Corner of Bourbon & Division

I have one of those twice-weekly reports to write for work tonight, and it's time-consuming and annoying, so I can't spend too long updating this journal just in case work gets busy later and I don't have time to get the report done. I do not want to have to explain that I didn't get my work done because I was blogging. That would look bad. ;)

I probably shouldn't stress too hard about it, because I routinely take, like, five hours or longer at work to update because I keep getting interrupted anyway. So I'm sure I'll get it all done. This report in particular stresses me out because there are no explicit instructions for how to prepare it, but it's somehow still extremely important to get it done exactly right. *headdesk* Also, I only write one once every four months or because it's specifically a night shift duty and my shift partner and I take turns to do it, so I am woefully lacking in practice. Nothing stresses me out more at work than being asked to do something I'm not familiar with AND for which I have no reliable blueprint. It is objectively the worst.

Tonight is my last night shift, and then I am off until my day shifts next weekend. So far no coworkers have agreed to a shift trade, although I am waiting for that one coworker to get back to me tomorrow (he won't be in until 3pm, though, so I won't find out until late in the day if he's accepted the trade). If he says no, which he likely will, because going from an evening shift directly to a 12 hour day shift with no break is goddamned brutal, I will simply have to suck it up and go to work next weekend.

That give me five days this week and four days next week to get everything packed. Normally I would spend the Monday after my night shifts sleeping, but obviously I can't waste all those precious packing hours on something as silly as sleep, so I'm going to take a brief nap when I get home and then get up and start packing. I have asked KK to help me with packing tomorrow because it's a statutory holiday, but I'm not sure how much help she will actually be. Tomorrow being a stat holiday means that I won't be able to go to U-Haul to buy more boxes, because I'm 99% sure they'll be closed for everyday purchases (albeit likely not for van rentals and that sort of thing), and rightly so. Employees deserve their statutory holidays, and should have the day off like everyone else.

So, yeah. I should probably make some aspirational packing goals for this week, so I'll know how hard I failed by the time the weekend rolls around. ;)

Okay. Report writing time! Wish me luck. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

 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.

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.

I've been posting to Dreamwidth and LJ pretty consistently, but LJ's "new" interface is pretty janky these days. For one thing, it just isn't loading some of my icons when I select them, for reasons I can't figure out. Some work just fine, others just load the default icon, which defeats the purpose of having other icons. I am displeased.

I also really dislike the new posting interface, but I can't revert back to the older version. I can't do proper text cuts anymore, and adding in images is an absolute pain in the ass. I miss being able to just plug in some html code and being able to preview the entry. Now it's all supposedly "integrated," but in practice it's a hot mess. I'm grateful that Dreamwidth is still operating with a recognizable form of the open source software that LJ was built on. I assume the change at LJ is deliberate in order to do away with as much of the old open source stuff, because capitalism, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

It's too bad that both LJ and DW are so quiet these days. I miss the old days of being able to catch up on the minutiae of everyone's lives, both good and bad. I've noticed that on social media people tend to have two modes: 1) Everything is amazing in my life, please look at this aesthetic photo I took, and 2) Rage bait. Those are the two kinds of posts that appear to "drive engagement," as they say nowadays, and the lack of authenticity is a real drag. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that all the friends I follow are suddenly being shallow and inauthentic, but Facebook and Instagram and so forth really encourage you to curate both your posts and what you consume. Photographic posts are rewarded by the algorithm, while text-only posts get "suppressed." The algorithm also decides for you what you should be seeing, meaning that I often miss important news and announcements from friends, which sucks.

There was also something that felt very intimate about blogging, because the long-form content allowed all of us to dive deeper into topics if we felt inclined. At one point I was the queen of very short posts, but I also wrote some much longer thinky-thought type of posts, and having long conversations across multiple comment sections was a great way to get to know people and to deepen my thinking on a number of topics. It also allowed all my nerdy friends to info-dump about the subjects they loved, and by extension allowed me to learn about them. Short-form social media just doesn't lend itself well to this sort of thing.

During Quaker Meeting yesterday, the focus of worship ended up being The Situation At Hand. *gestures broadly* One young online attender shared their trepidation for themself but also their friends in the US, and all of a sudden there was an outpouring of ministry from the older Members, many of whom are old enough to remember World War II, most of whom had family who were active in various war or resistance efforts. So much of the ministry that those elders offered was filled with messages of love and hope and practicality that I could see a lot of the younger people visibly shift out of their despair, even if it was only for a few moments. It was a reminder that we can get through the dark times. We may not get through them individually, but we can get through them as a whole. It doesn't make it any less terrible or scary or awful, but it reminds us that we can be brave and do hard things even when we are afraid.

The elders also reminded us that Quakers have a long, proud history of letting people decide for themselves what pacifism means. For some, it means conscientious objection no matter what, to the point of imprisonment or execution. For others it meant serving in non-combatant roles like ambulance drivers and army medics. For others still it included accepting conscription when it came for them. 

A famous anecdote about George Fox recounts William Penn (another founding Quaker and for whom Pennsylvania is named) asking him whether he should continue to wear his sword. Penn was accustomed to wearing the sword, and at the time was reluctant to give it up. Fox is said to have replied: "Wear it as long as you can, William, wear it as long as you can." And, supposedly, the next time they met, Penn was no longer wearing it.

There are multiple ways to resist in these dark times. We can choose to openly defy those who choose to oppress us, or we can do it more secretly, and take opportunities to resist where they present themselves. We can challenge them in court, we can sabotage their efforts wherever we can, especially if our jobs allow us to slow down/delay/obstruct. We can drown them in useless paperwork. We can hide people who need to be hidden. We can help other people hide people who need to be hidden. We have a wealth of ways at our disposal, and each person's resistance will look a little different.

It was a really enlightening Meeting, and I am glad we were all there for it. I don't think we would have had as enriching an experience of Ministry had we not had both the in-person worshipers and the online worshipers, so I also feel pretty vindicated in that regard.

Today is my only day shift this week. I've switched shifts with a coworker who needed to be on days from Tuesday to Friday, which suits me just fine. I'm working the early evening shift, too, which is great because it means I get to still get to bed by about midnight or half past. Working the regular evening shift usually gets me to bed at 2am, which I find a little rough, but midnight is still halfway decent.

On that note, it's time to get back to work. Catch you all tomorrow, friends!

I burned the candle at too many ends, and I am paying for it today. I think this is the fallout from packing too many commitments into my evening shift week and into last week as well, especially a bunch of house visits. 

I had lofty plans to do some cleaning today, but mostly all I've managed is a nap. I am trying to view today as a "radical rest" day, even though I feel very bad about not cleaning. I had a therapy appointment that ended a few minutes ago, and my therapist told me that when I make plans and have to cancel them, even for good reason, my brain registers that as a failure (apparently it's a biological phenomenon, I'll have to look it up later) and that's why I feel extra bad about it. We discussed different ways to make plans in such a way that if I do have to cancel or change them, it won't register as a "failure" in my brain.

Anyway, the plan now is to go get my latest book from the library, and do some reading. I put a handful of books on hold, since they all had fairly lengthy waiting lists, but somehow they've all become available at once. So now I have the unexpected task of trying to get them all read in three weeks. A few years ago this wouldn't have been an issue, but these days it can take me a month to read a single book. So we'll see if I can get this done in time. It does help that I have several days off in which to accomplish all this. I did manage to finish one book during my night shifts, and I'm partway through a second, and I'll be picking up the third today. The first two are non-fiction and are fairly dense: Practicing New Worlds: Abolition and Emergent Strategies by Andrea J. Ritchie and Struggle and Mutual Aid: the Age of Worker Solidarity by Nicolas Delalande. The first in particular was a very dense read, and I think would have been better if I'd been reading it as part of a discussion group rather than just on my own, but it still gave me lots to think about. The second one is not as complex but it's a lot drier, so I'm having a little more trouble getting through it. I was hoping to read it in the original French, but unfortunately it's not available at my local library.

The book that's waiting for me now is The September House by Carissa Orlando, which intrigued me after I heard a review of it on the Too Many Tabs podcast. The podcast thoroughly spoiled the book (which I expected), but it still sounds like it's going to be a really interesting and entertaining read. The premise is that an older couple buy their dream home and, when it turns out to be Extremely Haunted, the wife decides that a little haunting never really hurt anyone, especially considering how perfect the house is otherwise. So she just goes to extreme lengths to placate the ghosts, which get particularly rowdy in September (hence the title), scrubs off the blood that keeps oozing from the walls, and makes do, right up until her daughter comes to visit and threatens to upset the precarious balance she's struck.

I'd also like to work on a craft project this week, but I haven't decided if I should re-try the socks or try a new needlepoint project. I got myself a cute little kit that will let me embroider an owl, and I'm excited to try it, but I'm also working with my knitting coworker next week who's been teaching me to knit socks, so it would be nice to have a sock that's ready to at least have the heel turned by the time I get there. Decisions, decisions.

Okay. Time to get this show on the road. I still have a few things to get done today before I pass out in bed again.

No, not THAT 'Q' word. ;)

It's a long-standing superstition/tradition working in emergency response (or any kind of call centre), that you should never, ever, comment on "how quiet" it is during a shift, because that's just inviting in the forces of chaos. If you're a dispatcher, it means there's going to be a multi-car pileup or a huge fire or some other cataclysm that will tie up your phone lines and keep you so busy you won't know which way is up right until the very end of your shift. If you're extra unlucky, you'll be stuck handling That One Call and have to stay past the end of your shift, and no overtime is worth that.

So, naturally, we've been having a very, err, uneventful week at work, and one of my colleagues just announced he was bored and then loudly started talking about how quiet it was. Seconds later, the phones started ringing. I can't swear that the superstition is true (the lines have died down again), but it certainly feels true.

I don't mind either way as a rule when it comes to work. A busy shift will go by quickly, and a quiet shift will let me get other stuff done, like reading a book or working on my knitting or what have you. Of course, this week I haven't brought my knitting for a few reasons. One, day shifts are usually very busy, and I am not a good enough knitter that my projects can survive the constant interruptions without suffering from potentially catastrophic error. Two, this week I am taking public transit home from work, and in the winter that is a dangerous proposition for knitting (and I am not a person who can safety knit on the bus, because again, catastrophic error). I had a third reason and now don't remember what it was, but I'm sure it was a very valid reason. ;)

( Why are you taking public transit, Phnee? )

Anyway, all this to say that work as been pretty dead today. I've been slightly obsessively checking my email inbox for a confirmation that my red wiggler worms will be ready today, and it's not looking good, I must say. The email I got did say they would be ready between today and Friday, so I may have a little while to wait yet. It's not that big of a deal--I can still go to Canadian Tire after work and pick up the Rubbermaid bins and the bedding I will need there. In theory one can use newspaper for bedding, but it can't be a colour newspaper, and these days I don't trust the papers that are available in my city not to contain some weird toxic substance in their ink, so I'm getting newsprint paper that's made specifically for packing and has no ink on it whatsoever. It typically is made from recycled paper, so I am hopeful that I won't be fucking over the environment too hard with it. Then I can put together my new worm-friendly environment and have it all ready and waiting for the worms whenever I get them.

In other mundane news, I have to put gas in the car later today. It's at about 1/2 a tank, and given the pretty cold temperatures we're having this week I prefer to keep it at 3/4 or more. Not having much gas in the tank causes a lot of wear and tear on the fuel pump, and also in the winter if you get stranded somewhere or even just stuck in longer than average traffic, you don't want to run out of gas and/or your potential only source of heat in the cold. For those of you who've been following me a long time, you may be amused to know that I still have my blue Yaris, aka the General Service Vehicle: Congenital Optimist, or GSVCO for short. I bought her in May of 2010 and she's still going strong, thanks to Steve the Wonder Mechanic. He gave her a makeover last fall, because she had developed a hell of a rust problem on her driver's side rear wheel well, and also needed her struts replaced. It was an expensive repair (body work is always a bit of a bitch), but he has breathed new life into her, and she's been purring along nicely ever since then. She's nearly 15 years old, has nearly 250k kilometres on her, and has been paid off for nearly a decade. My goal is to keep her as long as physically possible, because she does excellent mileage and I don't want to contribute another car to the landfill and use up even more resources for a newer car, even if it's hybrid or electric. In fact, KK's last car was a hybrid and has turned into the World's Most Expensive Lawn Ornament, because it would cost more to fix than the car is worth, but she still has to pay off the rest of the car loan anyway. Nightmare fuel. I'm sticking with my reliable little workhorse that doesn't have too many fancy computer bits in her until the bitter end.

Anyway, that's today so far. I have to think of something to make for dinner tonight. I've been slacking off on the meal planning of late, which is never a good idea. I will have to start that up again when I get home, and just plan for the next few days and next week while I'm at it. I always do better when I have a plan.

So, yeah, I really should found that company called "Good Intentions Asphalt and Cement."

I keep telling myself I should update more, and then more life stuff happens, and then I get overwhelmed with how much I'd have to write to get everyone up to speed, and so I just... don't post. Not my most shining moments, let me tell you.

( Cut because of triggers for mental illness and weight/body image issues )

Did I tell you my plans of taking dog training courses and eventually opening up my own business? I think I did. Anyway, the first semester is over, and the theory is going really well. The practice? Not so much. We're observing one of the puppy classes (which is going fine), and then doing basic obedience with our own dogs, following the new curriculum. The problem is that poor Sergent's anxiety levels go through the roof when he's in that class. First he has to sit or lie quietly for an hour during the puppy class behind a board so the puppies can't see him, and that stresses him out (because he can hear the high-energy puppies and can't see them and isn't free to move around). By the time obedience class comes around he's a nervous wreck. On several occasions he nearly pulled my shoulder out of its socket trying to get to the exit, poor thing. Of course, when he's that stressed he can't learn, and having him learn is a big part of how I'm being evaluated. So I have no idea if I'm going to pass this class or not. I also need to take Sergent to the vet, because I think the anxiety is making him chew his paws and his side, but I want to make sure it's just that and not a sign of something worse.

If I do pass, I've decided to skip the spring semester and do the fall semester instead. I've found it extremely punishing on my body and my schedule to do these classes, and I could use the break until September. Not to mention the finances. These classes are extremely expensive. In the meantime, I'm going to educate myself on how to start up my own business, and see if it's something I can realistically do.

Anyway, I have to jet to work. See you on the flip side!