the_rck

My allergies are still acting up. I have no solid idea about why they're so much worse this year (including last fall) than usual. My suspicion is that there's some low level allergen around pretty constantly that's making my immune system crankier and more likely to overreact to things that would normally be minor. As to what that could be, I have zero clue.

If last fall had been normal for me rather than filled with the LTD appeal and insurance uncertainties, I'd have tried to get a referral to an allergist. I don't see such a referral as a good option right now, either, just for very different reasons. I think I may send my doctor a patient portal message about it anyway. It might take months to get to see someone anyway.

Sleep last night wasn't great. I was both too warm and too cold, just different parts of my body, and I kept sneezing off and on. I spent a lot of time in that weird state of being aware of being in bed and of my body and surroundings while still having uncontrollable dream nonsense running through my head.

That's more restful than not sleeping at all, but it's not really refreshing. I spend a lot of energy on deciding whether or not x or y bit of information from my body merits movement and risk of full waking. I can manage some things-- for example adjusting my cpap headgear strap when it starts slipping on my hair or sticking a foot out from under the blankets when my feet feel too warm-- but others are less feasible. I can't shift my pillows or ease my back and/or shoulders and/or hips. I can't relayer the sheet and blankets.

Today's to-do list includes making biscuits (if I can get Cordelia to help) and a load of laundry. I should probably start the grocery list, too.

We've been experimenting with Todoist for that which Scott likes a great deal and I'm less enthusiastic about. My main objection is that I dislike having to open the program every time I think of something to put on the list. My usual approach is to keep the paper list by me for most of a day and jot things down as I'm reminded. On Scott's side, it's better than the paper list because he can check things off and tell with a glance what he hasn't picked up yet.

On the whole, Scott's needs are more important here because the paper list does lead to him missing things when I make a mistake about which section of the store the item is in or when that bit is too near the folds he makes in the list to get it into his pocket. Dental items have consistently been casualties of that second problem because the box for that part of the store is bisected by a fold.

The ACT has moved Cordelia's test date to 13 June. As far as I can tell, they're not trying to schedule an extra date, just telling people to choose one of the existing dates and locations. They say they're going to try to add locations. I'm a bit concerned about the location part. We had transportation set for the original test date, but June and July are both horrible in terms of Scott's weekend availability, so the logistics could be challenging.

Cordelia is finding that the trimester change over is an advantage as far as the switch to online instruction goes. Few of the teachers had anything complicated to deal with for Monday or yesterday because it was all syllabus and introductions. That's letting them experiment a bit with the interface (Google classrooms) before they try more challenging interactions. Cordelia's friends who're at schools that do semesters are having a more difficult time because the teachers have more to juggle.

One of the teachers currently has the flu (not, she assures us, the coronavirus as she has a different set of symptoms). Another tells us that he and his family have left town to stay in the country because his son has major lung issues and is at high risk. Both of them seem relieved to be teaching remotely. The one with the flu is teaching ASL, and the school would have difficulty finding a sub with subject knowledge. The one with the family leaving town teaches math.

We're still trying to find distilled water for our c-pap reservoirs. Scott's been to half a dozen places at different times, but there hasn't been any to be found. He's looking for toilet paper, too. We have enough of that for at least a week, possibly ten days, but since he's not seeing it anywhere, he's looking for it.

I managed the sleep disorders clinic Monday without touching anything but elevator buttons, at least with my hands. Part of that was keeping my phone in my hands. I had a little bottle of hand sanitizer in my pocket and used it after the elevators. I don't like that particular kind (Purell) because it has some sort of added fragrance that makes my nose start running, but I used it anyway.

We tried to make some hand sanitizer at home, but we couldn't get the isopropyl alcohol and the aloe to mix and not separate. We've now got two bottles of mostly isopropyl alcohol with the vaguest hint of aloe and a layer of aloe on the bottom. We're shaking them before using them, but it's still like pouring slightly slimy water rather than anything close to a gel.

Possibly the aloe was simply too old. I'm pretty sure we bought it when I had the cellulitis in April 2018. Possibly the recipes were also assuming something less than 99% aloe for the one part aloe to two parts isopropyl alcohol. I used a whisk for about ten minutes, but the aloe stayed globbily particulate and kept sinking to the bottom.

At any rate, the isopropyl alcohol will kill things adequately. It's just harder to use as a liquid than it would be with a bit more viscosity. Scott's still looking for actual hand sanitizer. He has to go to work, and him having some with him is pretty important.

The sleep disorders clinic told me, after I arrived, that they're trying to shift to e-visits for things like my appointment. I'd have appreciated the option, but the timing was so tight between the changes in policy and when my appointment happened, that there was no way for me to know that it might be possible. Also, I think that, on Monday, Medicare still didn't cover e-visits.

The clinician explained that my inability to breathe during the first 20-30 minutes of putting on the cpap is due to the thing taking that long to 'ramp up.' It goes to half pressure immediately and then squats there while I get a headache from lack of air and can't move around in bed because I'll end up having to gasp for air. I'm fine once things are at full pressure. I'm fairly annoyed about this.

She said she'd change it remotely, but later sent me a portal message to say that she couldn't. I wasn't surprised since I've never set the machine up for remote access and have zero intention of doing so. I might be willing to give her temporary access during a pre-arranged time window, but I can't think of any reason at all why it would make sense to leave a gaping security hole like that constantly open, not for a medical device.

Scott's therapist and my psychiatrist are both offering remote appointments for the duration. The former may, possibly, be worthwhile, but I think the latter can be delayed. We haven't made any recent changes to my meds, and my prescriptions are current. I'm not having any side effects or any increased distress. (For some reason, the current fuss and bother isn't setting off my anxiety. I had issues last week with my need to get all of the preparation done, but at this point, that's all settled.)

I'm in that stage of convalescence when I *can* do some things but need to stop and think about how much of the day is left and what else I may have to do. That is, bringing the laundry upstairs is possible; it's just not a great idea because it probably means not eating lunch and might mean not eating dinner.

Our absentee ballot applications are in the mailbox, awaiting the mail carrier. I'm debating ordering stamps online versus just going to the post office and buying some. The downtown post office is on the way between where the bus route starts/ends and the library, and I'll be going down there tomorrow morning. I'm just not 100% sure I'll be taking the bus. Still, if I don't, Scott will be able to get stamps on Wednesday. I'm not sure how long it takes the USPS to deliver stamps purchased online, but I can't think they'd get here before tomorrow's mail delivery.

One or the other of us needs to buy more bus tokens for Cordelia. Those are a PITA because the bus company only sells them in bags of 100 (full price tokens can be purchased in smaller quantities. These are half fare and meant for kids and people who meet certain income and/or disability guidelines). Otherwise, I'd just send Cordelia to buy her own since she'll be downtown tomorrow afternoon and again on Wednesday afternoon.

The hard to do things are still at the top of my to-do list as they have been for weeks. I was hoping to have Scott sit with me while I worked on them, just for moral support and help focusing, but he was busy yesterday evening with bills and with canceling Comcast. I'm still not up to sitting in the living room for more than an hour or two a day.

I've successfully used my c-pap the last two nights. Both mornings, however, I've awoken more tired than I expected to be, so I'm not sure this is a net win. I'm still taking half a tablet of halcion at night rather than two tablets. I think I'll manage to keep that dosage, but I don't think I'm going to be able to drop it entirely. I need that and the Tylenol in order to sleep around the pain.

Also, once Scott starts working 2nd shift, sleep is going to be harder to come by. He'll get off work some time after 11 p.m., have a half hour drive home, and still need to eat and shower before bed. I can't sleep through him getting home. His current plan is to get up with Cordelia in the mornings at about 5:45 a.m. I think this is a bad plan as it means he'll only get about four and a half hours of sleep a night, but it is the only scheme by which he'll get to interact with her at all during the work/school week, so... I don't know.

My best guess for my sleep is that I'll sleep from about 1 a.m. to when Scott and Cordelia get up. I may be able to fall back asleep again if I don't get out of bed during that hour that Cordelia's getting ready to leave. I can manage the going back to sleep thing some mornings now. I just think it will depend on what Scott does when Cordelia leaves. My impression is that he'd like to be up for the day then because it gives him time to do things. Theoretically, at least.

The front door is having issues with not latching properly. It needs double checking because it will look shut but pop half open when the screen door shuts (the screen door has a separate issue with not closing properly unless it's pushed firmly). It will still look closed from the outside, but it will be half an inch to an inch off from shut. It's getting cold enough that this is going to be a real problem. I don't want to have to keep getting out of bed to check after Cordelia leaves in the morning.

I'm actually half thinking that I should ask Cordelia to go out the back door in the mornings. Even when the driveway is a sheet of ice, that would add less than a minute to her walk to the bus, and it would avoid the issue of the front door.

I'm planning to weed my shelf of unread books. If I've had a book for a decade without even taking it down and opening it, I think it's time to pass the book on to someone who will read it. I know of seven little free libraries within six blocks of here, so when I'm up to walking around, I'll try to make some trips to leave some books at each.

I'm starting with some mass market paperback romances. I don't think that books are going to become magically easier to hold or that my general, anxiety-related difficulties with finishing books are going to evaporate. They haven't done in the last twenty years. (The revelation that I don't read many books or watch TV actually shook my mother. She thought I was still reading a book a day, minimum, because that's fundamental to her image of me.)

Tomorrow is going to be busy, mostly because of ordinary Thursday things. I need to do more laundry and change the sheets. Then there's all of the preparation for the cleaning lady. I hope I can keep myself going through it.

I tried to nap this morning after Scott and Cordelia left, and I slept enough to dream, but I woke feeling really terrible. There was still water in my c-pap reservoir, but my sinuses and throat felt dry enough that I assumed that I'd run out.

I made it out to Kroger to get my prescription, but I didn't manage to leave until 4:30. When I did, I discovered that it was raining and felt much colder standing at the bus stop than it had felt just opening the door and trying to guess at the temperature. I don't know that I'd have taken an umbrella with me because umbrellas severely limit what I can carry. I ended up with three bags of groceries on top of the prescription.

I finished filling out my absentee ballot. Even with thumb/wrist braces, it took me a long time, long enough that it wouldn't be feasible standing in an polling place. I need to get it to the post office tomorrow, but my body's conspiring against me-- I'm having an allergic reaction to the dust I put in the air when I swept our bedroom today, and I'm starting up cramps.

I was hoping that the c-pap filter would help the allergies, and it is helping some. I also used a neti pot and rinsed things. My sinuses aren't willing to calm down to let me sleep, so I kind suspect that I won't get to do that tonight. Maybe if I set up in the living room... I'm hoping not to have to do that, but Scott's still sick and desperately needs sleep.

On the plus side, I've gone from being 12 prompts behind on letsgetshitdone to being 8 prompts behind. I haven't finished anything, but finishing wasn't ever my primary goal. I started one Amber story, one Labyrinth story, one Narnia story, and one that's meant (if I ever finish it) as a gift for someone who reads here. So the tally for the month is three written, one abandoned, and four started.

I got everything on my to-do list done yesterday except for the phone calls. I'm hoping to do that this morning.

I found what I think is the ending of the Sky High fic yesterday. I expect there will be expansion of what goes before and maybe some new chapters in the middle, but this is where it ends.

We have someone coming by to do an estimate on replacing the roof of the garage. It desperately needs doing, but I had been assuming that we'd end up just letting the garage slowly rot because replacing the roof was outside our budget and because some of the baseboards are going. We had someone take a look at the latter years ago, and he claimed he couldn't replace the baseboards without taking down the whole wall above each.

I wasn't able to use my c-PAP last night because the forced air kept setting off sneezing spasms. I don't think that it made much difference in terms of how I slept. I'm breathing better this morning so far. I guess we'll see how it goes.

Scott went to Kroger last night to pick up a couple of prescriptions, but they were in the midst of a prolonged power outage. Scott says they were marking all of their meat products as unsaleable and that he couldn't get the prescriptions because they had no way to process the transaction even if he paid cash. He'll have to go back tonight because I only have enough Wellbutrin for today and the first dose tomorrow.

I somehow managed to either burn or very badly pinch a bit of the palm of my right hand. It hurts a lot, and it bothers me that I don't remember doing anything to explain the injury. I think pinching is more likely given the chores I did and the shape of the injured bit, but it feels like a burn.

Scott got another middle of the night call around 2:30 this morning. I need to make him bring his cell phone into the bedroom and have them call that. It will still wake me, but if they call the landline, that's on my side of the bed, so I have to sit up to reach it and then talk. They only call if there's something that's happened that means that a line will be down for 4+ hours or something else has happened that will create similarly lengthy delays. I think the idea is that Scott will tell them something else to work on if there is something.

Last night, I took off my c-PAP when the call came. I'm not sure why. Maybe I thought I needed to in order to answer the phone or maybe I got up to visit the bathroom. I can't recall. I just know that I didn't put it back on again.

I woke with a headache. I'm pretty sure that I felt it growing even while I was asleep and dreaming. Black tea and breakfast helped a lot. I just feel exhausted now. I also used my neti pot just in case it was mostly sinus. That didn't feel like it helped at all, but I suppose it might have since it's been an hour now.

I was worried that it was a migraine because I seem to have kept the wrong packaging for my Amerge prescription. The box I have is for an expired prescription, and I know I got a renewal in January or February. At least... I think I did. December through February is all really not very clear in my memory. I have one Amerge tablet left, and I need to call the pharmacy to see if I have a current prescription for that. It's a phone call that can't go through the automated refill system, so I've been putting it off and putting it off.

I'm pretty sure that there's a tension component here, too, because I've got a week to finish this exchange fic and am not making much progress on it. Part of that is that I want to write other things; part of that is that I need a sex scene for the fic to fit the exchange parameters. The story really wants to fade to black, so I fear the sex will be entirely tacked on and emotionally unsatisfying. I've got a mental thumbtack at the line where I think it should have ended. I can't put the sex earlier in the story because the rest of the story is all set up to get the characters to the point where they want to.

At any rate, this close to a deadline, I sometimes start getting weekend stress headaches if things aren't flowing. In this case, it's particularly likely because Scott and Cordelia really want my attention on family stuff today and tomorrow. That's going to be like a tightening screw as the moments slip away. If I could just get myself to focus and write this scene, I'd be in much better shape.

When I was on a different set of meds, this level of stress is when I'd have a wine cooler and have that be enough to let my body relax enough so that I could write. I used to have one or two a day for the 3-4 days leading up to running a LARP because that was the only way to avoid incapacitating headaches (which tended to get worse and worse as the deadline got closer with things not yet done because the headache wouldn't let me).

I signed up for intoabar. It's not an exchange, so I won't feel quite the same pressure about needing to wedge the story into a certain sort of box. It's a challenge that involves picking a character from one canon and then listing up to four other canons one's willing to write. The moderators will randomly assign a character from one of those others to meet my selected character in a bar (or other public hang out sort of place. Given that many characters in my other fandoms are underage, I don't know that a bar will make sense. I'll see who I get).

I took Brad Crawford from Weiss Kreuz for my character and offered The Pretender, Phineas and Ferb, The Pretender, and Archer's Goon - Diana Wynne Jones for the other fandoms. Crawford's kind of a cheat because he's not very likely to meet someone accidentally. Whatever he's actually up to will give me a plot of sorts.

I'm not signing up for fandom5k or nightonficmountain. I'm still on the fence about notprimetime. I will consider treating or pinch hitting for all three. I'm eying polytrolley because someone nominated Weiss Kreuz, but I'm not so interested in offering other fandoms there, so treating might be a better idea. I'll track the requests to see if I change my mind.

ETA: Okay, I still have the edges of something migraine-related. Scott's frying onions, and I really feel sick from the smell.

Scott is anxious about doing well at his new job. Nothing terrible has happened, but he's feeling like anything going wrong could destroy his life and therefore mine and Cordelia's. Vast responsibility. From what I can tell, he's really well suited to this job, and the people he's working with are being really supportive, so I'm treating it as jitters rather than as something with a strong basis in reality. Big change is really, really terrifying.

I had an appointment with the sleep disorders clinic yesterday. evalerie gave me a ride there. I took the bus home. Climbing the hill was interesting because I was feeling both really, really cold and really, really overheated. My hands and ears ached from the cold, and I knew that my bare arms would be unhappy if I took off my coat, but I very badly wanted to because my down coat felt like too much. It was in the mid-20s F, I think, and it was windy, so this was not about my coat being too heavy for the weather.

The PA I saw at the sleep disorders clinic thinks my c-PAP stuff is all really good. The fact that I don't feel like I'm sleeping particularly better isn't under consideration, just that I'm averaging 0.3 apnea episodes per hour. I think that, mostly, she was of the mind that the real problem right now is my window for sleeping meaning that I'm not getting more than six hours any school night.

The Story I'm Not Writing is something like a dozen words short of 22K now. My Worldbuilding Exchange story is almost at 500 words (I've used some html tags which Gdocs counts weirdly, so I need to see how AO3 counts the dratted thing). I did some brainstorming about it yesterday. Right now, I just have to buckle down and keep going back. I can only manage about thirty words at a time because it's a weird style for me, one that's not poetry but more in that direction in terms of the effort to get the pieces in the right places. I don't have time to count on rewriting, so this may end up being it.

Anyway... 500 more words on this. I can do this.

There's no school today. The call came at almost 6 a.m., so Cordelia and I had both had breakfast. She went back to bed almost immediately and didn't get up until around noon. I went back to bed some time between 7 and 8 and slept until after 11. I had vivid dreams. My c-PAP apparently does its 24 hour turnover at 11 a.m., so the numbers looked weird when I got up from my nap because the system was only counting nine minutes for the day.

Last night, Scott and I were stuck talking to a salesman because Scott thinks we'll have money to replace the siding on the house some time in the next decade. He's not thinking about college. Paying for that is only 3.5 years away, and we have no money for it at all.

At any rate, someone knocked on the door last week to ask if we wanted a free estimate, and Scott said, 'Yeah, sure,' and made an appointment. So we spent two hours on that last night with the salesman giving us the hard sell because setting us up with a loan we can't afford would be really, really easy and not hurt him at all.

We have a good credit rating because we don't borrow beyond what we can pay, and there's no wiggle room in the budget for paying $500 a month for the next few years. Maybe if we suddenly had zero medical expenses.

I'm actually very cranky with Scott about this because it was an utter waste of our time. I think he thought that, somehow, it would take ten minutes and be done. He's been through this process before, so he ought to know better.

I also felt bad for the salesman because he lives an hour away, and coming to Ann Arbor was out of his way between where he'd been and home. Scott knew, when he made the appointment, that there was no way on earth we could afford to have it done. He just has some fantasy that a year from now or two years from now, it will be different in a way that's better.

I ended up not going to parent teacher conferences last night because I got home from my afternoon appointment and pretty much crashed. Scott got me some turkey before he left, and I was able to get more food after that because the turkey gave me a little energy.

Have a diagnosis and a treatment plan is actually helping me feel better about not doing all the things I normally would. Without the diagnosis, I wondered if I was just not trying hard enough. Without the treatment plan, I'd be telling myself that all of this stuff has to get done-- long term-- whether I'm sick or not and would have gone to the conferences, accepting the fact that I wouldn't be able to do anything much at all for the next 1-3 days.

I'm still getting test results from Saturday's blood draw trickling in. Yesterday, I got the ferritin which was still (barely) in 'normal' range but low enough to be a potential warning sign even without everything else.

Today I got another result for a hormone-- ACTH. Like the cortisol, it's just a little bit high. I don't know and haven't managed to find enough information about that whole system to know how much which numbers mean. There are some tests where being 1-5 units outside of the lab defined normal range still leaves you inside the normal range as defined by, say, the Mayo Clinic. There are also some where being a couple of units up or down doesn't actually change much. I don't like the look of the things that most commonly cause ACTH and cortisol to be high, so I'm hoping it's not going to turn out to be anything but my anxiety and my body/brain fighting the anemia.

But I'll be surprised if I don't end up with more testing on this one.

I took a cab to my appointment yesterday and then the bus home. The bus station was closer than anywhere I'd have wanted to go and buy food. There's a Starbucks right next to the office where I had my appointment, but I thought that coffee or tea wouldn't help. There's a diner about halfway between the office and the bus station, but I only generally go there when I have cash. Any of the other places I'm comfortable going (mostly knowing that there's food that won't make me sick) would have meant a longer walk than to the bus.

I can tell that I was very out of it, though. I got to the crosswalk by the station and glanced over to where the bus I needed usually waits. I didn't see any buses (there can be up to three in that part of the block). I had the walk light, so I did. Then I looked again and realized that there was, in fact a bus there. It couldn't have arrived between when I first looked and when I looked again because it would have had to pass through the crosswalk where I was.

If it had appeared from nowhere, I'm pretty sure the other people waiting for buses would have noticed, so my brain must have glitched.

I slept with the c-PAP last night to see what would happen. I didn't wake with a headache, not even one that went away quickly. But I did wake a few times during the night and end up feeling less rested than I expected. I'm going to keep trying, off and on, to see if addressing the anemia changes things with the c-PAP.

( To-do list )