Corner of Bourbon & Division

Happy post-Canada Day! I had to go to work in the midst of the craziness that is downtown Ottawa just as the fireworks were ending. Absolute madness, but I was able to get through thanks to a letter from my manager explaining that I'm an essential worker and a (mostly) understanding police officer. Now I just have to get through this night shift without falling asleep at my desk.

The building of the Murphy bed is an ongoing saga. It is a huge undertaking for people who aren't accustomed to doing such things on the regular. My friends Dylan and Sarah came over on Saturday to help me build it, and by the end of the day only the upright cupboard part of the bed was built and anchored to the wall, so I had to sleep on the cot one more night. Sarah came back on Sunday and we got the bed part built enough that I was able to sleep in it that night, but we still weren't done. She came back today, and we were able to add the "doors" that make the Murphy bed look like a wardrobe when it's folded up (they are not functional doors, for the record), and also put together the shelving portion of the built-in desk part of it. We are still not done.

I'm on nights this week, so I got about two hours of sleep before Sarah came over, and then KK let me take a nap in her room later, so I'm chugging along on about four-ish hours of sleep in total. I haven't been much help in building my own bed, mostly because Sarah kept kicking all of us out of the room, preferring to work on her own for most of the time, but also because I've been trying to get a million things done at once, which is working about as well as you'd expect. 

I'm cautiously optimistic that once the Murphy bed is completely built I'll start getting more on top of things, because I'll be able to fully unpack my bedroom and hopefully get it set up for maximum efficiency, and from there I'll be able to keep going in the rest of the house. The kitchen and living room are a bit more unpacked now, but we're nowhere near done.

I also need to take several days to go back to the old house to clear out the remaining stuff from there, clean the place from top to bottom, and then hopefully find someone relatively inexpensive to repair the basement walls. Longtime readers will remember that my cats did not react well to the stress of moving many years ago and had peed extensively in the basement, damaging the walls to the point where the bottom of the drywall had to be cut away in many places. I may try repairing it myself, since it's just a question of getting drywall cut to the correct dimensions, screwing it in place, and then screwing some shiplap over it (I think it's called shiplap, it's basically cheap white wooden slats). It doesn't have to be done well, it just needs to be done.

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

 It's been long enough (nearly four weeks) since I worked the AvSec Desk at my job, and I forgot how busy it can get. There's a lull right now, but even though everything else has been pretty quiet, I have basically been going steady since I got in at 08:00. It does have the advantage of making the time go by much faster.

I drove in with KK this morning since we're both in-office today. She had originally wanted to park near her office because the parking is cheaper there, but she got up late and therefore asked that I drive and drop her off and park at my office (conveniently making me pay for parking). It makes more sense to carpool on days when we're both in-office, but she tends to pull these last-minute bait-and-switches on me, and so I think from here on out I'll be making my own way to the office on those days anyway, especially now that we aren't paying for a monthly parking pass anymore. We had one before she got her medical exemption from the three days a week in-office, but now that she only has to go in two days a week or less, and I have only nine to ten in-office days every two months, it's not worth the monthly cost.

I have been a lot less patient with KK lately, and I think it's because I've worn through a lot of my resilience in the past couple of months, between my parents being ill, my getting Covid, the stress of working a bunch of extra hours, all the last-minute legal and financial shenanigans about buying the house, packing up the house, and then having to pull an extra few thousand dollars out of my ass because the move had to be postponed. Each of these things I probably could have handled just fine, even two of them would probably have been stressful but fine, but all of it within a six-week period appears to have taken a toll. Objectively I understand that KK is unable to share the load equally, because she is more physically disabled than I am, and she also doesn't have much money due to having to pay down some considerable amounts of debt (she actually makes about $16k a year more than I do, but I am in much better financial shape than she is). On my good days, I totally get it and have no trouble with it. I knew this going in when she moved in four years ago, so this isn't a surprise or a deal-breaker. On my bad days, however, when I've come home to find that she's left more garbage in the sink for me to clean up instead of throwing it in the garbage can that is *literally right there* and then she makes some sort of snide comment about something I've done that she doesn't like, it takes all my self-control not to snap at her. 

Anyway, I think my first order of business will be to go to bed as early as possible tonight in an attempt to be better rested for the next couple of days. I'm working in-office and KK is working from home, which will spare us some of the logistical issues at least. I would also like to finish all of the packing by Sunday. I think it's all pretty doable, but I definitely need to be less of a zombie for all the dominoes to fall just right.

I think I'll leave it there for now. Work is so busy I may not have time to post before my shift is over otherwise. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

It is SO nice not to have to be the SitRep writer anymore! I spent a small chunk of today holding the hand of the new SitRep writer as she navigated her first day of writing SitReps, just as the previous SitRep writer did for me last week. It is a job and a half, and honestly the instructions we were given are, uh, not very clear. I am sort of tempted to re-write them and submit the proposal to the "Core" team of supervisors/managers so that future SitRep writers don't find themselves navigating a sea of practically indecipherable text. Okay, it's not that bad, but whoever wrote the instructions did so with no regard for brevity or clarity, nor is it particularly well ordered. Technical writing is a skill, after all.

I'm working from home tomorrow, which is a blessing. It's the only WFH day I have this week, so I plan to take full advantage of that. I have to get up early enough to take out the recycling and the green bin, but at least I don't have to get up at the ass-crack of dawn. Also, since I'm not the SitRep writer this week, it ought to make for a much more chill day. If that turns out to be the case, I am going to try to take advantage of the "extra" time to keep packing up the house.

KK is finally home after being out with H most of the weekend. We drove to the new house this evening and took the dogs out for a run, checked the mail, and picked up the cat food that had been delivered there (we didn't want to leave it outside in case the smell was too enticing for the local wildlife). I also wandered over to the road that leads to the neighbour's farm and said a respectful hello to some of the dairy cows that were hanging out nearby. They were pretty nonplussed at my presence, but they didn't seem overly concerned otherwise. I quite like cows, so I'm hoping we will be on good terms with our neighbours in general. I also spotted the same cat I'd seen over the weekend (I think) trotting down the path in the direction of the farm, so I am reasonably confident that the cat must belong to them.

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

I just don't want to lose my streak, and I'm willing to "cheat" just a little bit to accomplish that. ;)

Yesterday got away from me a little bit. Work demanded that I produce two situation reports a day on Monday and Tuesday, and that meant that I basically did not get up from my desk for eight hours. Both days I managed to sneak away for 15 minutes to grab a bite to eat around 2pm, and that was it. So I ended up not having the time and energy to make a post here, alas.

At least I got to bed at a halfway decent time, so that's something.

A more fulsome update will follow eventually, I promise. 

 I have spent all of this shift halfway convinced that it's my third night shift instead of my second. I think it's the fact that I've already been working for nine days straight that makes it feel like it's later in the week than it actually is. I still have five more nights to go, including the 12-hour weekend shifts. I am not really looking forward to any of it, but it is what it is.

I managed to get about six hours of sleep and probably would have slept longer had I not had to get up early for my therapy appointment. I have made the grievous error of agreeing to multiple meetings and appointments this week. I keep trying to not schedule stuff during my evening and night shifts, and I keep failing abysmally. It's just never a good idea, but sometimes there just isn't another choice. Alas.

So later today I have a meeting with tow members of Ministry & Counsel about a small worship group one of them wants to start centered around chronic illness, and on Friday I am going to my new credit union to sign my life away in order to qualify for a reduced interest rate on my new mortgage. Okay, I exaggerate slightly for effect, but essentially I have to switch over to a checking account with the credit union and have my pay direct deposited there in order to qualify.

I've sent out feelers to my coworkers to see if anyone will trade my weekend day shifts in 10 days with me. Getting the weekend off to be able to focus on packing would be a godsend, but I'm not going to hold my breath. People are pretty accommodating at my workplace, but we're getting into summer vacation time and people are a busier with kids and commitments and stuff. Fingers crossed, anyway.

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

We're meant to be losing at least some connectivity at work tonight starting in a little over 20 minutes, so I'm doing a very quick update just so as not to lose my "post every day" streak. Yes, these things preoccupy me, don't ask. ;)

I am really hoping it's a minor inconvenience. In theory we have backup systems, but there's a non-zero chance we will have to relocate to another building, which is a huge pain in the ass. We have to pack up laptops and cell phones and binders into backpacks and lug them on foot for several blocks to another building, then have a fight with that building's infrastructure in order to get everything connected, and none of it works quite right nor quite the way we're used to working at our regular workstations. It's inconvenient and annoying, but nothing worse than that.

More annoying is that I have to work this weekend, since I switched with a colleague last month, and so I'm going to spend most of tomorrow and maybe also Sunday mopping up the backlog that this outage is going to cause, which is yet another annoying, inconvenient pain in my ass. 

In the spirit of maybe finally starting to get my act together (hah), I went out today and acquired some more moving boxes. Specifically I got wardrobe boxes, boxes for dishware and glasses, a pack of small book boxes (good for books, CDs, DVDs, and small but heavy items), and a bunch of bubble wrap. I've asked KK to get a start this weekend on clearing the trash out of the living room, in the hopes that that will clear some space to start a staging area for packing on Monday. I don't know if she'll do it, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I likely won't have much time to pack this weekend, but at least I have more materials now, which seems like a step in the right direction.

In the meantime, I am going to have a very short night of sleep tonight. I work until midnight, won't get to bed until probably 1:30 or 2:00, and then I have to be up again at 6:00 in order to get to work on time for 7:45 for my 12-hour shift. *weeps a little*

I had a preliminary conversation with the recruiter about WillScott Mobile (technically the recruiter is from a firm called Duffy Group, I think), and I think it's worth exploring further for now. I think I mentioned that they're located closer to my home than my current work, and it looks like they may have free parking, whereas parking downtown is $24 a day. It might not turn out to be a money saver if I have to drive in every day due to the cost of gas, but I'd have to crunch the numbers to be absolutely certain. I suspect I'd probably end up breaking even, or somewhere close.

Okay, connectivity thing has started. I will try to post this and hope for the best. Fingers crossed, and see you on the flip side, friends!

Unsurprisingly, my mother has come down with the same symptoms as my father. She's taking her meds and being a good patient and resting a lot and drinking a lot of fluids, and so far seems to be doing as well as can be expected under the circumstances. I spoke to both my parents yesterday evening, and they're both being pretty good about things. My father is always more motivated when my mother's well-being is very obviously on the line. I wish he were able to project that into being more careful the rest of the time, but that's probably too much to hope for. Neither one of them is particularly good at risk assessment or management, alas.

I've been harbouring a headache and a slightly sore throat since yesterday, and I cannot for the life of me tell if it's Covid or if it's just the stress of the week catching up to me combined with the truly terrible air quality at work or the cumulative effect of using the CPAP without the humidifier (because it was way too warm). Am I paranoid? Maybe. But just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face. KK is going to be picking up fresh Covid tests tomorrow if we can find some, since ours are expired and therefore unreliable. It's been increasingly difficult to find Covid tests in Ottawa in the past couple of years--no one seems to carry them anymore. Shopper's Drug Mart apparently sells individual tests for $7.00 each, which is an absolute rip-off, but I expect nothing less from the Galen Weston Jr. empire. The main reason I don't know if it's Covid is because these symptoms do not at all match my parents' symptoms,  which are mainly extreme fatigue and some gastrointestinal stuff. So headache and slightly sore throat? Who knows?

Work is going by very slowly, partly because of the aforementioned headache. I'm glad it's not busier, though, because I've already made a pretty regrettable mistake this evening which my shift partner caught, luckily enough, and it's been a pain in the ass to fix. I hate making mistakes at work, even though objectively I know that they are unavoidable. It triggers my impostor syndrome like nobody's business. Oops, make that two mistakes. My coworker is saving my bacon tonight. The second mistake was when I was trying to fix the first mistake, and I didn't realize that there was a new SOP for fixing the mistake and I followed an old SOP for fixing the mistake. *lies on the floor*

I am really looking forward to my bed, which I will be in in about four hours if everything goes really well. I got relatively little sleep today, because we got home from KK's endoscopy shortly before noon, and then I had to wake up in order to be on time for my phone call with Brian, my birth father. He actually sent me a text message saying he'd caught a cold and could we postpone to tomorrow? To which I thought "Sweet, I can go back to sleep!" so I agreed, but I then had to field a call from work asking me to come in early and then changing their minds because the supervisor in question hadn't done the math properly and my coming in early wouldn't actually help anything. After that I had to field a call from my mortgage specialist because the auditor apparently decided that the mountain of paperwork I provided was not, in fact, enough to meet all of my financing conditions for the house. *headdesk* So I have had to send even more paperwork to prove I am not an evil money launderer trying to get a mortgage to launder the rest of my ill-gotten gains through a rural property in Southwestern Ontario.

So, yes. Very much looking forward to my bed now.

Okay. I am going to go heat the last of my lunch and wait for the shift to be over. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

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!

The sleep study went okay. The ADHD struck and I misread the instructions on when to arrive (I saw "twenty" minutes but the email actually said "thirty," oops) but I managed to get there in time anyway. I located a parking spot ($15 for overnight, ouch) and hustled my way to the secondary reception point, since the primary one isn't open on weekends, apparently. I got myself signed in, then went to the cardio-pulmonary ward where a sign directed me to a waiting room where there were clipboards and pens with a form to fill out.

Am I the only one who overthinks medical forms? Or any form, for that matter? Anything that asks me to answer YES or NO immediately sends me into a tizzy of "Well, it DEPENDS. What exactly do you MEAN?" And of course it's a paper form, so it can't provide answers to your clarifying questions. :P One of the questions was: "Please describe the nature of your sleep trouble," or something to that effect, and I just wanted to yell at the paper "I don't KNOW! That is the whole POINT of having a sleep study done! To see if I have trouble!" I tried to ask myself how a neurotypical person might interpret the question, and decided it landed in the category of "Tell me what brings you in today," and went with that.

I had a very lovely technician named Marilyn who got me all strapped in with more wires than I had initially imagined, which is saying something, because I had imagined quite a number of wires. There were also straps and cannulas and extra sensors. Marilyn was joined by another technician named Rita, and drew on my head using a special kind of wax crayon. It was red crayon, and I amused them a lot by asking about the colour and whether they each had a favourite, because apparently no one had ever asked about the crayon colour before. It seemed a natural enough question to ask, but I guess not. They glued a bunch of electrodes to my scalp using a putty that was kind of like wax and would later prove to be rather tricky to wash out, and then it was time for the sleepings in the beddings, as we say to the dogs in our household.

I actually managed to sleep decently, all things considered. I woke up a few times, but not much more than I would if I were at home, and I had weird dreams in which the hospital setting merged with some sort of superhero storyline (it's all a bit of a blur now). At 04:49 a code blue was announced throughout the entire hospital, which was a little jarring, but I went back to sleep relatively easily after that. I felt bad, but it's not like I was in any kind of position to do anything about the poor person in the ER who was having a truly terrible night. I hope they're okay, but of course I will never know. 

Marilyn woke me around 5:30. I thought it was closer to 06:00, but I didn't look at my watch until I was back at my car and realized it was only 6:05, so it must have been closer to 5:30. I got unstrapped, we commiserated over night shift work, I thanked her for all her hard work, and then got dressed and was on my way. I was home again by 6:45, had a quick snack, then stood in a hot shower for a very long time trying to clean the goop out of my hair, and took a nap from 8:00 to 9:00 so that I wouldn't be a complete zombie at work today (because I had agreed to swap shifts partially with one of my coworkers who had hockey games scheduled today).

I've been at work since 11:00, and up until not that long ago things were pretty busy. Luckily most of it has been pretty routine, and I am keeping my fingers crossed that it will continue to be routine for the next couple of hours until it's time to go home.

That's it for now. Tomorrow I have an appointment to get my taxes done, and I am considering going very early to get my blood drawn before that, and then much later in the morning I need to take Peggy to the vet to get her bum squished (one of my favourite euphemisms for anal gland expression). Exciting times, indeed! I know you are all riveted by the minutiae of my daily existence.

Catch you all on the flip side, friends!

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.