Monthly Archives: November 2019

Song: “Doop” by Doop

Mood: 7

Nightmares: 0

Ghosts: Pack

Just a real quick post to say I’m still around. Lately I haven’t had the oopmh I need to write something half-decent before bed. Today is no exception.

My visit with FA was fantastic, my mother-in-law is coming over this weekend, and I may be volunteering at the church for a bit on Friday, We’ll see.

So yes, I’m still around and I’m keeping very busy.

Stay safe.

Song: N/A

Mood: 6.5

Nightmares: 0

Ghosts: Pack

Just a quick entry today. I don’t actually remember if I fell asleep on the couch last night or not. I didn’t wake up with a headache or sore throat so I’m guessing I went to bed like a normal person.

Spent waaay too much time today melting, adding to, and re-solidifying suet for my feeder. Bought a cheap suet block and added smashed peanuts, shelled sunflower seeds, whole black oil sunflower seeds, and peanut butter. Next time I will be sure to leave the block out overnight so it’s warm, that way it won’t take forever because I’m trying to melt a block of -20C suet without making fried birdseed. J said the house smelled like peanut butter and popcorn when she got home.

Read an article today where a teacher lost her job because of workplace problems and PTSD, then lost her disability coverage when her employer’s psychiatrist argued she didn’t have PTSD:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/teacher-bullying-edmonton-public-schools-1.5367107

What happened to her is a nightmare, and reading it has left me feeling out of sorts. I know there is always another side to a story, but I feel quite badly for her and I hope she gets the assistance she needs and deserves.

Tomorrow I am going to volunteer at the church for a little while, we’ll see how it goes.

Stay safe.

Song: N/A

Mood: 6.5

Nightmares: 1

Ghosts: Lots

I just realized it’s quarter after midnight so I should get this stuff jotted down.

My day was alright. I didn’t fall asleep on the couch but I did have a nightmare (tent); fortunately, it wasn’t bad enough to get me out of bed.

Big thing today was that I drove myself to Dr C’s office this afternoon and on the way there, a guy turning onto the street I was on slipped and fell off his bicycle. He didn’t immediately get up – he sat there so I pulled over and tried to give him a hand. No helmet, grey clothes (it snowed out today) and no other preparation for riding a bike in snow but I’m just glad he’s okay. I picked up his bike, moved over, and he caught his breath as he sat on the end of the truck bed. Aside from a nasty bump on an elbow and getting the wind knocked out him, he came out of things okay. So, Rick, I hope you’re doing okay and you start wearing a helmet.

My Dr C appointment was tiring but went well. She has a thought that it may be the zopiclone that’s making me fall asleep on the couch and not really remembering that I did it. She suggested I speak to Dr W about it at our next appointment, which I will definitely do.

The evening was pretty calm but went by far too quickly.

I’m not sure what’s going on tomorrow at all. We shall see.

Stay safe.

Song: Theme From Bubble Bobble (Commodore 64 Game)

Mood: 7

Nightmares: 1

Ghosts: Several

One nightmare (life jackets) woke me up last night, but it wasn’t too bad and I was able to get back to sleep without having to go out to the living room for a while. I also didn’t fall asleep on the couch, so today I didn’t have a sore throat or headache.

J caught the plague so she was home today. She even got in the car and drove halfway to work but turned around and came back. I’m glad she did – even if she’s asleep down the hall, it’s so much nicer here when she’s around. She was feeling quite a bit better this afternoon but was fading in the evening again so I’m not sure what’s going to happen tomorrow. I hope she feels better!

I did another pass through the pile of papers and junk that came out of that desk yesterday and I think I can say that it’s done. Now I have to figure out how the stuff that’s supposed to go back in there should go back. I also found a lot of papers I need to scan. And a couple of books I want to read. And some parts I was looking for. And a whole lot of little screws that came out of… something.

J has some vitamin C tablets that she’s taking. They’re the bubbly kind that you’re supposed to put in water first, like an Alka-Seltzer. I figured I’d try one and decided that I’d skip putting it in water. Now my tongue feels really weird. Not sore, just… weird. Like I’m licking a bunch of tiny batteries. I’m pretty sure my wife thinks I’m dumb. She may not be entirely wrong.

Otherwise, today was pretty relaxed and laid back.

Tomorrow I have an appointment with Dr C but otherwise I’m not sure what’s going on.

Stay safe.

Song: Theme From Bubble Bobble (Commodore 64 Game)

Mood: 7

Nightmares: 0

Ghosts: Pack

I had a good time on Friday with FA. We had a delectable burrito lunch, talked about all kinds of stuff again, and went to the hardware store to do an aisle crawl for the first time in quite a while. I had a lot of fun and the time went by far too quickly.

The weekend was pretty good. J and I did some figuring for some of the junk in the house and we came up with a multi-step list of potential ideas for us to maybe try if we were feeling like it. We have too much stuff cluttered around the house; some of it needs to be thrown out and some of it needs to be sorted and put away. Baby steps, though – both of us can get overwhelmed if we try to do everything at once.

My sister called the other day and it looks like she and her family are going to make the trip out this way over the holidays! They’re going to stay at my folks’ place for most of their visit but will stay with us for a few days before they fly home! This is great news – we haven’t seen my nephews in a couple of years, and it’ll be fantastic to hang out with my sister and do stupid things with my brother-in-law. I do feel guilty about things, though – the reason they’re splitting up their holiday like that is because I still can’t get out to visit my parents or in-laws. Plus, my sister and her family moved to a new city about five years ago and we still haven’t been out to visit them, either. But… I’m not the one who suggested they spend time in two different places, so hopefully it’s not too much of a problem for anyone.

No nightmares for the last couple of days, which has been great, and I’m getting better at going to bed instead of falling asleep on the couch. Last night I fell asleep on the couch, but yeah… I’m getting better about it.

Today I did some more writing, designed and printed up some new stuff, and spent hours cleaning out and organizing the stuff that was in the top part of a desk in the dining room. It’s an old desk that was part of a set of bedroom furniture my parents bought me when I was… seven? Eight? Desk, chair, and captain’s bed. The desk is all that’s left now, and it’s still getting a lot of use. Unfortunately, part of that use was as a convenient place to stuff things when people came over, and it was at the point where the door wouldn’t close all the way. I still can’t believe how much stuff was packed into there.

After getting everything out and using WAY too much Orange Pledge to wipe the surface down, I’ve been going through all the papers and bills and envelopes and bits of scrap with writing on them, trying to figure out what needs to be kept, what needs to be thrown out, and what needs to be shredded. I’m on pass 3 now and the pile is much smaller than it was. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll get it done and then move onto the top drawer in the desk and see how awful it is in there…

Either our DVD player, cables, surround system, or Elementary DVD is messed up, so until we fix the problem J and I need to watch something else so we’re giving GLOW a try. So far, it has been waaaay different than we expected but still pretty good. They do a pretty good job of giving the show a sleazy, coked-out, low-budget mid-80s feeling. We’re only a couple of episodes in but I think we’ve agreed to keep going.

Tomorrow I have nothing scheduled except that I want to go through more stuff and hopefully find more junk to throw out or tidy up. I think there’s plenty more to go through in that desk.

Stay safe.

Song: Song from 1980s Finesse Shampoo Commercial (AGAIN)

Mood: 6.5

Nightmares: 0

Ghosts: Pack

Once again, I fell asleep on the couch, but this time I fell asleep with my legs crossed and propped up on the ottoman so in addition to the usual fell-asleep-on-the-couch issues, today I feel like my knees and ankles are made out of old screws wrapped in sandpaper. Woe is me, and extra woe because it’s my own damn fault again. I should set up a camera to see what actually happens. Do I say, “oh, I’m tired so I should get up aZZZZZZZZ,” or do is it something like, “I’m kinda comfy here so maybe I’ll just sit for a couple more minutZZZZZZZ,” or is there suddenly a really bright light that hypnotizes me and lifts me off the couch and up to a waiting flying saucer for a round of good old-fashioned alien probing?

No nightmares last night, though, which I’m quite happy about. Oh, and I woke up this morning with my CPAP hose wrapped around my neck and the machine just a couple of centimetres from falling off the nightstand. Part of me wonders if I was snoring a bit too much again and J got mad…

Another slow start today but things went alright and after I got up to speed I kept quite busy and got a lot of stuff done. Another thing done on the printer, some more tidying, some more writing, and some more thinking.

I had an idea for something else that I’d like to try that may also help some people out. Everybody knows about Wikipedia, but a while ago FA introduced me to the Simple English Wikipedia, where the articles should be just as detailed as Wikipedia but using “… Basic English vocabulary and shorter sentences,” as the main page for simple.wikipedia.org says. I used it for some of that volunteering I was doing and I looked up The Undertones. The Wikipedia article is about 3500 words long. The Simple English Wikipedia? 17. So maybe I can pitch in and do something about that. I should bounce this off FA – she knows a lot about the Wikipedia stuff.

I think I mentioned this a few days ago, but I don’t think I’ve noticed any problems (or anything at all, actually) from reducing the venlafaxine after my last appointment with Dr W. I think/hope this is a good sign that I’ll be able to reduce it some more in the future. I have no problem with taking medication that helps me, but if I can take less and still be okay, I’d rather do that.

The volunteering I was going to do tomorrow is off and we’ll pick up again next week. Instead, FA is going to come over tomorrow for another round of geeking out and scheming and burritos and talking and all kinds of stuff! I think we’re going to pay the hardware store a visit, too, which will be neat. There’s always at least a handful of unlabelled things in that store that neither of us have seen before so we spend time turning it over and trying to figure out what it is or what it does.

Stay safe.

Song: Song from 1980s Finesse Shampoo Commercial (stuck on very short loop, sigh…)

Mood: 6.5

Nightmares: 2?

Ghosts: Lots

I fell asleep on the couch again last night. I don’t know what’s changed – I don’t go sit on the couch because I’m tired, I’d much rather go to bed. I wake up hours later, phone on my lap or the floor (sometimes still playing a show), and stumble off to bed. This has led to quite a few days of sore throats and headaches and poor sleeps. I’m considering whether I should set an alarm on my phone to remind me (or wake me up and remind me) to go to bed.

I had more nightmares (tent) last night, too. I remember two – the first one wasn’t too bad but the second one had me up on my feet and feeling that inner tube winding tight around my chest. I was already out in the living room with the lights on, which I think was good, and after I calmed down I went to bed and held onto J until I fell asleep.

I woke up a couple of hours later and got out of bed an hour or so after that, then started my day. I spent quite a bit of time with the music way up… I hope the neighbours don’t hear it, and if they do hear it, I hope they don’t mind. I don’t turn it up until at least 11AM and it’s turned back down around 4PM.

J has an electronics project for me and I spent a good amount of time working on that. Some more stuff got printed, some more stuff got written down, and some more tidying got done. I’m starting to get better at timing things so I start thing A and let it go in the background while I work on thing B, etc.

Tomorrow is Thursday… I don’t think I have anything specific going on, but there is a lot of stuff to do so I intend to keep busy. I think I might volunteer again on Friday for a little while, but we’ll see how that goes. I like helping but at the same time I don’t want to waste my (or their) time if nothing is getting accomplished.

Stay safe.

Song: N/A

Mood: 7

Nightmares: 0

Ghosts: Lots

Just a quick post tonight. Things have been going along alright and nothing too exciting is going on, which is good.

The weekend went well but both J and I ended it feeling a little more tired and down than when we entered it. Neither of us is entirely sure why, but it is what it is. We finally got around to starting the final season of Elementary, and so far it’s been pretty good.

I didn’t accomplish a huge amount today. It’s been taking me a little longer to get out of bed lately – I’ve been spending a lot more time just staring up at the ceiling and rubbing my face while cursing myself to get out of bed. No nightmares last night, though, which was the first night in about a week.

FA called this afternoon and we geeked out about project-y stuff. Both of us are quite susceptible to wandering off on tangents or chasing things down rabbit holes, but I think that’s part of why we are good at figuring things out. One of us has an idea and drags the other along until they say “hang on a sec”. It was an interesting conversation.

J and I went and got our flu shots today. I don’t know if I’m getting tougher with age or if the needles are getting finer and finer, but I could barely feel it when I got poked. Way better than the hollowed-out piece of bent rebar they used to give us the DT shots back in high school.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time over the last few days fiddling around with designing parts and printing them up. I won’t dare say I’m even the least bit good at it, but I do enjoy it a lot and a lot less stuff is coming off the printer and going straight into the garbage or recycling now.

No appointments this week but I think I’m going to do some more volunteering on Friday. It’s been working pretty well so far and it gets me out of the house and talking with people, so that’s good. Plus, helping someone out makes me feel good, so that’s nice too.

Other than that, not a heck of a lot is going on. I thought I had another thing I wanted to write down but I can’t remember right now.

Stay safe.

Song: N/A

Mood: 6.5

Nightmares: 2?

Ghosts: Lots

I’m really foggy on what happened last night aside from two nightmares (lifejacket, tent) and some weird dreams. One of them got me out into the light of the living room again, which sucks. J has mentioned a couple of times that I’ve been restless in my sleep lately, too. The nightmares and poor sleep seem to happen for a few days or a week or so at a time, then go away. I haven’t made any changes to my nighttime medications, nor have I made any changes to my routine or diet, etc. It is not fun to be worried/scared about what’s going to happen when you’re sleeping.

I also had some pretty weird dreams (I don’t count dreams as nightmares unless they wake me up I feel like I’m going to panic). I don’t remember most of them, but one stands out – I was arguing with Willie Nelson over a Popular Science magazine in the checkout line of the K-Mart in the town where I grew up. Don’t ask – I don’t have a clue.

So I’m pretty beat. I didn’t accomplish much today, but I did drive to my Dr C appointment without incident, which felt pretty good. The appointment itself was very tiring and I could hear myself stammering, trying to find words that usually come pretty easily. We talked quite a bit about Halloween and how/why it bothers me, which was quite difficult. We are still working on me getting out of the house, as well as ghost chasing while I’m home, but we are now also working on my sleep. Apparently there is some new research about sleep that… I can’t remember right now, but I do remember it making good sense at the time. Something about how your brain regulates deep sleep vs REM sleep… argh. Anyway, I’m starting in on a sleep diary tonight and will do it for the next two weeks, then we’ll see what we can do.

After the appointment, I went to pick up the groceries J and I ordered last night; that also went without incident, and the person who brought out the order thanked me for the silly comments I put for some of the items in the online order form. Hopefully she was being serious. I should probably go check and see if the eggs are all broken or the condensed milk cans have been licked…

Speaking of ghosts, with the colder weather here, the house is making all kinds of different noises again, and they’re difficult to ignore unless my mind is really occupied with something or I’m muffling or drowning the sounds out somehow. I know what a lot of them are or can figure them out pretty easily, which is good, but they’re still quite a distraction, and another thing that’s worse when I’m tired.

I also got notice of two appointments for tests coming up in the next couple of months. It will be nice when everything’s done and figured out or fixed or whatever.

I forgot to mention yesterday (or Tuesday… or Monday) that FA came over on Monday for a visit and to geek out about some projects she’s working on. We had a good chat (as always), and (as always) the conversation snaked around and took all kinds of odd turns to different subjects. I often find myself amazed at how much ground we cover when I’m reflecting on the day later. Plus, we had delicious burritos for lunch and fit in a few games of Carcassonne!

Tomorrow I plan to volunteer at the church for a little while. Other than that, I think it’s going to be a quiet day. Then, on to the weekend.

Stay safe.