. I might keep up more with larping Lost b/c there are SHO MANY Accord games on IRC. I was actually too sick to attend my local games in December and still hit my XP cap for Accord, yikes.
I think at this point I've had more sinus infections than I've made Things for 100Things. So I refuse to feel guilty about that, I can't just stop one of those nasty things from happening to me. I think? So that sadly did not work out. Not sure whether I should try it again, maybe make it 100-Things-By-My-Birthday. But I'm just not feeling the jewelry or the polymer clay these days, my brain is just too fried. Sewing is OK but for me is less creatively demanding. Maybe I'll just focus on finishing that sewing to-do list by my b'day.
Also trying to figure out resolution-type things, but the synergy of New Years causes those to fail across the board, so meh. Considered another cleanse/diet thingie, but then decided I'd rather use this year to make my life *easier* instead of more difficult. I've re-started my Superbetter game, and put the button on my various browser toolbars so I don't forget about it this time. It wouldn't hurt to try and get back to live-journaling every week too.
Strattera doesn't seem to be hurting me, but I can never get a level playing field to try it out on given all the extra illnesses last season. My body seems to have adjusted to it for the most part, I guess we'll just have to see what happens. *shrugs*
Would also like to focus more on fixing the sleep problems, so Ima talk to my psych about anti-anxiety meds that might help with my AWI (cuz I don't want to take clonopin every nite), and ask my new internist if he can point me towards someone who can custom mold me some earplugs (the spongey ones hurt for some reason :-/). It all comes down to being tired and fatigued all the time, whereas other symptoms come and go, so I'm putting my $$ on the sleep disorder.
One ongoing behavioral problem in the way is how much time I spend spacing out on the internet in the evenings after work. I wonder if I should push myself to do something either more active (sewing, cleaning, etc), or *completely* inactive (tv + couch). Internet browsing is this strange in-between space that is just active enough to keep me clicking the mouse button, but I don't really accomplish anything. Its not even entertaining enough to remember what I was looking at the next day. It causes me to lose track of time, and then I miss out on more sleep.
This week has been weird energy wise. I got to bed a bit late Monday night, so was a zombie Tuesday morning and actually starting to fall asleep on the circ desk before lunch. But then lunch perked me back up. Last night I got to bed on time, but the possibly abusive next-door neighbors started a screaming match a half hour later, and despite taking clonopin to get to sleep after that it still took a long time. So once more: almost fell asleep on morning circ desk shift, then lunch made me entirely functional again. Will do my darndest to get to bed early tonight and hope the neighbors don't have another screaming match.
Tho I'll also be calling child services, now that I know how, and see if anything can be done. Cuz I'm not sure why else a nine year old girl would be screaming like that between 11pm and 1am :-( The co-op hasn't done anything since I last complained, and security hasn't been helpful at all. The office did suggest I log all the disturbances, but that's about all I have, and its my word vs theirs. Not sure if I should try the co-op again, but it *is* a frequent noise disturbance even if it turns out to not be an abusive family.
Financially... still kind of a mess, and sickness and sleep dep don't help me to be mindful enough to fix it. Large purchases, like fabric and BPAL, keep popping up out of nowhere to tempt me into being silly. Tho I'm a lot better at hacking down my BPAL wishlists than I used to be. But given the state of my sinuses I really shouldn't be ordering this stuff until I'm fixed.
On the other hand, if I should trigger another s.i., it does give my new doc the chance to see what happens (hopefully) to make me stay sick so long and so often. So Ima do my best to not break my sinuses before Arisia, no more cleaning or perfumes or nothin if I can swing it, and then afterwards see how far I can poke my system with pretty smells. Assuming I don't just come home with con plague. And by then I should have more sick and vacation time accrued again so I'll take less of a financial hit.
Also booked discounted train tix for the Boston MES games... on 2/28. Kinda far in advance, but it means it only costs $30 more round trip than the bus, and train is far superior (and less stressful) to bus, especially in the winter. And so far the DST says there's no reason game wouldn't be that weekend. If I'm less frazzled when I arrive, maybe I can finally hang around out-on-the-town with people the night before game. And there was enough in my "MES Travel" account to cover it, and then some. So yay for that. And yay for seeing some of my Boston friends at Arisia too :-)
So this week I feel gross, despite just having come off winter break, and I'm not planning any social stuff for the rest of the week or the weekend. I need to do the laundry, make the monthly grocery trip, finish an MES pc, and hem one dress for con, but otherwise Ima do as little as possible to save spoons for Arisia *next* weekend.
Still want to be more social in general, but it will have to wait until after con. The next con after that at best would be Dexcon, b/c monies. But I've been bad at getting myself to Dexcon, and I tend to be sickly in July, so if not then I can save that for more cons next year. Or skip Dexcon so I can use that $$ to refill my emergency savings instead (I have sucked at that plan so far, yeesh). And then definitely DCon, but I'm not sure if I can keep going to that one. It may be my last consecutive year, unless its remarkably better than the last two.
<3 Chrysilla