Corner of Bourbon & Division

I've been at work for an hour but today has lasted eighteen million years or so.

I got to bed shortly before 2:00, but since I had a 9:00 appointment at the bariatric clinic and I knew that sometimes traffic and parking can be dicey, I got up at 7:00 in order to leave at 7:45, with a view to arriving around 8:30. Oh boy, did THAT not turn out the way I planned. It was snowing, you see. "Snow, Phnee?" you may ask. "Surely in Canada you are all accustomed to snowfall and can adjust accordingly?" To which I'd answer: "You'd be surprised, and don't call me Shirley!"

For some reason, there were no snow ploughs to be seen anywhere, including the highways. I counted no fewer than five vehicular collisions on my way to my appointment, and traffic had slowed to a crawl even on the side streets near my house. The trip that usually takes me 30 minutes when traffic is clear took an hour and a half, and therefore I arrived in the parking lot already 10 minutes late for my appointment. Then the parking machine stubbornly refused any form of payment card that I offered, and since it also didn't accept cash, I gave it up as a bad job and went in hoping that I wouldn't get towed or ticketed (which, luckily, I didn't). Then the receptionist ignored me in favour of finishing up the world's longest phone call, in which the patient on the other end was asking questions that were very obviously not urgent, and since by then I was 20 minutes late (I had called ahead twice to advise them of the situation) I was pretty stressed out, and it took all my self-control to remain polite and not come off as aggressive/impolite/entitled/whatever in any way, because that's a good way to get yourself thrown out of a medical practice these days. But I knew the nurse practitioner was waiting, and she couldn't know that the reason I was extra late was just because the receptionist wouldn't put a phone call on hold for one minute.

The appointment itself went well. I will put a few more details behind a cut, so that anyone who doesn't want to read about weight, deliberate weight loss and medical interventions for said weight loss can skip that part. I will not be discussing specific numbers.

( Discussion of weight, weight-loss, and medical weight-loss procedures behind the cut! )

Okay, onto other stuff that happened with my day that's not weight-related!

First off, I finally got my compost worms! I sent a follow-up email yesterday, got a reply from the owner of the operation referring me to an employee, and the employee answered my email at, like midnight, which is wild to me. Go to bed, people, I don't expect service 24/7 for worms, IT'S FINE. Anyway, I called her after my appointment and arranged to drive out to what kind of felt like the middle of nowhere to pick up said worms. I took them home tucked inside my coat, because she said they'd gotten cold and it would be best to get them settled quickly. Since I had a 40 minute drive in bad weather ahead, I figured human body heat would be just the ticket, and I wasn't wrong. They were in a glass jar, in case you somehow imagined that I just had pocketfuls of worms or something. :P 

I got home without incident, caught KK up on all the happenings, got the worms situated in their new home, and promptly crashed out for a one-hour cat nap that was interrupted on multiple occasions by my beloved hounds baying loudly at the neighbours, the squirrels, the Amazon delivery person, and the lovely people who came to shovel our walkway. The dogs have Strict Opinions about anyone or anything coming too close to their house, you see, and those opinions are invariably loud and shrill. I love my dogs, they are a delight.

After that I had just enough time to shove my lunch into my bag and head to work. I left early just in case the road conditions were still terrible, but I was pleasantly surprised and arrived early. My coworker took advantage of my arrival to also leave early, meaning I'm working voluntary OT today for about 20 minutes, but whatever. What was more annoying was that he somehow managed to unplug the headset adapter while he was working. I'm one of the few people here who uses a headset, because between the back injury and the hearing loss, I find I can work much better with it. However, people keep accidentally or deliberately unplugging the adapters in new and creative ways, and, like today, I don't always notice right away. So of course my first call was for a possible IED (they're always false alarms but I have to treat each one as if it was real), and the headset wasn't working and my coworker had shut down the computer instead of restarting it, so I was on the back foot for at least 10 minutes until I got all the technical issues sorted out, which made me very grumpy indeed.

Since then things have calmed down, enough for me to type out this post, so I can't complain too hard. I remembered to bring my knitting tonight, and I'm hoping that I might actually be able to finish the Hubris Shawl, if not tonight then maybe tomorrow. Maybe. We shall see.

I think that's enough for now. See you on the flip side!

I completely forgot that I wanted to set up the vermicomposting bins today, even though the worms themselves haven't arrived. They were supposed to be ready between Wednesday and Friday of last week, but I haven't heard anything from the company I ordered them from. If I don't hear from them by tomorrow, I will reach out and see what's happening there. Luckily for me, KK remembered about the bins and reminded me of my intention. She actually did the bulk of the work, which was drilling holes in the Rubbermaid bins I bought (for air and drainage). She really enjoys putting things together and using power tools,  so I offered to have her do it, which she did with great glee. I then spent about ten minutes cutting up strips of newsprint paper to serve as bedding, and now the system is ready to go as soon as we get the worms. I'm very excited to get started on the vermicomposting, and I really hope the worms are available soon.

I'm not sure how I forgot about a project that I was so excited about. I am pretty sure I don't have a brain worm, but it's been getting so much harder to deal with all this stupid brain fog. I feel like I've been chasing the dragon of clear thinking and energy to do things for years now. I think I may have actually overdone it on that front, so I've decided to stop taking all the supplements I've been trying out and reintroducing them one by one after a week or so, to see if they're actually making a difference or not. I'm trying to be more scientific about things, in a weird way, because I'm not a scientist, obviously. I just want to see if I feel more tired or lethargic if I don't take them, or if after a week or two I start taking them again and notice an improvement.

In similar exciting news, I finally got myself organized enough to call the sleep clinic where my doctor referred me last July. I had been forgetting to contact my doctor's office to get their contact information for three weeks, and I finally remembered on Tuesday. They got back to me on Wednesday night, and I actually remembered to call during their opening hours on Thursday (I know!). I was initially told I should expect at least another six month wait, because the average wait time is about a year for new patients. I politely inquired if they had a cancellation list, and lo! the receptionist I was speaking to asked me if I was planning to go away over March break. When I replied that I was staying put, she offered me a spot on March 15th. That's still nearly two months away, but that's way better than the six-plus months I was initially told to expect. I know several people who've told me that getting a CPAP machine was a game changer for them, but I also know a couple of people for whom it made not a jot of difference, and I'm a little terrified of being in the latter category. I already seem to be in the 10-15% of people for whom ADHD stimulant medication doesn't work, and I am more than a little envious of all the people who said taking those meds was life-changing. I've tried four different medications since 2019, and I have yet to see any of the brain chemistry-altering effects I was promised. So, yeah. Part of me is hopeful that the sleep study will find something conclusive and that I'll finally get on top of all the crushing fatigue and brain fog, and another part of me is worried that either they won't find anything, or that they will find something but I'll be resistant to treatment.

Anyway, it's a ways off yet, so I'm going to try not to worry about it too hard until it's closer to the date. 

In the meantime, it's going to be a busy week. Tomorrow I'm finally getting the car rust-proofed (I tried making the appointment in the first weeks of December, and this is the earliest I could get in!), after which I have an appointment for Peggy at the vet to get her bum squished, as we euphemistically refer to an anal gland expression. On Tuesday I have a therapy appointment in the early afternoon, Wednesday I have an appointment at the bariatric clinic (I may get into that in a later post), on Thursday I have an appointment with a naturopath for the first time in my life (more on that later as well, I think), and Friday morning is the monthly meeting of Ministry & Counsel. I'm working the four to midnight shift all week, so I rather think that I'm going to be exhausted come the weekend. I plan to sleep in on Saturday morning and then I've planned a Zoom hangout with friends on Saturday afternoon, where we're going to shoot the shit and work on whatever projects we have going on that day. I don't remember the last time I had stuff on every single day of the week, and the very thought of it is tiring. Hopefully it won't be that bad.

Have a great week, everyone!