Song: “A Little Respect” by Erasure
Mood: 6
Nightmares: 0
My medication is really clobbering me right now so this is probably going to be a pretty short post. Sorry about that.
I didn’t have any nightmares again last night. That’s been three nights in a row since that last batch of them. Hopefully they’ll stay away for a while now. I woke up three or four times worrying, though, and had to get out of bed to go sit in the light out in the living room for a little while to calm down.
It’s weird – sometimes to calm down, a quiet and dark room helps a lot; other times, I need bright light and to see living things moving around. On occasion, I’ll still wake up suddenly without a clue where I am, and having the dim light filtering into the room from the front of the house helps a lot.
I went for my walk again this morning. It was quite a bit cooler than I’d expected and quite windy. Unfortunately, I went in a short, t-shirt, and crocs again, so I was shuffling even faster than normal.
My exercises went not too badly. Lots of distractions and guilt but I was able to refocus on what I was doing each time and got through it. I hope this trend continues – I can feel the difference for the rest of the day when my exercises go well.
Did more exposure with the toaster. With the way it’s going, I’m just going to do it for the rest of this week and then I’m going to change to something else.
J got two parcels delivered today. The first one is a blind for the deck door. I opened it and it looked great, but then the smell hit me. I have no idea what the smell was, but it was terrible. I had to put it down in the basement to let it offgas or finish whatever chemical reaction it was undergoing. If it still stinks that bad tomorrow, I’m putting it out in the garage. Don’t need that in the kitchen, no way.
The second parcel contained a movie (the original version of Overboard with Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn) and a new uSD card for my phone. I was running out of space on it and, after copying data from the old uSD card to the new one, I now have a whole bunch more usable space. Lots more space for pictures or recordings of sessions or music or games or movies or whatever.
My sister called this afternoon. We’ve been keeping out Wednesday phone calls going and it’s been great! We talked about all kinds of things. My nephew just got his orange belt in Taekwondo and is really excited. We also talked a lot about the movies we’ve seen lately and ones we want to see. My sister and her family are way ahead of J and me (and J is way ahead of me), and I really want to see Black Panther and Infinity War, but for obvious reasons I need to wait to be able to order them on DVD or Blu-Ray.
Also this afternoon, my area did a test with the Emergency Alert System. I was completely expecting it, and I turned the volume on my phone down so the emergency tones wouldn’t bug me too much. I knew when they were running the test, so I was holding my phone in my hand, staring and waiting. Right when the time clicked over to the test time, my phone went crazy. The volume went up to full, the phone vibrated, and the tone sounded for what I thought was way too long:
A text message also popped up on the screen with a big red icon next to it and information (in this case, that the alert was a test).
Even though I’d been expecting it, it still startled the heck out of me. I’m all for emergency preparedness and Amber alerts, but I really hope my phone doesn’t do that at 3AM. Man, I hate that sound.
Had my appointment with Dr W today. J stopped at home to pick me up and we talked for a couple of minutes before we left. Traffic was okay but on one of the main roads we take there was a lot of construction, which slowed us down quite a bit. We made it to the hospital with less than a minute to spare. The appointment was difficult (as I had expected), and I forgot to bring along any of those anxiety toys I’d talked about to keep from wringing a hole in my hand again. Fortunately, I had a handkerchief in my pocket so I took it out and directed my fidgeting into it.
Dr W was curious about how I was feeling (not much difference from two weeks ago), whether I was still seeing my therapist (he’s on vacation), whether I’m doing the tasks that my therapist asked me to do (yes), and whether I had noticed anything from the medication changes we made two weeks ago (no). So we went ahead and made some more changes: we discontinued the sertraline (which was the very first antidepressant I’d been put on – by my old GP) and increased the venlafaxine to 450mg. I’m a little concerned about dropping the sertraline but Dr W said I shouldn’t notice it. So that’s one more drug I’m not taking. Sure, another one has been increased, but the fewer bottles I need to go through, the better, I think.
After I was done, I left Dr W’s office and J went in to speak with him about that letter we got from the insurance company earlier this week. Apparently, all is well in that department (although it still freaks me out and makes me very uncomfortable).
After we got home, we had supper. I gave my parents a very quick call to say hi just before we ate. After that, we did some of our own stuff and then watched another episode of Boston Legal. With all the stuff that Alan Shore argued in that show, I have a funny feeling that if they did a revival of the show that the Shore character would either be insane or had quit law and become a vigilante or heavy equipment operator. So many of the battles he won in the Boston Legal courtrooms were lost in real-life Federal cases, or by lobby groups buying politicians, or by gerrymandering districts. Yeah, I think Alan Shore would be a much different character if he’d been here to see how real life has turned out.
Not sure what I’m going to do tomorrow but I think I’m going to send a bunch of texts and maybe give my parents another call. Oh, and I want to put that new uSD card to the test. It looks good so far.
Please pardon spelling or grammar errors, or even if it looks like chunks of text are missing or don’t make any sense – my batteries are pretty much completely flat and I need to get to bed.
Stay safe.