the trick is to keep breathing

I have to say, one of my favorite things about working from home is the sleep. If I feel like shit, I can sleep. It’s stupidly powerful. One of the best things to do for fibro is to just rest it, and I can nap whenever I need to and wake up - usually - feeling better.

Yeah, I sleep a lot. Sure, I could be doing other stuff with that time. I’ll sleep when I’m dead, etc. but just the sheer simplicity of being able to curl up on the couch with three cats and nap until I feel better is fuckibg amazing. It’s worth sleeping so much to be able to feel this good occasionally. I’m not sure I’ll ever go back to an office full time, not if I can help it.

so mike and i are going to pittsburgh this weekend for my brother's birthday. i had a full list of things to get ready for today - get things settled for the catsitter, clean the kitchen, do some laundry so i have something to wear, pack, rig up my bike for the weekend, sort out my medications (this takes about a half hour every week to load them into my "morning" and "evening" weekly pill boxes, ugh) ... there was a lot.

the thing is, i have been tired as actual fuck this week. because i end up overcharging my energy credit card during the week, i usually try to save up and pay it off on weekends, meaning i need lots of sleep, relaxing, and a good amount of alone solo-time. because of the recent messes (previous posts), i haven't had a free weekend to myself since the middle of june. this means not only am i exhausted, and carrying around the static background-noise of someone who hasn't been able to ground herself and clear everything out*, but of course the house is a mess and i am behind on everything.

(*i am also suffering from not having my Vicodin at the moment; those four hours of reduced pain help me clear out the static noise and ground myself like fuck, but because i have to go back to formal pain management (which is a process) i don't even have that tool in the toolbox right now.)

so anyway, i am tired and pretty strung out at the moment, but it's jim's birthday and mary wants us to be a surprise, so we'll be a surprise :)

so last night, i come home tired from the pain-load on my circuits. i take two tramadol and a glass of wine, which i'm sure my liver is mad cool about but it helps shut the pain up when i don't have opiates. i crash on the couch for a bit, with cats, and then slowly start hitting my chores. i make a pact with myself because i'm watching Chopped on tv, so every commercial break i get up and do a thing. this continues on, laundry and litterboxes and drugs, via Chopped and Beat Bobby Flay commercials (look, i love BBF, it's all fancy cooking and trash talk, that's my jam), until the second wind wears off and i get tired. well, i say, i'll get up early in the morning to finish it.

the alarm goes off at 5:00.

1. i am having a dream where a group of people (no one i know, which is surprising for my dreams) and i are hosting some kind of event luncheon thing with food and wine for fucking Donald Trump and some Republicans, I guess trying to talk some sense into them or come to an accord or argue with them or spy on them or, i don't know, it seems reasonable in the dream. and i'm some kind of power hostess but i'm focusing mainly on the cooking (thanks, fucking Chopped and Beat Bobby Flay), and trying to make points and break up fights while making sure everyone has food?, i mean at one point i fucking leave an argument to go make more fried cornmeal balls (hushpuppies i guess)???? so like: i'm already pretty discombobulated.
2. i finally manage to get out of bed, after some snooze buttons, at about 6:00
3. i head downstairs, turn on the keurig, head to the basement. pull the dry laundry out of the dryer and put the wet laundry in the dryer. yes, i went to bed with laundry in the washing machine. it was literally only there for like 5 hours, it didn't smell or anything
4. i get my coffee and sit down on the floor to fold the laundry but i'm tired as fuck and end up playing out my stamina in FFBE
5. i fold the laundry, while finishing FFBE/FFRK stamina, with Iggy and Potato helping. this literally hakes maybe an hour? i'm so tired i feel heavy, like i'm moving slowly because everything weighs 500lb, including my thoughts
6. i finish the laundry and go to get the cats ready. write a note, set out food, fill their dishes, give them wet food breakfast, get everything set
7. my brain finally processes that i had a dream about catering donald fucking trump, where i made him bruschetta and fucking hushpuppies rather than punching him in the face, maybe with a knife. i spend a good 15 minutes severely disappointed in my subconscious
8. it's starting to get close to when i should be leaving for work, and i'm starting to unravel a bit here. i go upstairs to pack. weirdly i fucking gained back 9lb in the month of july, i do not know how, so i'm also trying on everything i want to pack to make sure it fits. a lot of random shit just goes in the bag
9. i spend a half hour sorting out my pills. i have 20 empty pill bottles and at least 2-3 refills of each type, which makes everything more confusing than it should be. i do not know how it happened and my brain really wants to know rather than focus on getting each med in its appropriate pill box. eventually the boxes are full
10. i scramble to get ready for work, throw some shit on, the jeans are actually still damp but honestly i ignore it bc they stretch out better that way after a wash. hair goes up in a braid, fucks not given
11. head down to start loading the car. checking my important list on my phone. get jim's gift in the back seat, bike pump in the trunk because once it had a spider on it. look around the garage, and i don't have my bike rack
12. it must be in fucking mike's garage
13. i legit spend 20 minutes attempting to cram my goddamn bicycle into the back seat of my fucking honda civic
14. i mean, maybe if i take the front wheel off
15. the front wheel isn't coming off, the brakes are in the way
16. how do i undo brakes
17. maybe if i wedge it this way
18. fuck it we're gonna have to stop by on the way out and get my bike
19. head back in to wash the oil and smudge off of my hands. i am sweaty, and extremely cranky at this point
20. hands clean, everything else in the car, head out to get in and go to work
21. the bike rack is hanging from one of my ceiling hooks
22. someone was helpful and "put it away"
23. at this point i am decidedly sweaty, cranky, and obscenely late for work. there's a constant stream of "fuck you, fuck this, fucking fuck, fuck this shit, fuck everything" coming out of my mouth like i'm reciting the world's worst rosary
24. while taking the rack down the straps get caught in my hair and pull half of it out. everything is terrible
25. the rack is on the fucking car. the bike is on the fucking rack. go wash my hands again.
26. get into the car. what's on my seat? oh, it's the post it note of my to-do list. let's check it. i forgot to leave the key for the fucking catsitter
27. fuck you, fuck this, fucking fuck, fuck this shit, fuck everything
28. the key is safely in a plastic bag in its place
29. i am stopping at starbucks if it fucking kills me
30. literally i do not care if i am fired for being late i'm getting a goddamn starbucks

...

1. get to work. no one is here. half the group is traveling or on vacation, and the other half is off for 9/80 fridays. all my brain can come up with is "9/11" and i sit staring into space for 20 mins trying to figure out what the 9/11 schedule is
2. it is surreal
3. i don't know what i'm doing

so now i really just want a nap. and another starbucks

• I am still in love with my sleeping pills. I've discovered through some trial and error that trazodone has a very narrow window of sleeping -- so my usual "get in bed and read/play games/whatever for 45 minutes" method does not work. Once I take that pill I've got 5-10 mins tops and if I get caught up and read through that drowsy couple minutes, I'm back to my usual looonnnnn-n-ngg-g-ggg ass falling-asleep time. Trazodone is apparently a picky mistress. I forgive it its quirks because it is so good to me.


• I have solved my shorts dilemma - a shorts dilemma I may not have mentioned here; I hate shorts. Absolutely despise them. All ladies shorts I've tried - and I have tried quite a few - just don't fit right, don't look right on my body, make me feel many levels of uncomfortable: it isn't just an issue of how I look and feel while wearing them, uncomfortable in the sense ofoh god I look ridiculous, most are actually legitimately uncomfortable -- like help I cannot bend over, also when I sit down my thighs bulge at angles I didn't think skin could do and my ass sticks to what I am sitting on and also did I mention I cannot really move at all and I feel sweaty and sticky?. The problem is mainly that shorts are tight, and my thighs are ungracefully still built as if I'm running half marathons - even if that muscle has been replaced with pudding - and no matter what length the shorts feel like they are as tight as saran wrap and my legs look like sausages. I swear to god I have tried every style out there in the stores and I just went to wearing maxi skirts made out of the kind of fabric that feels like you're just wearing pajama bottoms even though you look ~fancy~.
  
  --- BUT THEN I FOUND THE ANSWER, and it is: DUDE SHORTS. They are comfortable as legitimate fuck, exactly the feel and convenience I was wanting, and since my "sense of style" is already kind of like "hobo bum that can't match things" anyway, they go with everything I have. I am legit so happy about these shorts I am blogging about them. Don't make fun. THEY ARE SO COMFORTABLE. I AM SO HAPPY. Today I was actually a normal temperature in the summer because I wasn't wearing jeans. HOW DID I NOT FIND THIS SOONER.


• I have a lot to say about the new job but it would take up so much time. I have been there late 2/4 nights this week. I had to take Friday off because I was just so fucking behind on everything that I needed a day to lie in bed and then do four loads of laundry. (This is not a joke.) On Wednesday we had a massive storm front move through that flooded out a giant portion of the tank farm - complete with tornado warnings! We evacuated! - this is seriously the kind of thing that makes old hands at the job stress and die, and I had been there all of ten fucking days.
  
  I am exhausted. But I freaking love the job so far. It is -- it is a breath of fresh air to be actually doing things that will help people, even if they are so far the small things - "low hanging fruit" - and I'm probably going to feel underwater for the next three months before I get the hang of it all. I love the job; and I hate that I love it, because it is very tiring and all-encompassing. I get emails at 1am -- and sometimes I answer them when I get up to pee. But so far this was the right decision. I will not say a GOOD decision because I am so tired and burnt out on people I had to take a vacation day to wash my unmentionables -- but it was the right decision.


• I'm now out of energy on this entry. Whoops. More later, then.