mousme | Entries tagged with mystery tired

I may have overdone it a little today, but in my defense it was (sort of) necessary. See, a couple of weeks ago I got a slightly nasty email from my community garden organiser, telling me I had to clear my stuff out of my old plot so they could till it. I was at the time dealing with my parents' medical emergency, and I knew that afterward I'd be working night shifts, so I told the organiser that I would be there on the morning of April 29th to deal with it, and to please not till my plot because I had a currant bush and a whole bunch of asparagus crowns that I planted there last year (which cost me a pretty penny, let me tell you!) that I wanted to rescue first.

Then of course I got Covid, and it was arguably at its peak on April 29th, so there was no way in hell I was going to be able to get to the community garden while I was running a fever and coughing my brains out and generally being horribly ill. Luckily for me, Dylan and Sarah were absolute heroes and rockstars and agreed to come help me today, a mere five days after I said I'd clear out the plot (my deadline was May 5th, so it's not as bad as it sounds). We first met up at the dog park and they brought their dogs, Frankie and Shadow, to play with Peggy and Pixie, and a good time was had by all.

Dylan and Sarah did most of the work in my plot, because I am about as useful as a wet paper towel these days, and Sarah kept telling me to sit down because I couldn't breathe. It was a humbling experience, not going to lie. We rescued the currant bush and the asparagus, cleared out the paving stones that were my abortive attempt at an herb spiral last year, all the cardboard I put down, a few bags of soil, and my 500 litre water barrel. The rest was all straw mulch and dirt, which we left in place.

We were also visited by a pair of mallards (a drake and a hen) who were not in the least put out by our presence, which was really sweet. They just swam by in a storm drain, doing duck things, totally unbothered.

I gave Dylan and Sarah a dozen quail eggs as a token thank you gesture, and offered to let them keep all the bags of soil, since I'm not going to be using it immediately anyway. I am going to have to figure out how to get soil delivered to the new property, since I definitely can't haul it in the Yaris and even KK's Nissan Rogue wouldn't be up to the task. It's a job for a pickup truck, to be sure. Maybe I can either rent a truck or arrange for delivery. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, I guess.

I also helped KK carry the air conditioning unit up from the basement. The weather is getting much warmer, and if we want a snowball's chance in hell of not dying of heat prostration while we're trying to pack, then the A/C needs to go in the window in the living room.

So between the dog park, the community garden, and hauling the A/C unit up the stairs, I may have overdone it slightly. All of these things were necessary, because A) the dogs were climbing the walls out of boredom and frustration, B) the community garden was threatening to till my beloved asparagus, and C) the A/C is going to be needed in the coming weeks. But hoo boy, am I very sore and very tired. Hopefully I will sleep reasonably well as a result tonight.

Speaking of sleeping well, I am on Day 20 of using the CPAP, and now that I know that it was Covid causing my throat to be super sore and dry, I can say with confidence that I have no trouble using it at all. I'm a little frustrated about the Covid because it's completely skewing any impressions I might have had about my energy levels and brain fog. I can't tell if I'm improving because I've been as sick as the proverbial dog. ARGH.

Anyway, time will tell. At least I'm not struggling with the CPAP. I switched to the largest size of mask/nose pillow, as the two smaller sizes were causing sores to develop on either side of my nose (super attractive), and that has been working well for me so far. It doesn't keep me from sleeping, and even though I wake up during the night it's not noticeably more than before, and it's mostly just to reposition the hose when I turn over and it does something weird. So, so far so good.

Okay. Time for bed. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: exhausted

I'm still at work for the next little bit, but I'm not sure I'll have time to write anything in depth in that time. The nature of my work is such that interruptions are all but inevitable.

I woke up with my lungs feeling a little sore, but some quick googling tells me that's not uncommon when first starting to use a CPAP, because your lungs are filling up a bit more than they're accustomed to at night, and your chest muscles work a little harder to exhale against the forced air. The discomfort didn't last very long, so I'm not too worried about it.

The quail laid a second egg for me this morning! They've been steadily laying one egg a day in the evenings, and I collected one last night, then found another egg this morning when I went to change out their food and water today. Tomorrow I shall be making myself unpopular with them because it will be time to change out their bedding. They've been doing well with the pine shavings I got them, but the bedding gets disgusting after a little while, so a full change is required. I am going to research the "deep litter" method when we move, since apparently that requires less regular cleaning out, and I hear it works well for poultry, especially in the winter.

I have D&D tonight after a long-ish hiatus, because we are all adults with lives and commitments, and scheduling is HARD. Since D&D is a basement activity for me (that's where the computer desk is), I will do my best to do some packing tonight too, since I'll be down there anyway. I ordered some pre-printed packing labels to help with identifying boxes, and I need to pick up some extra Sharpie pens and maybe figure out how to clearly identify what's in each box in a more efficient way than simply scribbling on the side in Sharpie. :P (Suggestions welcome, btw!)

I have reached out to two moving companies already for quotes, and am thinking I might try for one or two more. I want a quote for how much it would cost if we do all our own packing and for if I pay for someone else to do all the packing. I suspect the latter is going to be way too expensive, but it's worth asking, at least. I assume they'll want to do a walkthrough of the house to get an idea of just how much stuff there is (so much stuff), so I'm going to need to get the house tidied and semi-organized before they arrive. At least that should light a fire under me to get the ball rolling.

My goal this weekend is to get the entire basement packed up minus my computer desk, which I'm still going to need for the next few weeks. I'm also going to do a serious purge of my closet. There's a bunch of clothes I just don't wear anymore anyway, so I may as well donate the ones that are in good shape and toss the ones that can't be donated. Then I need to get rid of a bunch of the stuff that I don't need or use anymore, and pack up whatever I won't need for the next six weeks or so (books, old CDs, etc.). I'm going to ask KK to put one of our portable A/C units up for sale, since we're not using them anymore and the new place has central A/C. That will free up some space and put a tiny bit of money toward the move.

I think it's all doable, or at least I hope so.

Anyway, it will soon be time to go home, so I will catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: busy

Yes, I am absolutely writing this post during my work hours. Shh. More seriously, I don't think my boss cares particularly what I do as long as my work gets completed promptly and accurately, so I'm safe on that front. Today so far hasn't been a super busy day. Currently the only important thing going on is some ongoing tests for a distress alert on a specific vessel, and while that requires me to be responsive, it's not particularly labour intensive. I am most of the way through my shift, and rather looking forward to going home.

I'm writing my update early today in the hopes of shaving off the time spent on it in the evening. Yesterday, after I finished writing I went upstairs and got sort of waylaid by KK who had approximately seven thousand things she wanted to discuss, and the next thing I knew it was 11:30pm and all my good intentions about going to bed early had gone out the window. KK is very much a night owl, but I am not, and I cannot function on that little sleep. To be fair, neither can she, but she has fewer negative consequences for it than I do. For instance, her workplace is pretty tolerant of her taking a mid-work nap, whereas where I work we don't even get a lunch break. If she oversleeps then she can choose to work from home that day and make it up another day, but I have people waiting for me to take over their operations desk, so I can't afford to oversleep or be late.

So I am trying to lessen the number of things to do right before bed, and updating my little daily blog is one of them. I still want to keep writing a little bit every day, so really it will just depend on what else I have going on that day: what shift I'm working, what other errands and chores I have planned, etc. I have technically broken my streak once, on the Saturday I got the quail, and that's only because I got home so late and then had to set up the quail in their new home, that by the time I got around to updating it was already technically Sunday. Oops. I decided that didn't count, because in shift-work logic, it's not the next day until you've gone to sleep and woken up again. :P

The second night with the CPAP went a little less well. I was perhaps a bit less tired than the day before, due to working from home, and so I was more aware of the mask being on my face during the night. The head strap was also a little loose and kept shifting up on my head, so I awoke a couple of times to pull it back down. Overall, though, the night went by fine, and tonight I will tighten the strap and hope it dos the trick. The CPAP noted that I had something like 1.2 events per hour, which is even better than yesterday, so I'm counting it a win.

I have lost the habit of meal planning for the week, and really need to start that up again. I don't have a plan for tonight yet. I am going to skip making ground chicken to spare me and KK the same thing for a million days in a row, but otherwise I haven't thought it through at all. I'm sure I'll be able to come up with something on the fly, but I saved myself a lot of time and hassle and mental bandwidth by planning ahead. I also have a lot of stuff in our freezers I'd like to get through before we move, so that I don't have to worry about moving that much frozen food over a long distance on the same day. I will have to especially focus on the large chest freezer and see what I can get rid of in there (there are a few things KK brought with her that I've never touched that I'm pretty sure she's forgotten about entirely) and what I can cook up in the next few weeks so that I can then empty it completely and then defrost it in anticipation of the move. We won't be able to get through everything that's in all the chest freezers, because I purposefully built up our food reserves to last for three to four months, but I think I can get it to a more manageable level for the move.

I am determined to find a ladder and get over myself about packing for the move this weekend. I've been meaning to pack the living room area for a week now, and keep not doing it, so I'm changing tactics. This weekend I shall pack up the basement, or as much of it as I can humanly manage. The good news is that a lot of it is already in Rubbermaid bins, so realistically all I have to do is label them and stack them neatly. I plan on dismantling most of the shelving, and getting as much of it squared away in order to make room for more packing boxes. The only thing I won't be able to pack away right off is my computer and computer desk, and the latter won't fit in the new house. I don't know yet if I'm going to try to hang onto it and maybe set it up in the little workshop area, or if I should sell it or give it away. It's pretty new (I got it in 2021) and it's a really good computer desk. However, it won't fit in my new bedroom (again, 9 feet by 9 feet is not the most spacious of areas), even if I install a Murphy bed. I may be absolutely crazy, but I could try installing an adult-appropriate loft bed (i.e. one that won't break my back and has some sort of shelf system that would serve as a night stand), but then that would definitely preclude having my parents overnight. With even a double Murphy bed I can give them my room for the night and sleep on a cot in the living room, but most loft beds are twin sized, and my 87 year old mother with a a bad hip certainly can't manage a ladder or steps even if did find one that was a size or two larger.

Argh. Logistics.

In a few years I would like to build a "Bunkie" on the property, which is basically a glorified shed, and I'd probably turn that either into guest quarters or into a home office for myself, but that's a pretty big purchase and certainly not one I can afford right now. So the problem of the desk remains. I may be able to wrap it securely in plastic and store it in the garage for that mythical future date when I can use it again, which is a decision unto itself. Am I just hoarding, or am I hanging onto an item with genuine future use? WHO KNOWS. The same desk costs about twice as much now as when I bought it thanks to inflation, and now that tariffs and trade wars are happening, that new price may double or even triple by the time I would buy another desk, and it might not be as good. Am I just dealing with a scarcity mindset or being fiscally prudent? GOOD QUESTION.

So, yes, welcome to Thinking About Packing With Phnee. It's like packing, only a lot less productive and lot more anxiety-ridden. :P

Okay, time to get back to work. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: restless

I promise not every post will be about my CPAP adventures from here on out. No, really. But for now you will have to bear with me. :)

The first night with the CPAP was a success, I think. I didn't find the mask difficult to wear at all, despite all the dire warnings I had received ahead of time that lots of people struggle with wearing it and that it's the top reason for noncompliance with CPAP therapy. I think the fact that it's a nose pillow and not a full face mask probably really helped with that, because I barely felt it while I was sleeping. I actually woke up briefly around 2am worried that the machine had turned off because I couldn't feel the air blowing, but it turns out I only feel the air if my head is tilted back, so if it tilts forward at all (which it does during the night as I move around), then I don't feel it at all.

The machine also provides me with a helpful readout/summary of my sleep before I turn it off. It told me I used it for eight hours, and that I had 2.5 events per hour. I'm not entirely sure if that means I only had 2.5 events per hour, or if it only detected 2.5 events, or if I had 2.5 events per hour that the machine felt it need to push extra air or something. Since I was averaging 65 events per hour during my sleep study, whatever this is, I assume it's good no matter what. I did some googling, and the internet agrees that I should be aiming for a readout of under 5 events per hour, and this is definitely under 5, so I'm considering it a win.

My Fitbit readings were also different today. It's actually super bad at detecting my oxygen variation, so I don't pay attention to that, but today it did tell me that I spent a whole extra hour in REM sleep, which jives with the aforementioned reading I've been doing. Studies have shown 50% increases and more in REM sleep the first night of CPAP usage compared to the baseline. It's all pretty cool, really, if you're a nerd who's interested in brainwaves. Interestingly, for the first time in a long time I didn't remember my dreams at all upon waking, and I'm not sure what that means.

Today was a work from home day, and for once I wasn't tapped to do the morning briefing (this is a task for the people who work from home, since we don't have the same operational requirements as the people who are in the office), and I also wasn't given a project to work on, so I kind of twiddled my thumbs for most of the day. I can't complain too hard, because it's a pretty chill way to spend the day, but I'm expected to be at my computer and available to work at a moment's notice, so I can't really go anywhere or get into anything else too much in depth in case I get pulled away. I ended up doing a bit of busywork and watching The Librarians, which I've been re-watching for the past week or so. I actually got to the series finale today, which made me a tiny bit wistful. I had watched the three precursor movies as well, and it's just such a delightful premise and show: the world being saved by ultra-knowledgeable librarians. The series is fun and filled with whimsy, and it's from a time that doesn't seem all that long ago but in fact started over a decade ago (2014) and reflects the optimism of the Obama years, when it felt like knowledgeable geeks might be the ones to show us a better future: math and arts and science and magic, all rolled into one fantastical package.

I made chicken quesadillas for dinner, and it turns out KK has a lot of opinions about quesadillas. Mostly her opinion is that everything in the quesadilla is pointless except for the tortilla and the cheese, and any extra meat, vegetables, or spices are just contaminating the cheese. XD I was making them because I accidentally thawed too much ground chicken and I need to use it up before it goes bad, so she had to put up with some extra contamination of her favourite dairy product, which she did. I was very kind and didn't put in any extra vegetables for her, at least. ;)

Work from home days always feel like I'm in Limbo. I'm often not working on anything in particular, but I don't want to work on my personal stuff on company time, so to speak. I suppose I should try to get past those scruples if I want to get packing done on work from home days, but I think that might actually be a moot point since after this week I only have two day shifts left and the rest will all be evening, nights, and weekends, and none of those are work from home shifts.

All righty. Time for bed. I'm trying to get back into better bedtime habits (I fell off the wagon a couple of weeks ago after several good months of getting to bed between 8:30 and 9:30pm and being asleep between 10:00 and 10:30pm), especially now that I have the CPAP. I want to give it as much opportunity as possible to do its thing of giving my brain oxygen when it needs it.

Current Mood: calm

I have a CPAP! I spent today at work counting down the minutes until my appointment, I have to admit. The appointment itself went quite well. I spoke with the provider who was very nice and a CPAP user herself. I paid a ridiculous sum of money to rent a CPAP for the month, most of which is non-refundable and also not covered by insurance. *sigh* But at least I had the money for now, and now I get to try out the machine for the next three to four weeks.

I will say, the first fitting felt really weird. I have been given a nose-only mask, which the provider called a nose pillow (which honestly is a hilarious name for it). It's pretty comfy, and I don't really notice it by itself, but once the machine is turned on the forced air feels very odd. I don't think it'll be too much of a problem, however.

More annoyingly, a lot of what makes the CPAP comfortable, like the custom mask (I am a size small), the humidifier, and the heated hose for the humidifier, are not covered by the ADP (Assistive Devices Program) nor by my employer-provider health insurance, because they're considered "luxuries." So I am going to be out of pocket by a pretty penny on this one. When the Public Service Health Plan was with SunLife it was all covered, but ever since we switched over to Canada Life the coverage has been drastically reduced. Yay.

Still, I am excited to give it a try tonight! I am supposed to wear it during the day to try to get used to it for the next few days, too, so I'll do that tomorrow when I'm working from home and don't have to be on camera. I think if I decided to give a briefing while wearing the mask I might be subject to a wellness review by my manager afterward. ;) Also, it's actually weirdly difficult to talk while air is being forced into your nose, because you're no longer controlling the air flow from your lungs through your mouth and over your vocal cords, so I found myself having to breathe out a bit before I could speak reliably.

Thus the saga of the CPAP continues. All of my reading and research has indicated that I shouldn't expect to feel any significant changes before a few weeks, so I'm trying very hard not to get my hopes up. I am sort of hoping that there will be some sort of placebo effect. I could use a little win, even if it's purely psychosomatic and not real.

I am heading to bed in a few minutes. I need to check on the quail one last time (I already got another egg today!) and make sure they have enough water for the night. I changed out their water in a bit of a hurry this morning, and by the time I got home from work they were completely dry again. I hope it wasn't for too long, so I need to stay on top of that better from now on.

Okay, that's it for now. Boring CPAP update is done. Catch you on the flip side, folks!

Current Mood: optimistic

The day started out quite promising. I was up in time to get out the door for my appointment. KK, however, slept through her alarm and therefore didn't go to the office today, and worked from home instead. Luckily her job doesn't require her to be at the office to perform her duties, and she has come to a tentative truce with her manager about letting her work from home a bit more in order to manage her pain levels better. She had intended to go in today, but the weather change combined with the natural end of the effects of the injections she got in January (it's a special lubricant thing, I think, but I don't know what it's called) have been wreaking havoc on her lately.

The doctor ran 15 minutes late for our appointment, but the appointment itself lasted for maybe five minutes, tops. The doctor confirmed what I already knew, and performed a fairly perfunctory exam of my lungs and throat. Apparently my throat and neck structure are "built for apnea," with an extremely narrow pharyngeal opening, and it seems that still having my tonsils contributes to that, or so I gathered. He wrote me a prescription for a CPAP, and cheerfully told me that about 50% of his patients reported feeling better after CPAP therapy. Not gonna lie, I found that a little disheartening. A 50/50 chance of still feeling like absolute garbage. Boo. I asked if there was perhaps a commonality between the people who did feel better after using a CPAP, and it turns out it works best for people who experience the apnea during REM sleep, which is exactly when I experience it! So I am a little encouraged by that.

Anyway, I called the local CPAP supply place nearest to my house as soon as I left the appointment, and then realized that they were still closed. I called a few more times while I was driving home (using Bluetooth, have no fear), and got no answer. Since it's a literal five minute drive from my home I decided to just go there directly and ask in person, and it worked! I spoke to a nice lady at the counter, and she said they could see me next Tuesday at 1pm. That's not ideal, since I'm working night shifts next week, and an appointment right in the middle of when I would normally be sleeping sounds kind of awful, but I was willing to take it if it was the earliest available one. I pulled out my now tried-and-true "do you have a cancellation list?" card, and she promised she'd let me know, but that their provider was actually only in three days a week since they were "in-between." I had to ask in-between what, since surely there can't be an apnea season, or whatever, and it turns out she meant they're in-between providers, so I guess they just have one person covering multiple locations.

I thanked her, left, got in my car, and hadn't even pulled out of the parking lot when she called me to let me know she could fit me in tomorrow, with an array of time slots, no less! I'm guessing that the provider added a day to the calendar right as I was leaving. So I am getting in tomorrow afternoon at 3pm, which was the latest I could get. I'm working 7 to 3 tomorrow, so I wanted to lose as little work time as possible, given that I had to take nearly two hours off today as well. But the good news is that as of tomorrow afternoon I will likely be coming home with a CPAP to trial for the next three to four weeks! I am VERY excited to get this going. One more (more) sleep!

I was scheduled to work from home the rest of the day, and spent most of that time fighting with Outlook, which has decided it doesn't want to send emails anymore. They just hang out in the inbox and refuse to go anywhere, which is extremely inconvenient. Grr.

Then, right when I was about to get dinner started, all hell broke loose in the house. For some reason, Juno decided to be Very Brave and came downstairs while the Brittanies were loose. The dogs immediately lost their collective shit and took off after her. There was barking and shrieking and growling and hissing, and a million things got knocked around as they proceeded to trash the fuck out of my house. By the time I caught up with them (less than a minute) Pixie had Juno in her mouth and was using her as a chew toy. She let go as I arrived, and she and Peggy took up sentry positions on the stairs, so that they would have easy access to Juno if I tried to carry her up the stairs. Poor Juno was soaked in her own urine, and so all of that got transferred onto me as I picked her up and sent her to the basement for temporary safety. Then a a few minutes later Pixie busted through the baby gate to the basement, and there was another round of me chasing her around. Luckily Juno was well hidden, so at least the only thing to do was chase her back up the stairs.

So then I took a very long, very hot shower. To quote a D&D character of a friend I play with: "Never clean! NEVER CLEAN!" And THEN I made dinner. While I was brushing the dogs' teeth, I noticed that Pixie absolutely reeked of cat pee, so I took her upstairs and gave her a bath, much to her consternation. KK had already mentioned she smelled and had tried to scrub her down with some dog wipes, but they were unequal to the task. Pixie does NOT enjoy the non-consensual wetnesses, specifically she hates being in the rain and also being rinsed, so there was a lot of screaming and carrying on. My poor neighbours must think I routinely torture my dogs, based solely on the sounds that Pixie produces. Jeez.

Anyway, Juno is none the worse for wear after I gave her a more thorough going-over a few minutes ago to check for injuries. Pixie is now clean, and I got absolutely soaked, but I am calling it a win. I have changed the quails' food and water, and they gave me another egg! Luckily I always keep the laundry room door closed, so they were undisturbed by the earlier cat-and-dog antics. I did notice one of the males pecking at the other birds, and I don't like that at all. If he continues to be aggressive he may have to be separated from the others for their well-being. Time will tell, I guess. I will definitely hold off on drastic measures like culling until I get them into larger quarters when we move, since this might just be due to the quail being in slightly too close quarters to each other. But yes, if he keeps it up longer than that he may well end up being dinner one night.

All right. Time for bed. I need to be up at stupid o'clock tomorrow to be at work on time. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: indescribable

Tomorrow morning I have my appointment with the sleep specialist. I cannot emphasize enough how excited I am about this! The appointment is at 8:15 and they want me to arrive half an hour early, so I'll be leaving around 7:00 just to be on the safe side. I don't know what the traffic is like going there at that hour, and I don't want to be late. I hope that I'll be leaving with a prescription for a CPAP in hand, and it's my intention to get an appointment with a local provider I found ASAP. In fact, the plan is to call the minute I get out of the appointment and see how quickly I can get an appointment.

Have I mentioned that I am TIRED of constantly feeling like warmed-over crap?

Anyway, I am very excited about the appointment tomorrow. I hope it goes well. If it doesn't, I may very well cry. I wonder if I can get a same-day appointment. That would be ideal, but I'm not going to get my hopes up too high for that. I do hope I can get an appointment this week, though, and that they can accommodate a later time since I don't have a ton of time available to take off work. We shall see, I guess.

In unrelated news, the quail are still doing well. I changed out their food and water this morning, and once I'd closed the door behind me I heard some very loud and indignant tweedling. I initially shrugged it off, but the tweedling repeated as I went up the stairs, so I went back to investigate. I checked the quail's bin, and as I was puzzling over it I heard more loud and indignant tweedling and realized that one of the boys had managed to get out of the enclosure and was standing under the sink, making his displeasure known. I think he was mostly mad about being separated from his friends and girlfriends, or maybe he thought they'd make a break for freedom with him. Either way, I scooped him up and put him back, and he immediately settled down.

I now have four eggs! It's very exciting. I don't know which of the females is being such a good layer, but I am certainly not complaining. It might not be just one, either, but I have a completely unsubstantiated feeling that all the eggs are from one bird. I hope the other two get in on the action soon. Three small eggs a day is the equivalent of one normal chicken egg per day, which means a total of about five to seven eggs a week, if all the ladies lay regularly. I'm kind of excited for my first quail egg dish. I don't know if I should make a really simple omelette or if I should look up a recipe specific for quail eggs. I am tempted to at least do some research on that front. Quail eggs are considered a delicacy by many, after all.

I had my weekly Sunday Skype call with my parents. I tried to get them onto Zoom since Skype is disappearing in three weeks, but my mother especially is attached to Skype, so we're sticking with that to the bitter end, apparently. My mother is anxious about my move, and as usual her anxiety is translating into her getting super passive-aggressive and slightly nasty with me. This is not a trait I particularly enjoy, because among other things she tends to talk to me as though I am a developmentally disabled child who's playing with missile launchers. It particularly annoys me when she condescendingly explains to me that I will need to make a budget, and then tries to explain home maintenance to me while not knowing the difference between a septic holding tank, a propane tank, and a sump pump (literally the conversation we had today, no exaggeration).

Anyway, I have been dealing with my mother for 46 years now, and because I am an adult with good communication tools now and enough empathy to understand that it's my mother's rampant undiagnosed anxiety disorder causing her to act this way, I gently called her out on her behaviour and eventually redirected her energy to something more positive. She initially denied that she was being nasty, but eventually kind of grudgingly semi-admitted to it. The rest of the Skype call went much more smoothly after that, and she was in a much better mood by the time we ended the call.

I made a pseudo-roast chicken in the Instant Pot for dinner, and now I have leftovers for the week to go with my borscht, as well as rice, and a package of spicy lentil something-or-other that my friend Sarah gave to me last weekend. She's allergic to dairy and accidentally bough the packet even though it contains both butter and cream. Since it's spicy and has tomatoes KK won't touch it with a ten-foot pole, so that means I get to have it for lunch, which sounds delightful. KK tolerates lentils but only up to a point, so adding spice and tomatoes is literally a recipe for disaster.

I definitely need to step up my packing game this week. I've been feeling overwhelmed about things, so I think I will start in my bedroom instead of the living room, because it will (I HOPE, DEAR GOD) be easier to make decisions about de-cluttering and the like. I plan on significantly downsizing my wardrobe, which I've been meaning to do for a while anyway. I have a dresser and a night table that I need to empty, as well as my small library of reference books. I also need to get rid of my terrible broken air conditioning unit anyway, which should free up a fair bit of space for staging my boxes. I should probably consider paring down some of my linens, too. I need to let go of some of my prepper tendencies here and embrace some minimalism where it comes to my immediate possessions.

Okay. Time to get to bed so I won't accidentally oversleep tomorrow and miss my sleep appointment. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: optimistic

I think I am paying for all of the "lack" of sleep from the past few weeks. Today was lost to feeling like absolute garbage most of the day. I have two more sleeps until I go to the sleep specialist on Monday morning and probably get told that I need a CPAP, and then the plan is to get ahold of a local CPAP provider as soon as humanly possible, because I am so tired of feeling tired. Right now would be the perfect time for a bit of extra energy, too, as I have to pack up the house.

I have been trying to get through the industrial quantity of borscht I made last Thursday, and it's officially down to a dull roar. I will have some left over for work next week, too, which is nice, as long as I don't spill it on my clothes. I have yet to find a reliable way to get beet juice stains out of clothing.

I have Quaker Meeting tomorrow, and after that I may work on de-cluttering my bedroom in anticipation of packing things. I am slowly trying to convince myself that I should part with my dining room set, which I've had for 16 years now and was my first "grown-up" purchase when I joined the RCMP. I love it so much, but there is nowhere to put it in the new house. There's no dining room to speak of, and the kitchen has a huge built-in island/table thing. I kind of want to just wrap all of it securely in plastic and store it in one of the outbuildings on the off chance that one day we'll have enough money to put an extension on the house, but that's probably super unrealistic.

Actually, since the garage will eventually have to be torn down, I am mentally toying with the idea of creating a secondary residence, like an in-law suite, with whatever building we end up putting there. I was thinking perhaps a quonset hut would be useful since they're not super expensive and can be adapted to any number of uses. I want to put in essentially a fully functioning guest house, with bedroom(s), bathroom, kitchenette, etc. But that's a huge and expensive project that is for a future me who hasn't just spent all her money buying a house. ;)

Man, I am doing a terrible job of convincing myself I don't need a dining room set. :P

I have so many plans, and so little free money with which to implement them. I do love building castles in Spain, though, it's one of my favourite hobbies, because it's completely free. Eventually I'd love to build a fully functional outdoor kitchen or maybe just a summer kitchen, one in which I can do large-scale processing of fruit and vegetables and meat. Having either a summer kitchen or an outdoor kitchen would make things a bit easier, because it's extremely hot work and it turns the house into an absolute oven, even with air conditioning.

Of course, I have some immediate expenses I have to figure out as well right after the move. We need fencing for the dogs, and the house needs gutters in order to not, oh, rot from the bottom up over time. I can afford one of those two things right away, but very likely not both, unless I can manage to get one done remarkably cheaply. *sigh* Being an adult is difficult.

Okay, once again, it is time for bed. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: calm

I cannot keep my eyes open. Today was the big push in with the professional organizer, in which we moved around all the furniture to make space in the kitchen, and it turned out that my idea was a good one. There is a lot more space in there now, even though we're not finished and won't be until tomorrow afternoon. My body is protesting HARD and reminding me that sure, round might be a shape, but it's not necessarily the most advantageous shape for doing consistent physical labour. I was up and down the stairs a lot today and on my knees a fair bit scrubbing the baseboards after moving the furniture around. It's honestly amazing how much grime builds up over time behind furniture. Right now almost every part of me is either sore or throbbing or both.

In house hunting news, it's a busy time of year for real estate, so there's a lot of scrambling to find a house inspector (my usual guy, Mike, is unfortunately not available) and to get my mortgage approved. I need extra paperwork for arcane real estate reasons, mostly to prove that I'm not a criminal mastermind shoddily laundering money through this random real estate purchase or something. It's all extremely bureaucratic and annoying, and extra stressful because I only have until Tuesday to get it all together.

If the house does become a reality, the next 60 days are going to be incredibly busy. I will have to find movers and pack up the house. I will leave KK to pack up her room and her office stuff, but I think packing up the rest of the house will mostly default to me because I am the more able-bodied of the two of us. Like, last night KK asked me to bring up a sofa cover from the basement, so I did, thinking she was going to replace the old one, but no, tonight she asked me why I hadn't done it. (The answer is because I didn't have time between cooking dinner last night, driving her to work this morning, working with the professional organizer until 1pm, dealing with mortgage things afterward, and finally going to pick her up at work before starting dinner again.) She seemed super puzzled that I somehow hadn't had time to do it, even though she napped on the sofa the entire time I was preparing dinner. Anyway, it got done and we're none the worse for it, but I will admit I was a bit snippy about it. Now, it's theoretically not KK's problem that I have decided to reorganize the kitchen and have therefore been extra busy and tired, but also she's never expected me to change the sofa cover for her when she's capable of doing it herself.

I have nodded off three times writing even this. I will come back tomorrow with a hopefully longer update. Good night, friends!

Current Mood: sore

I am very ready for this stretch of night shifts to be over. Luckily (I think?) tonight has actually been on the busier side of things, which means the time has gone by pretty quickly so far. I’m not even halfway through my shift yet, alas, but the time is creeping up toward midnight, and at 1am I will officially be at the halfway mark of this last twelve-hour shift. I suppose it’s kind of ungrateful of me to be practically counting the minutes until the end of my shift, since this is what pays my bills, but I am nonetheless still rather resentful that capitalism insists on taking me away from all the fun hobbies I want to engage in instead.

Of course, it’s not like I’m engaging in fun hobbies in the meantime. For the moment I am choosing to blame the sleep apnea. I used to have hobbies and go out and do things. These days, not so much. Now I’ve never been a massive social butterfly, and now with Covid still running rampant I have begun embracing my inner hermit even more than I ever did in the past. Still, not that long ago I had activities that I enjoyed doing, like cycling and swimming and of course all the crafting. These days it takes all my energy to go to work, cook food to keep me and KK from starving, and do a minimal amount of housekeeping.

For now, I am choosing to blame the sleep apnea. I have been trying not to hyper-fixate on it and failing miserably. I suppose I should embrace the hyper-fixation and just go with it. I’ve always had the tendency to go down research rabbit holes about whatever is going wrong with my health at any given time, and long-time readers of my (admittedly boring) blog will recognize this pattern. So, I’ve been doing a bunch of reading about sleep apnea, and the more I read, the more a bunch of my symptoms make sense, including my inability to focus for more than, like, five minutes at a time, my inability to learn anything new except with extreme difficulty, and the constant feelings of exhaustion and lethargy. I also read that sleep apnea can contribute to or mimic symptoms of depression. Now, while I haven’t been depressed per se, I have noticed that I’ve been having trouble mustering the same level of enthusiasm for things I usually enjoy. Hell, even trying to pick a movie or a TV show to watch to keep myself busy on night shifts has been a bit of a struggle because nothing quite appeals to me. I miss just outright enjoying things, you know? There is a reason I have a tag that’s called “Phnee has no chill.” I like enjoying things with unabashed glee, and these days everything just feels kind of muted or dampened. So, my hope is that treating the sleep apnea will get me back to feeling more like my old self. If it doesn’t, I honestly don’t know what my next steps are. More curcumin supplements, I suppose.

I do have another book that I’m hoping to finish tonight after reading the Care Manifesto, called Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement by Angela Davis. Davis is a towering figure in the world of political activism and philosophy, and while I am familiar with her oeuvre overall, I have never actually read any of her books, so this is my attempt to rectify that oversight. Of course, it will largely be dependent on whether I can muster the concentration and focus needed to read through the book. I am extremely grateful for the existence of audiobooks, but unfortunately a lot of the books I wanted to read this year aren’t available in audiobook form, which is very sad. It’s been phenomenal to be able to enjoy stories again, even in a different format than how I used to read them.

Okay. Time to get back to work. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: optimistic

I am nearly done. Creeping up on halfway through tonight’s night shift (and by the time I finish this post it may be past that time, depending on how often I get interrupted for work).

I had a semi-productive day. KK asked me Friday night to help her move furniture when I got home so that we could launch the Roomba in the living room. Now, moving furniture after a night shift is not my first choice, but if KK is in the mood for cleaning, I am the last person to say no. So, when I got home, I cleared out the entire living room (except for the ottoman, because it’s big enough that it would block off too much of the downstairs before KK could come down with the dogs) and gave the floor a preliminary sweep. The Roomba is great, but it cannot compete with the dust capybaras in our house (they are too big to qualify as dust bunnies) since we hadn’t let it do its thing in a couple of weeks. I’m thinking of naming it Pete (the king of the rumba beat!), but I’m not fully sold on that name yet.

I also invested in a body pillow in the hopes that it will help with the eventual CPAP (I’m a side sleeper and I am a little concerned about the mask not fitting right) and also with the lower back pain that insists on coming and going. If I want to get my community garden plot set up right and not wreck my back the way I did last year, I’m going to have to be extra careful about managing it. I should look up my old physio exercises and start doing those again (blech), and maybe I’ll even set up some appointments to get a jump on this. Last year I hurt my back so badly that I was out of commission for weeks, and the entire garden plot went to hell in a handbasket. This year I would like it to be different. Anyway, the body pillow is less amazing than I was hoping for, but it might just need some extra getting used to.

In other news, my real estate agent has sent us a listing that checks off some of our boxes. It doesn’t have much land, and the neighbours are very close, but the house itself looks like it could fit us, it has some nice looking out buildings and is at a pretty reasonable distance from Ottawa. It would require some downsizing, for sure, but I think it could be workable. I’ll know for sure once we’ve had a chance to see it, which will be on Monday after KK is done with work. Originally, we were going to go tomorrow, but there’s an actual ice storm predicted for tomorrow, so the real estate agent rescheduled us for Monday.

I’m a little concerned about the ice storm, actually. There have been multiple severe weather alerts about it. For one, I am not thrilled at the idea of having to drive to and from work in that kind of weather. For another, I don’t currently have gas for the generator in the garage. I had gas stored but the ADHD struck and I kind of forgot about it, so now it’s too old to use safely. It would just gunk up the mechanism. So, if the power does go out I’ll need to buy a new container from Canadian Tire and fill it up that way, and I’m a little concerned that most of the people around here will be thinking along the same lines. For all my attempts at preparedness, I am apparently kind of unprepared for this current storm.

*sigh*

I need to get back into the swing of things, preparedness-wise. I have to fill the water containers in the basement and acquire more containers. My original plan was to have at least two weeks’ worth of emergency supplies: food, water, and basic energy. In terms of water storage, the rule of thumb is to have four litres of water per person per day, and then of course you have to take into account the pets. I had to do some math because the amount of water per day per pets is done in ounces per pound of body weight and came up with a total of three litres of water for all of the mammals in the house. The frogs also need distilled water, but we actually have a fair bit of that already stored up for them, and they go through less than a litre a week, so I’m not too worried about their water needs. So basically, we need a minimum of 11 litres of water per day, which is a little over half of each container that I’ve bought. I currently have four containers, so that would mean we’d have enough potable water for seven days, eight if we ration a little bit. In order to have at least two weeks’ worth of potable water I need three to four more containers, which is totally doable, albeit on the expensive side. Ideally, I would have enough water to last even longer than that, but two weeks’ worth seems like a good start.

The other thing I’ve been slacking on is figuring out shelf-stable emergency food supplies. The thing about stocking up on food is that you have to make sure that you will actually be able to eat whatever you’re stocking up on. As an example, I bought some canned chicken a while back, and it turns out the texture is super disgusting. This is what makes me laugh about the supposedly “hardcore” preppers: here they are buying 20 kilos of dried beans or nuts with no thought as to whether they or their family even LIKE beans or know how to cook them in a way that won’t make them want to slit their wrists after a week or two of eating the same thing over and over. Like, sure, you can stuff your bomb shelter full of canned beans and MREs, but then that’s all you’re going to be eating forever. Often enough these people also don’t know that they should be rotating through their food supply.

There’s also the question of how to cook it if you have no electricity. Back when I had a gas stove (God, I miss living in my old house, even if the landlady was crazy) this wasn’t an issue, but my current stove is electric. I did acquire a thermos shuttle chef a couple of years ago, so I should definitely practice making food in it so that I’m not caught off-guard when the power goes off. It’s actually pretty clever as a concept: you put food in it, bring it to a boil over a heat source, then place it in a larger “sleeve” for several hours, and it cooks the food over that time without using extra energy. It’s mostly good for things like stews, especially ones that incorporate a starch, like rice or noodles. KK isn’t a hue fan of stews due to the varying texture of the contents, but she can tolerate them reasonably well, and I know that in an emergency when we have no electricity, she’d be okay with that as a form of nourishment, which is encouraging.

I still have a lot of concerns about how to shelter in place if there’s a long-term power outage or a larger emergency that’s also accompanied by a power outage. My main concern is the dart frogs. They require controlled temperatures (between 18 and 25 degrees Celsius) and are pretty delicate, so anything outside those temperatures can kill them. They’re also pretty hard to transport, so if we have to evacuate, I will be facing a similar problem. At least at home I can keep them in their vivarium, but in the winter they could easily freeze and in the summer they could just as easily boil to death when the temperatures reach extremes.

I do need to invest in a few more shelf-stable food items, particularly peanut butter and maybe crackers or melba toast or something. Bread isn’t shelf-stable, but I can probably get away with making a flatbread of some kind if I have a heat source for cooking. I probably wouldn’t have enough heat to bake a loaf of bread, but I can at least generate enough to make flatbread. I tried making tortillas a couple of years ago and they didn’t turn out especially well, but I could definitely practice that skill. I’ve been meaning to practice more skills on a regular basis, but the no-longer-mystery tired has been keeping me in a vicious cycle of doing the bare minimum, collapsing from exhaustion while everything piles up, then trying to do more, exhausting myself more, and then being exhausted while watching everything pile up even more. Meow. Anyway, I am cautiously hopeful that if the CPAP works, I will finally be able to catch up on all the stuff I have been letting get out of hand all around me without constantly feeling like I want to crawl into bed for the next thousand years.

All right. Time to wrap up my musings and dive back into the books I brought with me. I got interrupted a fair bit on this post, so now I am pas the halfway mark of this shift. Four hours and forty-five minutes left until I’m done for the day. I am really looking forward to this week being over. For one, I’d really like to get some sleep, and for two, I am excited about the professional organizer coming over to fix my kitchen! Anyway, I shall now dive into The Care Manifesto until either more work comes in or it’s time to go home. If I finish it I still have two other books, including a new Mediterranean Diet air fryer cookbook which I hope will provide some inspiration.

Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: busy

I had my follow-up with the naturopath today, and let's just say I am, uh, unconvinced by her treatment options right now. All of my bloodwork came back in the normal ranges, although some of the numbers were what would qualify for "subclinical" levels that might possibly be causing some ill effects. That being said, she used all of the buzzwords and keywords that set my teeth on edge from self-appointed internet experts, all high cortisol this and inflammation that, and her prescription is to follow the Mediterranean diet and take some curcumin supplements.

So, yeah. I dunno.

She did think that the sleep apnea is the likeliest culprit for my symptoms, at least, once I told her about the test. She suggested I see how I feel first after the supplements and then after I (hopefully) get a CPAP to see what makes a difference. I am not super optimistic about the supplements, but we shall see, I guess.

I didn't sleep terribly well today. I napped for about an hour before I met the naturopath, and then I slept but only until about 3:30pm, which made for some rather broken and unsatisfying sleep. I will likely be a broken record for the next few weeks, but I am no longer surprised (if "surprised" is even the right word) that I don't feel rested after sleeping. I did some digging around the internet to see if there was anything I could try at home to help me keep breathing during the night, but from what I can see there's not a ton that will help beyond actually getting a CPAP. I already wear a mouthguard (because yours truly grinds her teeth in her sleep), which obviously does diddly squat for the apnea (I was wearing it during the sleep study), and the only other options appears to be surgery, which obviously is not an option *before* a CPAP, nor do I particularly want to have surgery. If nothing else, surgery appears to be widely understood to be less effective than a CPAP and should only be considered if the CPAP doesn't work. I am considering a body pillow to help position me a little better to keep my airways open and it should also help with my stupid aging body that likes to throw out its back on a semi-regular basis.

Anyway, in political news, our current Prime Minster made a statement today that made it clear in no uncertain terms that Canada is done being the USA's closest economic ally. It's going to be really interesting to see how that plays out both during the election and once a new government is in place. Will the Conservatives decide to play ball and act as if everyone is Team Canada? Or are they going to try to play to the more extreme parts of their base and argue that we should be playing ball with the USA? Public sentiment right now appears to be riding a wave of weird patriotism in the face of the Trump tariffs and the threats to make us the "51st state."

Pierre Poilievre is in a really sticky situation now, because he's been associating with right-wing extremists for years now, and is up to his eyeballs in suspicion. The Premier of Alberta, Danielle Smith, also sabotaged him quite thoroughly by getting caught on a recording saying he was the best choice for Prime Minister because he was the best person to work well with Trump. Of course, Poilievre and Trump are trying to walk that back now. Trump has been going on at length and quite unconvincingly about how he wouldn't like to work with Poilievre and would just looooove Carney, and Poilievre is trying to pass himself off as a stern negotiator who somehow doesn't align with Trump's priorities at all. I suppose the people who want to be convinced will let themselves, but the rest of us see the charade for what it is.

The USA is getting more terrifying by the day. There are so many stories now of tourists and green card holders being grabbed by ICE and taken to detention centres with no one knowing their whereabouts. They grabbed a Fulbright Scholar the other day and held her in an undisclosed location and refused access to her lawyers despite their repeated attempts to locate her. Earlier today there was a news story about a woman in Georgia arrested because she had a miscarriage. She was accused of "concealing the death of another person," and "abandonment of a dead body," and could face up to 10 years in prison. This was a natural miscarriage at 19 weeks, so still relatively early in the pregnancy, and just a fucking tragedy, not a crime.

There's also been reports of the Trump administration cancelling the delivery of food to food banks across the nation. The food is already in the trucks, packed and ready to go, so the money is spent and the food will simply rot where it is. There is no reason to do this except to be extra cruel. Much like in Canada in the past few years, food bank usage has seen a pretty stark increase, with increasing numbers of people struggling to both keep a roof over their heads and put food on the table. These cancellations mean people will literally starve. The cuts to government services and the general chaos caused by DOGE also guarantees that tens of thousands of people just won't be getting the already paltry sums that they needed to survive. The USA is setting up its most vulnerable citizens to die, and it is horrifying to watch.

There has been some grumbling online about why Canadians can't just "find a way" to keep going to the USA for tourism, and it kind of baffles me that anyone doesn't understand why people don't want to take the risk of being dropped in the equivalent of a black site for anywhere from a few days to the rest of their lives. What vacation is worth that? The USA has made it clear that no amount of "legitimate" documentation will protect you if it decides you've broken some completely arbitrary rule that isn't written down anywhere. They can just decide that you're an enemy of the state and imprison you.

Okay. Now that I have thoroughly depressed myself, I'm going to wrap this up and finish out my night shift. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: worried

Ugh, I got my wires crossed and thought that the meeting with my Quaker Friends was today, but it was yesterday at 14:30. OOPS. There were three of us scheduled to meet but only one of us actually made it--the other Friend got caught up in a prior meeting and just couldn't make it. We have re-scheduled for next Monday. My brain is in full betrayal mode these days. Like, I wrote it down in my calendar specifically so I wouldn't forget, and yet somehow got it wrong in spite of staring at it on my screen the entire time.

It turns out my brain has more than one reason to be in full betrayal mode these days. My sleep study results are available in my patient portal, so I armed myself with Google and my reading comprehension skills and set about interpreting them. Luckily the report is mostly written in plain language with comparatively little jargon, so I was able to make sense of it pretty quickly. Turns out I have been quietly choking to death in my sleep. /o\ The report concluded I have severe obstructive sleep apnea, with an apnea-hypopnea index of 65.5 events per hour, meaning I stopped breathing partially or completely roughly once per minute. Eep. Obstructive sleep apnea is considered severe starting at 30 events per hour. My oxygen saturation dipped to 76% at its lowest and was below 90% for 14% of the night.

Adorably, there is a recommendation that I not drive when tired or sleepy. Not sleepy I can do, but if they ask me to not drive when I'm tired, it means I can't drive ever at all, because not a single moment goes by in my life that I'm not tired. LOL oh well. I will continue coping until I can get to that follow-up appointment. I assume they will recommend a CPAP machine, so I'm going to have to start saving up in order to afford it. It's not that I can't afford it based on my preliminary research, and I'm sure that I'll be able to get a chunk of it reimbursed by my insurance as long as I can get the machine while I'm still employed. I'll double-check my coverage just to make sure, but KK has a CPAP and I'm pretty sure she had it covered by insurance.

So the good news is that this is very likely the cause of the Mystery Tired. I'm going to have to stop using that tag, except that I apparently hit my tag limit on Dreamwidth. I keep meaning to go tidy up all my tags, but I haven't gotten around to it. It's not exactly at the top of my priority list.

I'm still meeting with the naturopath on Thursday, and maybe she'll have some insights as well. Leave no stone unturned, etc. I'm hoping that I can get all of my health-related issues dealt with this year, and the sooner the better. Apart from the sleep apnea, the other major thing will be the bariatric surgery, and I'd also like to get that done while I'm still employed and insured. I don't need the insurance for it, because it's all covered by OHIP (that's the Ontario Health Insurance Program, for non-local folks) except for the post-surgical vitamins, and those aren't covered by insurance anyway, but it would be nice to just be able to use my sick leave and vacation leave after the surgery rather than do it while on employment insurance and worrying every day about not being able to get back to work if I get offered a job.

Anyway, right now that is all moot. The system takes the time it takes, although occasionally it will speed up if you make enough phone calls, as I successfully tested out earlier this year. I'll keep my fingers crossed that we can keep things moving along. Honestly, I am just bad at waiting and I would just like all of this to be resolved as quickly as possible.

All righty. I'm sure I had more to say but I can't think of it, so I think I will err on the side of shutting up now. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: tired

It's the first night shift of the week, so I haven't yet descended into the usual madness of trying to revamp my entire life and making plans to become a whole new person by next Monday morning. Night shifts do that to me every time without fail, but usually the urge to create new calendars and to-do lists and coloured charts doesn't strike until a few nights in. We'll see how long I last this time. I might go a little longer this time because I have the professional organizer coming starting next Tuesday, so that might already serve to scratch the itch since re-organizing my whole kitchen does kind of have a similar feeling to re-organizing my whole life.

I really hope that we can get the kitchen into a properly functional state. Trying to cook in there is making my soul shrivel these days. All of my cupboards are topsy-turvy, I have almost no floor space, no counter space, and I can't stand directly in front of the stove because of the storage rack thing I put in because I couldn't figure out how to use the space well enough to store all of my kitchen equipment. So, yeah, we have four days of four hours each to get the kitchen whipped into shape. I would love to be able to just open my cupboards and grab what I need without things constantly falling over or on top of my head. Part of it is an organization problem, but mostly it's a clutter problem, and that is why I am paying the professional organizer the big bucks. Although to be fair, for almost an entire week of work she won't exactly be making a killing after taxes. I think her hourly wage comes to more than mine, but I don't know that I'd be chomping at the bit to do her job.

I've got two hours or so until I can go home. Today is the only day before Friday when I'll be able to get a decent amount of sleep. Tomorrow I have an appointment (virtual, thank goodness) with the dietitian from the bariatric clinic at 8:30am, and then I got roped into a separate meeting with two members of Ministry & Counsel at 14:30, which means I'm going to get about two hours of sleep at best between those two meetings. I might be able to get away with going back to bed after that, but I'm not super optimistic. Then on Thursday I have a follow-up appointment with the naturopath (also virtual, thank goodness), so that means I won't get much sleep then either. I hate scheduling things during my night shifts, but in all these cases I had very little say about the timing. Blargh.

And, of course, somewhere in all that I have to get over my weird psychological block and get my seeds started for the garden this year. I'm reluctant to sacrifice my sleep today, but maybe if I leave KK to fend for herself for dinner I can sleep late and then start the seeds between the time I wake up and the time I need to leave.

In unrelated news, I've been watching Chicago Med in my spare time, partly because I do like medical dramas (I was an early adopter when ER came on the air in the 90s and have never looked back), and it's not exactly good, but I can't seem to stop watching it because it's like a train wreck. There isn't a single character in this show with an ounce of moral fibre, and they all seem to spend their time making terrible, selfish, impulsive decisions based on their whims, often at the expense of their patients. All of these people are walking disasters who need multiple years of therapy and have no idea how to communicate. Chicago Med differs from most medical dramas that I've watched by having a pretty strong emphasis on emergency psychiatry, and one of the main characters is Dr. Daniel Charles, head of the psych department.

Now, I honestly don't know many heads of psychiatry who routinely hang out in the emergency room (Dr. Charles lurks around corners and observes patients), but apparently for the purposes of the show he does just that. That, and conduct wildly unethical "experiments" on patients and colleagues alike (giving out placebos to patients to "test" whether their problems are medical, lying to coworkers about the status of patients, egregiously violating his daughter's explicitly set boundaries, etc..). He's a weirdly likable character, mostly because Oliver Platt is a gem and plays him as an affable, cardigan-wearing father type with a penchant for collecting autistic-coded young women to be his protégées. I do understand that the show has to come up with drama because real life medicine doesn't make for good television, but if this were real life none of these people would still have their medical licenses.

Anyway, I think that's enough talking about television. It's just this weird little micro-obsession with a TV show. Definitely not enough to want to join the fandom or anything, but enough that I want to keep watching, apparently, in spite of the fact that the show is ridiculous in the extreme.

Okay. Time to wrap this up. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: thoughtful

I had one of my relatively rare bouts of insomnia last night. I woke up at 4:45 (after going to bed at half past midnight after my evening shift), and my brain and I had the following conversation:

Brain: "TIME TO BE AWAKE NOW!"

Me: "Um, no. It's not even 5am and my alarm is set for 8:30. I have groceries to get and a therapy appointment at 10:00. I need to sleep so I'm not exhausted for my shift."

Brain: "WAKEY WAKEY EGGS AND BACEY! YOU ARE AWAAAAAAAKE!"

Me: "Like I said--"

Brain: "--AWAAAAAAAAAAAKE!"

Me: *sigh* "Fine, maybe I'll check my phon--"

Brain: "TIME FOR INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS! HAVE YOU CONSIDERED WHAT YOU WOULD DO IF KK DIED SUDDENLY? HAVE YOU MADE CONTINGENCY PLANS?"

Me: "What? NO! That is a new intrusive thought, and it was very much not invited!"

Brain: "HAVE YOU CONSIDERED IT?"

Me: "Don't be ridiculous. There's no need for--okay, fine, yes, we have sort of talked on a very high level about estate planning and powers of attorney and stuff, but that's totally normal. You didn't need to wake me up before 5am for this."

Brain: "I NEED YOU TO CONSIDER THESE FIFTEEN OTHER RELATIVELY TRIVIAL THINGS THAT I HAVE JUST DECIDED WE NEED TO THINK ABOUT."

Me: "Do we have to? Are you feeling anxious? Because we can use the tools from our anxiety toolkit to--"

Brain: "NOPE NOT ANXIOUS JUST HYPERFIXATING. MAKE PLANS!"

Me: "What if we took a shower instead?"

Brain: "ACCEPTABLE."

I thought I might be able to sneak in a nap after my therapy appointment, but then I made a mistake in the form of deciding to call to cancel my insurance plan. KK switched us over to a more inexpensive provider with theoretically the same coverage as I have now, and I don't want to pay for two policies. In fact, I think that might be insurance fraud, or something like it. I spent forever on hold, and then the actual cancellation took a good half an hour to complete by the customer service representative who sounded like he was on death's door with some sort of upper respiratory illness.

I also booked a follow-up with the naturopath about my blood test results, since I haven't heard back from her. I assumed I'd get a call from her office to follow up, but nope, apparently I gotta do it myself. I booked online and she was full-up until almost May, but luckily I snagged an opening on March 27th, and for an online consultation no less, which is much more my speed than having to drive out there and back during my night shifts when I'd much rather be sleeping.

Coincidentally, speaking of the Mystery Tired, I did get a call back from the sleep clinic today too, and now have a follow-up appointment booked for April 14th, nearly a month to the day after my sleep test. I was actually not expecting to hear back from them for a month, so this feels very promising! I really hope they found something that will explain the Mystery Tired and also provide a relatively easy fix. If they don't find anything I have no idea what to do next. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it, I guess.

At least work has been keeping me busy enough that I'm not falling asleep at my desk. We're getting into the busy season for the Marine desk, so I've been pumping out notifications almost since I came in five and half hours ago. (I've been writing this post for about three hours on and off, whenever I get a few minutes of reprieve).

Okay. Time to call it and maybe have some dinner. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: busy

I know, I am a broken record. I regret nothing!

I will say that after multiple nights of going to bed early, including last night when I managed to get to sleep at 8:30pm, this morning I found it marginally easier to drag my carcass out of bed and face the day. I was just as tired for the rest of the day, but I was filled with less loathing at the thought of getting up and doing things upon waking, and I didn't hit the snooze button at all, which may honestly be a minor miracle.

It's 8:30 now, so I obviously won't be getting to bed quite as early tonight, but I also don't need to get up as early tomorrow since I don't have to be at work at 7:30am. I am still planning on getting up early-ish tomorrow because I want to try making yoghurt in my Instant Pot, and it's a lengthy process. Luckily I don't have to be around for most of that process, but I do have to be around at the beginning to get things going, and I want to make sure that I don't have to stay up late to put said yoghurt away once it's done, supposing it's edible.

The rest of my plans for tomorrow remain unchanged. Pick up my new red wriggler friends, go see my doctor to request a blood test, and then come home and dive into garden things.

KK is working from home tomorrow, so I'm going to have to get over all the weird feelings I have about Doing Things(TM) when she's around. Somehow having her home makes me feel incredibly awkward about trying to do things like clean the house or organize things or even do a bunch of cooking.

Also! There is a full blood moon eclipse tonight! It's very exciting. Unfortunately it will be at its peak at 2:26 tomorrow morning, but since we won't have another full eclipse until 2029 I have set an alarm so I can go take a look. I don't know if I will be able to drag myself out of bed at that hour, but I will at least give myself the opportunity. I got to watch the solar eclipse last year, which was super cool, and I'd like to watch the lunar eclipse as well.

Okay, time for bed so the odds will be more in favour of my not missing the eclipse. Catch you on the flip side!

Current Mood: tired

I cannot promise that the whingeing about being tired will end anytime soon.

I am counting the days until my sleep study (three more sleeps!), but of course even then I won't get answers right away. I'm still happy it's happening, and I'm planning to ask how quickly they typically have the results of a sleep study in the hopes that it's a relatively quick process. I have been told that even if it turns out I do need a CPAP machine, I get a "loaner" machine for a month so they can figure out all the correct settings and whatnot (don't ask me for specifics, I don't fully understand it yet), and then the loaner machine gets taken away and I have to wait an unspecified number of months before I get a permanent machine of my very own, all of which sounds sucky. I would just like to get a machine and be on my way, thank you, but alas, that's not the world we live in. On the other hand, I am really hopeful that this will be the determining factor in why I'm so goddamned tired all the time. It would be ideal if I could get the Mystery Tired sorted out before the summer so that I can really take advantage of the nice weather and not drag my sorry ass around like a partially deflated balloon.

In the interim, my brain keeps writing cheques that my body can't cash. There are so many things I want to do, but have no energy to even get started on, not to mention no brainpower or willpower either. If I were to write a list of all the things I want to do and learn, people would probably laugh at me, but I do honestly kind of want to be a Jack of All Trades with a lot of practical skills, like sewing and crocheting and making soap and woodworking and stuff. I should probably make a complete list of all those things and maybe break them down into categories by how feasible they are from a realistic standpoint. It would be an interesting exercise, for sure.

I got in touch with the person I've been jokingly referring to as my worm dealer. The red wrigglers I got from her a few weeks ago are doing well, so I decided to get them some friends in the hopes that they will all reproduce a little faster and produce more castings. I was a little worried at first because I kept finding worms climbing the sides of my bin, but a bit of research revealed that it's normal for just a couple of worms to do that in search of condensation. There was quite a lot of condensation in the bin at the time, and when I got the humidity a bit more balanced they stopped doing it. Apparently you only need to worry if either all of your worms are trying to escape, or if they're all huddled together in one spot, since that means the conditions are poor, but so far that doesn't appear to be the case. The worms have been happily worming, and I've given them more than enough food to keep them happy for now. That being said, I am still happy with my decision to get them some worm friends to speed things up a bit.

I'm meant to go pick up my new worm friends on Friday, and since I also have doctor's appointment that day, that will significantly cut into my time. My original plan was to get my seeds started, and I am still going to give it the old college try, with some spillover into Saturday if needs be. I am a little annoyed about the doctor's visit, because it takes me nearly an hour to drive there and then an hour to drive back, and my appointment is for literally fifteen minutes, and I doubt I will spend more than five minutes in there because I'm only going in order to request blood work for my A1C at the request of the bariatric clinic. This could easily be a phone call or an online appointment, but noooo, I have to waste nearly three hours of my time (travel time, wait time, appointment time, and the time it takes me to deal with all my winter gear) for it. Blargh.

However, if all goes well I should still have a fair bit of time in the afternoon. The plan is to pick up the worms on my way to the doctor's appointment, then head directly home after that, which will get me home by about 1pm. If I play my cards right and don't let inertia get the better of me (the trick is to not sit down, ever, because then I immediately realize how tired I am and don't want to get up again), then I can have a quick lunch and immediately head to the basement to get my seeds started. I do still have to set up all my grow lights, but I'm cautiously optimistic that that won't take more than an hour or so, which leaves me with several hours to plant some seeds before I have to start making dinner.

I've kind of been slacking in the meal planning department, too. I had gotten into the habit of planning dinner the week before, and that really came in handy for cutting down on grocery spending and more importantly saving me time and stress about trying to figure out what the fuck's for dinner every single night. I've also been meaning to create a full inventory of what's in all the various freezers, too. I have a decent idea, but there are things that I keep forgetting about that I really need to get around to cooking, especially stuff that's in the largest chest freezer in the garage. I have to dig out the sheets with QR code stickers that I got a while back with a view to making an attempt at getting more organized. That never materialized mostly because I keep running out of energy to do anything besides barely exist.

Okay. I have one hour left before my workday is over and things are picking up. See you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: working

Three early nights in a row. I should probably mark my calendar. I spent an hour or so in the afternoon literally falling asleep at my desk at work, even though I was working the AVSEC desk (Aviation Security) and was super busy most of the day. The moment I stopped typing or answering the phone, my body kept trying to force me to nap. I don't know what my malfunction is recently, but since I have to go into the office for two more days this week, I need to not be falling asleep at my desk, so I am making a point of going to bed as early as possible.

It's kind of unfortunate, because I'm having to keep my posts short in order to get to bed at a reasonable time, and I actually have a lot more to say! But these days I don't write as quickly as I used to, so taking the time I need to actually write everything down would mean going to bed well past the hour I intend to. I'm off on Friday, though, and have nowhere to go other than a doctor's appointment, so I may attempt a much longer post then to catch up on everything I want to say.

In the meantime, KK finally got the cheque for the money she won from a radio contest in January, which means she was able to pay me back for covering the January rent. I still need to sit down and crunch the numbers for our combined household expenses, because the joint account has been running pretty low lately, and I think we each need to up our contribution in order to stay afloat, which is going to be tricky since neither one of us are exactly swimming in money lately. I also need to print out all of my T4s and other tax documents for next week's appointment with the accountant at H&R Block.

Okay, time for sleep. I promise there will be a more substantive update at some point this week. I'm not sure exactly when, but soon. See you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: tired

With apologies to Hannah Arendt.

We were all sold a bill of goods by the apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic stories we were fed, I think. We were promised zombies, Mad Max-style races in the desert, roving bands of cannibals, tiny stalwart groups of humans scrabbling to survive in a harsh landscape made unrecognizable by the sudden and complete collapse of society as we know it. And then that scrappy little group of survivors gets to rebuild human civilization in a new world with a bright new future stretching ahead of them.

Of course, none of that is true of collapse. Collapse is long and slow and messy, and it mostly doesn't feel like collapse. I wonder if our current collapse feels similar to us as the collapse of previous empires did to the people living in those times, if they were constantly torn between worrying about the larger picture but also worrying about how to keep themselves and their families clothed and fed and sheltered.

No one told me that I'd have to pay rent during the end times, you know?

It's not all doom and gloom, of course. I am enjoying my job, even though it's maybe not at the top of the list of things I'd like to do with my time. I'm focusing more on my health this year so that I hopefully won't be super unhealthy when facing the collapse of some vital parts of society. I'm still planning a vegetable garden, and KK and I are steadily moving towards buying canadian products rather than US ones. It's a slow conversion (so many US products that we never even think about!).

I'm once again falling asleep over my keyboard, even though I was asleep by 9pm last night and got nearly 9 hours of sleep. It's honestly ridiculous how tired I am for no good reason. I'm working the early shift tomorrow, so I'd better get to bed and attempt more sleep. Here's hoping I will be less tired tomorrow. Only four more days until my sleep test, yay!

Current Mood: tired

I haven't even had that busy a day, but I am super tired.

Work is doing a weird thing this week where we're getting half-days to work from home, and it's more annoying than anything else. Finding parking at noon in an already busy building is a hell of an exercise in frustration. They're doing it out of a desire to make things a bit more fair because several people have afternoon courses this week, and rather than simply letting them work from home the whole time and forcing the rest of us to come in the full five days, which is admittedly shitty, they're doing this weird compromise instead. I appreciate the intent, at the very least, because I would have been a little salty about these people getting a full WFH week AGAIN (they had one last month too, and it's starting to feel a little old to constantly be the person who has to come in every single day while they get to be at home all cozy).

We're having another snowstorm that's going to last until at least Thursday, and so traffic was terrible getting home this evening. I think that's part of why I'm tired. Spending an hour and ten minutes in traffic instead of the usual half hour was just life draining.

KK was out for dinner with a friend this evening, so I got the house to myself. I cleaned out the fridge a little and ate some of the leftovers that KK won't touch, and got the dogs organized for bed without too much trouble, and since then I've been slowly settling into bed. As soon as I've finished this post I will be turning in for the night. I am working the early shift tomorrow, which means I have to be up at 5am in order to be at work on time. Blech.

I've been doing pretty well lately about getting to bed on time, but that hasn't actually helped me with feeling any less tired, alas. My sleep test is scheduled in ten days' time, though, and I am practically counting down the hours until it happens. I know I won't get an answer right away, but just getting it done will be a step in the right direction. I really, REALLY want to know if there's a relatively simple fix for how tired I am all the fucking time.

Current Mood: tired

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Page generated May. 22nd, 2025 02:01 pm

Corner of Bourbon & Division

Her Words of Wisdom Scratched Into The Door

Entries tagged with mystery tired

I overdid it a little

I hope I have enough time to finish this

An early post today

A Limbo-ish kind of day

CPAP Acquired!

Well, that went well...

One more sleep until (perhaps) better sleep!

Overslept again

O Death, where is thy sweet embrace?

Light at the end of the tunnel

Randomalia

Flirting with Quackery

Night Shift Brain Strikes Again

First Night Shift Thoughts

Today's theme is sleep, or lack thereof

Two more sleeps before the sleep study!

In which I whine some more about being tired

Early to bed again...

The banality of apocalypse

falls over