Feeling Some Pressure

Song: “King Porter Stomp” by Benny Goodman

Mood: 6.5

Nightmares: 0

Ghosts: Horde

Very quick post because I need to get to bed early this evening.

I slept pretty well again last night, and got out of bed feeling a little less dumb than usual.

Went out for a walk, I had to wear pants again.

Chased lots of ghosts today for some reason. Most were coming from downstairs. Someone knocked and rang the doorbell two different times today, which didn’t help either.

I did some tidying up and spent some more time playing with that Arduino that FA gave me a while ago. Man, it’s quick to get something set up and going! I’ve been a PIC fan for over 15 years but I think I’ll be making room for both PICs and Arduinos.

I’ve been feeling a lot of pressure today for some reason. I can’t seem to get enough done or even figure out what I’m trying to do. I suspect it’s temporary.

FA is coming over tomorrow morning! I am looking forward to seeing her; it will be interesting to see what kind of capers we get up to!

Tomorrow afternoon I have an appointment with Dr W. I don’t expect anything too big to happen. At least, I hope nothing big happens.

Stay safe.

Out For A While

Song: N/A

Mood: 6.5

Nightmares: 0

Ghosts: Horde

The weekend was kind of a blur. I don’t remember where the time went but I did get in a lot of thinking and working on things, so that’s good. I slept pretty well last night – no nightmares and I remember waking up three times worrying about the garage door, but I didn’t have to get out of bed for any of them.

This morning was alright. I got up, had some cereal and fried up a couple of eggs (I messed up my flip and mangled them pretty badly), and went about my usual morning routine. Things were a little more hectic this morning, though, because I had to get ready for a Dr C appointment at 1PM.

I scrambled around the house a bit and then found that I was over-thinking things and I had more time than I thought. I feel kind of bad now for sending out a tiny generic text to everyone this morning, I usually like to write them all one at a time.

Anyway, when I figured out I still had a couple of hours before I even needed to start getting ready, I looked at the disaster of datasheets and screws and breadboards and batteries and a statistics book (seriously), and decided I was going to do something else. I put on some pants (I know I said I was going to wear shorts until October but it was only +2C and when I go outside I don’t want to start out uncomfortable if I can help it), grabbed my keys, and headed out to the garage.

I think I’m pretty comfortable saying that the coolant leak in the truck has been fixed. I looked around at the various engine juices and things, then disconnected the battery tender, closed the hood, got in the truck, and went for a drive.

I did my usual little round of the neigbourhood, driving around the various bays and crescents in the area (everyone seems to be putting stones in the flowerbeds this year) and taking it pretty easy. I had my music on, the truck started and ran just fine, and I wasn’t cold because I was wearing pants. I saw one postal worker out delivering mail, but aside from him there were no other pedestrians. A few other cars, but when I can see them and know they’re there, things aren’t too bad.

After a while, I argued with myself for a while and then decided to turn onto one of the busier streets around home. Traffic was light and there were a few people waiting at bus stops or walking down the street (one guy standing at a bus stop had his thumbs stuck in his eyes for some reason), and after a minute or two I felt better about what I was doing and drove a little farther… and a little farther. I either had a better morning than usual or I’m getting better about not freaking out about stuff at the house when I’m away for a couple of minutes, because while all the usual stuff kept popping into my head, I was able to keep from dropping everything and getting home ASAP.

I kept driving until I’d almost made it to where I used to work (I wasn’t going there on purpose, it just happened to be along the road I was on). Things were going well enough that I was considering driving myself to my Dr C appointment this afternoon, but between thinking about that and thinking about work, things started to break down. I turned around in a coffee shop parking lot and headed back home. By the time I got back, I’d been out driving for about half an hour.

It was VERY good to be back home, and I felt that odd mix of being pleased and embarrassed with myself at the same time. Pleased because I haven’t driven that long or that far for quite some time, and embarrassed because there was a time when I could hop in the car and do a two or three hour drive without hesitation. Those days are gone, though. I don’t doubt that sometime (hopefully soon) I’ll be able to take J to an appointment for once, or drive to FA’s place with burritos, or even go out of town to see my parents, but I don’t think things will ever be the same as they were. Maybe that’s a good thing.

I still had some time after I got home before I had to get ready for my appointment, so I puttered around with some electronics stuff. I think I am happy with my little water detector, so as soon as I get some printed circuit prototype boards, I’m going to build it and toss it under the dishwasher, maybe sprinkle some water on it once in a while. A couple of people I’ve mentioned it to have expressed interest in it, so I may have the opportunity to make a couple more and have them go to good use. Since it was still blinking and doing its thing, I brought it and a handful of other stuff downstairs and made my giant messy pile on the dining room table a little smaller.

DA texted me over the weekend and asked me if I would be interested in helping him further secure his cabin. I told him I was interested and could probably help him out but haven’t heard back yet. Still, it’s another thing for me to think about. We used to hang out on our work breaks and sketch out ideas on a whiteboard and hammer out details. Things are a lot slower when doing them through text or email.

I made sure I had some extra time today before the taxi showed up to take me to my appointment, so I left the house with nary a drop of sweat on my brow. My appointment was difficult today, though, so by the time it was over, I was pretty gross. I wonder if she wipes down the chair with ammonia or something after I leave. Dr C and I have been working on the relationship between what’s realistically likely to happen in a given situation, and the fears or assumptions I have that prevent me from being able to do things comfortably or not at all. We are also going to start working on my memory and how I can be more comfortable with trusting it again. It feels like there is progress going on but I really wish she could just hypnotize me or something and reprogram me so that I have a normal amount of risk aversion and see things like how most other people do.

After I got home, my afternoon didn’t go all that well. Someone whom I suspect has a tiny wiener repeatedly driving their man-truck around the neighbourhood, an odd low booming sound coming from somewhere outside, and swearing I kept hearing something in the basement, I spent far too much time chasing ghosts. My right hand is also especially tingly today, and picking up electronic parts and little tiny screws got very frustrating very quickly.

J got home at around 6PM. She’d stopped by a store to pick up a couple of groceries, and we ended up having banana split yogurts for supper. Take a yogurt, chop some banana (without the peels) into it, toss in some granola, and add a maraschino cherry, and you’re off to the races. It was very tasty, but now I need to somehow keep myself from raiding the fridge and eating the remaining cherries.

We talked for a while and then did our own things for a couple of hours before watching a Brooklyn Nine-Nine. It was a pretty great episode. Best exchanges:

Jake: “I even told them that Scully was a Make-A-Wish kid with a rare disease that makes him look like a giant old baby.”

Rosa: “Did you call it Scullyosis?”

Jake: “Dammit Rosa, that’s really good and completely useless to me now!”

And:

Amy: “Our union health plan has a 100% reimbursement for out-of-state ambulance rides. Scully will fake a medical emergency.”

Scully: “Don’t need to fake it – always having at least one.”

Amy: “Great.”

I have no appointments tomorrow and J is taking an evening class so I won’t see her until around 8:30PM or so. I plan to do some cleaning up around the house, I want to work on some electronics stuff, I have some things I’d like to print up, and I will go for another walk. On Wednesday, FA may be coming over and then I have a Dr W appointment in the afternoon.

I have a few things left I’d like to get done before I head toward bed so I think I’ll end this post now.

Stay safe.

About Last Night…

Song: N/A

Mood: 6.5

Nightmares: 0

Ghosts: Lots

Quite some time ago – before I started this site – one of the problems that I was working on with Dr C was how my OCD was impacting things like my email at work. It would take 20 minutes to write a sentence, and sometimes hours to put together an email that was only a paragraph or two long. I would agonize over every letter and punctuation mark, worried that I would upset someone or that there would be a mistake (or mistakes) that would make me look like an idiot. We worked on that for quite a while, and I still work hard to make sure that when I write something, I go over it once and only once and then send/post/print it.

With that in mind, I try to avoid going back over my posts during the day and I try to just give them a quick look when I’m writing the next one to make sure that I’m not repeating myself too badly. So… I had no idea what happened to my post last night until just a few minutes ago. I remember starting up LibreOffice and typing… something, and then that really thick, heavy feeling I sometimes get from my evening medications settled over me. Beyond that is just static with a brief interlude of me walking around the kitchen, rubbing my face. I’m a little amused and a little embarrassed.

What happened yesterday during the day was I had an appointment with Dr H. Things went pretty good for the most part: routine bloodwork was good, my cholesterol is down and my kidneys and liver are doing just fine, she’s sending me to get the nerves in my right arm tested (oooo electrical shocks, my favourite), and she gave me directions as to what to do for exercise. Then we talked a bit about what feels like a chest cold that’s come and gone for the last month and a half or so. Between that, my past history, and some other things, she was worried that I had blood clots in my lungs again. It was kind of weird seeing her look down at the desk and mutter, “I don’t want to miss that if that’s what’s happening”. We talked about allergies and asthma, but in the end she sent me to get some tests done immediately so I went next door to the hospital to get them done.

About an hour after J and I got home, the phone rang. It was Dr H’s nurse, calling to tell me that the tests were negative and there weren’t any clots. That was a relief, but I honestly didn’t think that clots were the problem because they felt a lot different. Thing is, I started noticing the weirdness in my chest around the same time the snow disappeared and all that dust and dead leaves and crap were blowing around in the air. So… I now get to go for a lung function test and Dr H is prescribing me a puffer.

So yes – there’s nothing to worry about.

I’m still keeping myself busy and thinking during the day. I find that I seem to hit a bit of a lull in the evening and I want to close my eyes, but I perk up again a little while later. Since I cleaned the printer after the most recent disaster, it’s been working better than it has in months. I didn’t realize that it wasn’t working as well as it had been, so I think I’m going to give it a really good once-over once a week.

I’m also still playing with electronics, did some sewing, and had the microscope out again. J has been incredibly patient with my hobby crap slowly expanding to cover every horizontal surface in the house (thanks sweetie!!!) and I think she humours me sometimes when I babble on about stuff I’m trying to do, but I think/hope she likes that I’m using my brain again instead of sitting around watching Knight Rider or counting my toes over and over.

More of the items I’ve ordered have trickled in. I’m the happy owner of a little monocular spyglass thing (much less cumbersome when spying on the neighbours), a box of M3 screws and nuts, a handful of PIR sensors, and some sticky silicon rubber pads. I kind of like how it’s showing up one or two things a week – I’m not desperate for any of the stuff so it’s kind of like a surprise when something shows up.

That bluetooth stereo thing that J got for her work anniversary has been working really well – much better than the old set of computer speakers I put out a long time ago. I really enjoy the music and it helps relax me, motivate me, drowns out some of the sounds/noises that bother me, and it just feels good to listen to.

Hrm… I’ve kind of been all over the place here. Let’s see… today went pretty well. Lots of printer stuff, some spray sealant (blurrrgh), and watching as a pair of generic AA batteries slowly discharges to 2.0V. It’s been, uh, four days now? Something like that. Down to 2.1V, hopefully tomorrow they’ll be done. Oh, and two parcels were waiting at the local post office so J picked me up after work and we went to pick them up. I can’t remember if I said it in a text or in a blog post, but I started wearing shorts the other day and I’ll keep wearing them until October. Well, today almost made me change my mind. It was pretty brisk out there.

J is heading out to visit her folks for the weekend (have a good trip, sweetie!!!), so I’ll be batchin’ it. I am prepared, though – I have a big list of things (both fun and not so fun) to do, good music to listen to, some shows to watch, and, just in case, I have some emergency cash on hand just in case the pizza guy’s mobile debit/credit machine doesn’t work.

I could probably keep babbling on but it’s midnight so I should finish this up. Have a good night and a good day tomorrow, everyone!

Stay safe (WTH is “Syau”???).

Nothing To Worry About

Song: “Particle Man” by They Might Be Giants

Mood: 6.5

Nightmares: 0

Ghosts: Several

Now it’s half past midnight and I already can’t focus or type properly.

Sorry, folks. It’s far too late, I’m far too tired, and I’m making a ton of mistakes,

I will post about today sometime tomorrow.

Syau

Keeping My Brain Occupied

Song: “A Little Respect” by Erasure

Mood: 7

Nightmares: 0

Ghosts: Pack

Blugh… I just looked at the clock and it’s already midnight. Guess this’ll be a short post.

I’m afraid to say anything, but things aren’t too shabby. No nightmares for a little while now, I’ve only been worrying about things three or four times a night, and I’ve only had to get up to check in on things a handful of times. I’ve also been quite busy the last couple of days, doing a lot of thinking and actually getting some things done.

Okay, I just wrote five paragraphs about a print that failed yesterday and my attempt today. In the interest of not boring everyone and trying to avoid getting carpal tunnel (I was only about halfway through the story), I decided to replace it with this helpful bullet list:

  • Mark start print
  • Print take much time
  • Mark check back nine hours later
  • VERY BAD. PETG EVERYWHERE. VERY VERY EVERYWHERE. PRINTER VERY BAD, FANS VERY BAD, WHEELS VERY BAD. BAD BAD BAD.
  • Mark take two hour taking printer apart and chipping, tweezing, snipping, brushing plastic away
  • Mark check Internet for help. Internet NO MAKE UP ITS MIND. Mark give up on Internet and steps out on his own
  • Mark find and change settings he never seen before and not know how work
  • Mark try print again next morning. Mark sit by print all 11 hours just in case.
  • Mark watch old episode of Captain… CAAAAEEEVVVEEE MAAAEEEAAAEEEAAAEEEAANNNN!!!
  • Print work perfect. Mark no understand. No glob, no web, no nest, no hair, nothing. Maybe Mark lucky. Maybe Mark genius! Maybe printer lonely and want Mark nearby.
  • Unga bunga

One of the nice things about working in the basement with the printer and some music on is that it drowns out a lot of the indoor and outdoor sound that I’d normally hear and couldn’t figure out. So, ghosts weren’t too bad today, which was a nice treat.

Being downstairs gave me some time to get a bunch of other things done that I’ve been waiting for, and I have some appointments tomorrow that I need to get some things ready for.

Tomorrow will be a good day – J has the day off and I am eager to talk to Dr H about test results and things like my arm/hand and get back home, although depending on how things go, J and I may stop at a store for a few minutes. Don’t know which one, don’t really have anything to buy, I should just get out of the house more, especially with this wonderful weather.

Stay safe.

Interesting Article About Childhood Anxiety And Possible Treatments

I was going through my usual morning RSS feeds while eating breakfast, and I came across this article from Science News:

“When anxiety happens as early as preschool, treatments can help”, by Sujata Gupta for ScienceNews.

Do you know one of those kids who’s afraid to try anything, thinks that everyone is going to hate them or make fun of them, or can’t tolerate being unable to see their parents? It seems there is no lower limit to the age where excessive anxiety or an anxiety disorder can appear. The article mentions that there have been experiments done that have identified children that are overly cautious or anxious, and the researchers discovered that many of those children grow into adults who have anxiety disorders.

Researchers also think they have identified the parts of the brain involved, and what about those parts causes the problem.

The great news is that a particular kind of CBT that’s customized for kids appears to work in almost two-thirds of cases. A combination therapy with CBT and an antidepressant (they used sertraline) seems to work about 80% of the time. As it’s still a new and somewhat experimental approach, it’s not widely available yet, but the researchers’ success so far bodes well for being able to help children and potentially keep them from suffering from anxiety disorders as adults!

Stay safe.

The Flop Sweat Experiment

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m not a fan of hot weather. Not to be any more disgusting than I have to, but I sweat. A lot. Yes, I’m fat, and yes, I have an armoire full of black shirts, pants, and shorts, but there’s something else going on, too.

I remember one New Year’s Eve when I was in high school. I was driving friends home from a party (I was always the designated driver). Some of them lived out in the country, so there I was, squinting through thick clouds of blowing snow. It was so cold (below -33C) and so windy that my car wasn’t warming up, and to keep the breath of five people (four yelling and joking around) from fogging up the windows, I ran the defroster on full blast. It felt like my eyes were going to freeze in their sockets. I was cold – very cold, and nervous – very nervous. Despite the cold, I could feel sweat running down my chest in little icy rivulets. Once I finally dropped off my last passenger and made it home, I took off my jacket and was surprised to find my shirt was soaked with sweat.

Fast-forward to my first year of university. My vector mechanics final exam. I knew I was unprepared but had crammed as much as I could into my brain over the previous day. I made my way into the gym and sat down on one of those crappy metal folding chairs, staring at a very thick pile of exam pages turned face down. The TAs supervising the exam called out, telling us we could start and we had three hours. I flipped my exam over.

At the top, it said “IMMUNOLOGY”.

In hindsight, I probably would’ve done better on the immunology exam than I did on the vector mechanics exam, but at the time, I thought I was going to throw up. My skin felt prickly everywhere and I started to sweat like crazy. It only took maybe 30 seconds for me to get mildly scolded by a TA and moved to a table with the correct exam, but it really knocked me for a loop. As I tried to concentrate on the exam, I had to keep wiping my forehead and I could feel the sweat running down my chest, back, and sides.

Three hours later, they announced the end of the exam. I wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. I stood up, felt something kind of weird, looked down, and sat right back down, fiddling with my pencils and staring at my watch until almost everyone else had left. Turns out I had sweat so much that I’d soaked right through my shirt and jeans and there was a puddle on the chair. I got up again, cleaned it up as best as I could, dropped my exam off at the front table, and ran as fast as I could to get back to my room so I could change. It was humiliating.

A few years later I was dating J and her parents came into town. They took us out for dinner and as we sat around talking, I said something (I don’t remember what anymore) that I was worried that sounded wrong or dumb. Nobody said anything or acted any different, but I felt that familiar prickly sensation and I started getting the sweats. I had to excuse myself from the table four or five times so I could go to the washroom and run cold water over my face and hands, and use the hand dryer to dry the sweat out of my hair.

So yeah, I’ve got a history of the flop sweats, although they used to only show up when I was in some kind of high-pressure situation. Since I got sick, though, I get a good flop sweat going for almost any reason. Getting ready to go for a walk? Flop sweat. FA coming over? Flop sweat. My parents coming into town? Flop sweat. Dr C appointment? Sitting in the truck? Setting something up? Measuring something important? Threading my sewing machine? Getting into a cab? Installing a new app on my phone? Walking through the hardware store? Taking a shower before going out or someone coming over? Waiting for a package on the day it’s supposed to be delivered?

Flop sweat.

Something that really gets me about this whole thing is that I may only be a little anxious about something in the first place and just get a little sweaty, but then I start worrying about the fact that I’m visibly sweating and what are they going to think when they see this and why is this happening… I sweat because I’m sweating! It’s stupid and annoying and embarrassing.

A little while ago I decided to try and figure out if there was anything I could do to lessen the frequency or magnitude of sweaty armpits. Two things came to mind for me to try that could possibly make a big difference: flop sweat when I’m getting ready to go out or have someone over, and lessening the visibility of the sweat after it happens.

For the first thing, I needed to figure out why just taking a shower would get me nervous. I thought about it for a while and realized that one (or more) of four songs play in my head:

The theme from the Commodore 64 game Zarjaz. Speed it up to about 50 percent faster than usual. This is the one that gets stuck in my head the most. I have no idea why – I haven’t played Zarjaz since 1992 or so.

“Rockin’ Robin” – the original Bobby Day version, but about 25 percent faster than it’s supposed to go.

The theme from the Commodore 64 game Commando, bumped up 50%. Again, no idea why. I remember the music from a lot of C64 games, but this and Zarjaz are the only two that get stuck in my head. What I would give to get Hover Bovver stuck in my head sometime.

“The Circus Bee”, by Henry Fillmore. I was in a band that played this back in… 1992? 1993? It’s already pretty fast, but bump it up 25% and that’s more like what plays in my head. It’s a great song, but at the wrong time it definitely contributes to my anxiety.

I like uptempo music, but for whatever reason, those four songs play extra fast, get stuck in my head, and make me nervous. The good news is, all I had to do was play another song loud enough that it drowned out anything I was thinking and my brain fixated on the song that was coming from OUTSIDE my head. So far, it’s been “Mr. Blue Sky” by ELO. It’s a great song, uptempo and happy, and it’s one of those songs where so many things are going on that I don’t think I will get tired of it for a long, long time. It’s been over a month now and it’s been pretty consistent with keeping me from going back to those four songs and getting nervous.

As for hiding the sweats when they happen, I wasn’t entirely sure what to do. I’ve been wearing black clothes pretty much exclusively for the last 18 years or so because they don’t show sweat as much as, say, a red shirt would. Nowadays, though, that’s not enough. It could be because my confidence and self-esteem vary from ‘nonexistent’ to ‘maybe tomorrow’, it could be because I have the kind of complexion where someone can look at me and tell if I’m lying or embarrassed or any number of emotions, it could be that I’m disgusted and embarrassed at the idea of being the only person sweating in an air-conditioned room.

Since I got sick, I’ve carried a handkerchief around with me whenever I go out, just in case I need to dab (or swab) my forehead, neck, or even if I have to squeeze some extra sweat out of my hair (I’m sorry, I know it’s gross). Sometimes, the hankie doubles as a fidget toy and I fold and unfold it over and over. Most of my worry in this department is about beads of sweat forming on my forehead or the top of my head and running down my face.

My experiment for this problem? A hat. I have a big floppy one that I wear outside when I’m doing yard work but I needed something a little less… silly. J bought me a baseball cap a while ago and, while I’ve never really been a baseball cap person, I find that wearing it while I’m out (and sometimes when people come over) helps tremendously when it comes to ye olde flop sweate. Not only does it hide any sweat that shows up on my forehead, it also absorbs and keeps the sweat from going anywhere. It doesn’t do anything about sweat getting into the hair at the back of my head, but with the other things minimized, I feel a lot less uncomfortable so I sweat a lot less and my hair stays dry.

Jeebus… I’ve gone on about this for two and a half pages. I guess the takeaway from this is that there are aspects of my behaviour that I seem to be able to do something about, and it doesn’t take a huge investment of time or effort. Being able to break out of that loop where I’m nervous about getting all sweaty and gross, then I start sweating, then I get more nervous, then I sweat more… breaking out of that loop helps me in a few ways. Sure, I’m still going to get nervous and sweat like crazy when I’m at the dentist, but at least I won’t have had sweaty pits two minutes after I got out of the shower, and I won’t have to worry about people seeing me sweat in the waiting room.

So yeah… I’ve figured out how to lower the number of times I have to change shirts during the day. I know it sounds silly, but every bit helps.

Stay safe.

A Very Brain-y Two Days

Song: N/A

Mood: 7

Nightmares: 0

Ghosts: Several

Just a quick post since it’s getting late. Yesterday and today went pretty well; J had today off and it was wonderful that she was around.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and figuring about all kinds of stuff. Making lots of progress in some areas, not so much in others, but it’s all good. My brain keeps trying to do that spiralling thing where I overthink something to a ridiculous degree; fortunately, I’m getting better at noticing when that happens and stopping, short-circuiting, or redirecting it.

I think I mentioned a while ago how some of my fingers get tingly and go numb once in a while. My right hand in particular has been annoying – sometimes I don’t notice anything, but sometimes the area between my elbow and the tip of my pinky finger is all tingly and weird. I’ve been wearing the brace that Dr H prescribed but it doesn’t seem to be doing the trick. Ah well… I have an appointment next week.

J got a reward for working with the company she’s at for X number of years, and she picked a bluetooth speaker/FM stereo/aux jack player. We set it up last night and it’s been pretty great so far – much better and easier to use than the old system I kludged together.

Tomorrow I think J and I are going to watch some more shows, and I plan to continue working on the projects that I’ve been thinking about and puttering with.

Stay safe.

Forgot To Post Yesterday

Song: “Pumped Up Kicks” by Foster The People

Mood: 7

Nightmares: 0

Ghosts: Several

I realized last night as I stumbled toward bed that I’d forgotten to do a post. The evening got away from me, I guess. Not a big deal.

I think the biggest thing that stands out about yesterday is how warm it was. I went for a walk, wearing a t-shirt, shorts, and my faithful but tacky Crocs. I got a couple of odd looks but the air and sunlight felt very good. I also went and stood out on the deck and enjoyed the feeling of the decking warming up my feet. I also spent a lot of time working on the PIC stuff and I made a lot of progress. It’s nice but a little depressing when I finally manage to figure out something that I knew pretty well 10 or 15 years ago.

I woke up quite a few times last night to worry about things, mainly the garage door and whether the fridge door was closed. The pictures I took during my evening rounds were enough to let me get back to sleep within 10 or 15 minutes. I also woke up with a pretty nasty headache at some point, and had a very strange dream about the dishwasher door falling off and water going everywhere. It wasn’t a nightmare, though, and it didn’t wake me up.

Today went by very quickly. J was working from home today but she had to go out and do some work-related stuff around 11:30AM. With the less than stellar sleep that I’d had, I didn’t really accomplish all that much in the morning and when J got home from her work thing, I was sitting on the upstairs couch, half zoned-out.

I had an appointment with Dr C this afternoon. J dropped me off as she was on the way to an appointment of her own. The appointment was quite tiring but between some anti-flop sweat things I’ve been trying, taking some PRNs a little while before leaving, J driving (instead of me taking a cab), and being able to sit there alone in the waiting room and do mindfulness exercises while waiting, I was able to pay much better attention and actually make some eye contact with Dr C today. She is very encouraging about me trying to keep my brain momentum going and she wants me to pay attention to and enjoy the successes that I have while doing things. She also has a colleague that she is going to consult with about some different approaches for OCD treatment; she mentioned some things about memory confidence. I think Dr P and I worked on that stuff for a while but I am happy to try anything to make more headway.

Dr C just moved offices recently and this past week the whole floor got new furniture. It’s… nice… I suppose. I mean, it looks fine, but it’s not the same as the old, comfortable chairs. Things are also positioned differently and that will take a bit of getting used to. The waiting room is different now, too, but I think that’s a good thing – the way it was set up right after they moved was pretty cramped, drab, and it felt weird.

After my appointment was done, I sat out in the waiting room, put “Get Over You” by The Undertones on repeat, closed my eyes and did mindfulness exercises for about 40 minutes until J swung by to pick me up after she had finished her appointment. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to sit there for that long (calling a cab was always a possibility) but things worked out and I saved almost $40 by not using taxis at all today. Not bad.

This evening, J and I watched more Brooklyn Nine-Nine. We’re getting close to the end of what’s available online… I suppose we’re going to go back to iZombie after we’ve run out. Or maybe we’ll start at the beginning again. Or watch Community again. God, that’s a great show.

Tomorrow I will be home alone again with no appointments to worry about. I plan to go for another walk (I started wearing shorts on Monday and intend to keep wearing them until Fall), see if I can make more progress on my water detectors, play around with that Arduino that FA gave me, listen to some records, do some sewing, putter around in the truck, maybe go for a drive, tidy up the garage… there’s no way I’ll do most of those things, and even doing some of them might be a stretch, but if I don’t set any goals, I won’t get anything done.

Stay safe.

Go Ahead And Ad-Block My Site

I’ve been having an email conversation with FA about ad-blocking software, and it reminded me that I haven’t gone and changed my WordPress theme yet. I meant to do that a while ago but for some reason or other I didn’t get to it.

Anyway, I hate online ads. I didn’t mind them so much when they were off to the side, or the occasional inline ad. Nowadays, though, with the auto running videos that play sound, or being forced to watch a 30 second video before being able to watch a 12 second video, or the various other annoying pop-ups that get in the way… it gets old pretty quick. And I don’t like when company A hears from Company B that I was looking at Product C on Website D.

All that being said, please go ahead and block the crap out of my site. I don’t make any money from this site, and unless it suddenly becomes some sort of Internet juggernaut (which I’m really, REALLY not expecting), I plan to keep things the way they are. If anything changes, I will make sure to make it very obvious in a future post.

Block adverts, don’t accept cookies, block trackers… go nuts. It’s fine by me. In fact, I encourage it.

Stay safe.