Category Archives: Diary

(first world) disaster averted

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The cable company raised Mom’s rates, so she called to negotiate.  In order to get the rate back down to what it was before, she had to accept a bundle deal which included a cable upgrade and the addition of internet service.

The only computer they have is my old one, which I called Mother, which I purchased in 2001.  It runs Windows XP, and has a 40G hard drive, and something like 256M of RAM, or maybe 512, I forget.  I quit using it because by the time it had a firewall and anti-virus, needed to go online, it no longer had enough oomph to run anything else much.  My brother, who lives with my parents, adopted it because he didn’t have a computer at all, never mind internet.  It was perfectly ok for running the older games he liked–think Dungeon Keeper.

When he took Mother, I got my first new laptop, which I think I called Ripley.  I used it for two years, then the hard disc died so we replaced it with a larger one.  By then I was in Graphic Design classes, and Ripley couldn’t run the advanced Photoshop features I needed, such as 3D, so sadly I replaced her with my current laptop, Big Mama.  I love Big Mama, who has an actual number pad and a backlit keyboard, and cool chicklet keys, but I still have an affection for Ripley.  At first I downgraded her to a “beater” and carried her around in my bookbag.  Then Zor moved out and when she moved back in, she had no laptop, so I let her use Ripley.

Last winter, Zor finally saved up enough to buy a better laptop of her own, and Ripley came home.  But meanwhile I’d been having trouble running After Effects on Big Mama, so Mr Moth gave me one of his old laptops to try it out on.  Unfortunately my health/cognitive issues derailed me, and I never did use that laptop, and suddenly I have three.  I waffled a lot about which to keep, and what to do with the other, since I know more than one person who could use a computer but can’t afford one.  However, I wasn’t sure my brother would even want a more advanced computer, since he said he likes playing those old games.  But if I gave it to anyone else, I would feel the need to do a complete restore to reduce the chance of any old banking info being potentially recoverable from the hard drive, in the event Ripley changed hands again after leaving home.  That would mean a lot more work.

At one point, I even posted on Facebook, a theoretical question about how to decide what to do with an extra twenty dollars.  Unsurprisingly, the answers were not helpful.

Eventually, through the apneic fog, came a possible solution.  I would ask my brother if he wanted Ripley.  If he did, I would give her to him.  If he didn’t, I would give her to a friend.  However, I didn’t ask right away.  I knew I would still have to do some cleanup, if not a full wipe, and I haven’t felt up to even that much in months upon months.

But then the cable/internet issue came up, and I have been feeling a little perkier, so I cleaned up Ripley.  I thought I had time; he hadn’t had internet before, so wouldn’t be in a rush, but then I got a phone call.  When the cable company unplugged their old TV to hook it to the new cable box, it stopped working.  It had, evidently, been on its last legs for a long while, so this was not the cable company’s fault, but rather just bad timing.  They had another ancient TV, but it was a tiny portable, and Pa couldn’t see it.  My brother wanted to know if I could take Ma to Wal-Mart to purchase a television.

However, two Christmases ago when Mr Moth and I bought ourselves a new flat screen TV for the living room, we put our old 25-inch black box TV in the basement.  I had intended to use it in the spare room someday, but I don’t actually need a TV down there, so we–well, he–loaded it up.  By great fortune I even remembered where I had stashed the zapper.  We added the laptop, some books I’d been meaning to take up there, and the boombox CD player I bought but rarely used.  Sadly I forgot to put in the CDs, or the headphones, but that will give me an excuse to make another trip soon.

The TV we gave them is the same size screen as their old console, but only half the size overall, and fits perfectly on top of the old one for now.  The picture is still beautiful, and Pa can see to watch his weather channel and his outdoorsman show, and Ma and my brother can watch Jeopardy.  He can also now google things for her.  Not that I mind googling things for my mother!  But it’ll be more convenient for her to have a googler close to hand.

At first I felt kind of anxious, like offering my family my hand-me-downs might be insulting somehow, but they are not like that.  They think these things are wonderful.  They work, and they’re free.  Which makes me realize we probably didn’t *need* to replace these things, but I’m kind of glad we did, because in the end everybody’s happy, and how often does that happen?

crowned

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My temporary crown is on there.  They told me to avoid hard, crunchy, or sticky.  I replied that I have been watching that tooth flake away for years, and have been avoiding hard, crunchy, and sticky for a very long time.  I can do it a while longer.  

The temp is far too white, considering the tobacco and coffee my other teeth have survived.  Hopefully the permanent crown will be not quite as white.  What it will be is wider; they’re going to fill in a gap so my front uppers will present an uninterrupted line.  My teeth will not be picture perfect, but they will look…normal.  They filled in the chip on my left front incisor when they did fillings last time, and I am still startled when I look in a mirror.

So next trip, in June, I will be getting the permanent crown installed and some more fillings.  Dr A didn’t say how many fillings.  What she said was, “I’ll do as many as I can until we run out of time.”  I take this to mean they no longer feel the need to baby me along.  And it’s not as though I am trying to ironman it out, either.  I’m ok.  I had some very faint touchiness high in the gum, but I didn’t even feel the need to take ibuprofen for it.  I worried Horton might aggravate that, but no.  I could go back today if they wanted me to.

Instead I am working on a list that I hope to develop into a daily routine that will enable me to get things done this summer.  I lost most of last summer to dizzy spells and weakness, and the summer before that I spent lying around exhausted.  I thought that was because I was recovering from Portfolio Review and graduation, but I’m thinking that wasn’t it.  Or not all of it.

I live in hope that someday I will have things to share besides health updates and weather.  Speaking of which…

It’s cool enough today to turn the air conditioning off and leave the door open so dogs can come and go at will for a while.  They’re happy, so I’m happy. 

If Tyrion the Hammister wakes up, he’s going to be unhappy, because his cage is atrocious.  He still hates being handled, sigh.

Horton, days two, three, and four

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So by Day Two, I have concluded Horton (the bilevel cpap) is like having a baby.  You’re already exhausted from the pregnancy/apnea, and then you’re all excited until you realize you now have this thing in your face making smells and noises and waking you up repeatedly throughout the night.

Part of the problem is I have an excruciatingly high level (23) and the tech/therapist told me I am gonna leak regardless.  I get about two hours of sleep before the razzberry sounds against my cheeks and/or air blowing into my eyeballs wakes me up, at which point I discover the mask has shifted.  I just can’t seem to find the right level of tightness.  Too tight causes leaks (and is uncomfortable besides).  Too loose lets the mask drift which allows leaks.  I half wonder if I could polident the sucker into place.

I fiddled with some settings last night.  I turned the temperature down on the heater to 78°F, and the humidity down to 1, whatever that is.  I didn’t like trying to breathe tropical air.  The down side is, I woke up with the worst cottonmouth of my life, my cheeks were all stuck to my teeth and gums, and I really wanted a drink but was too tired/lazy to climb the dog gate to go get one.  I may have to start taking water to bed with me.  That would mean cleaning space on the dresser to put water.  That room really needs de-cluttered.

Day Two’s results are…I feel less dead than yesterday, a little headachey when I first got up, but that faded almost immediately.  I’m not sure how I feel compared to before that. 

(B.H.?  Before Horton?)

I also had some gas pains.  Actual pains.  I have never had gas pains in my life except post-caesarean.  So there’s another way Horton is like having a baby.

On the up side, Mr Moth said I seem (brighter? sharper? some tactful way of saying smarter) than normal.  I said, I didn’t know I seemed dumb.  I mean, I know I am dumb, I just didn’t know everyone could tell.  He replied, it had happened so gradually he didn’t actually notice until it subsided.

I asked him to continue to let me know if he notices anything else in the future because, yanno…hope.

Day Three:  I had to get up early (for me) and attend Zor’s (the at-home spawn and my youngest) college graduation.  Go, Zor!  The first sleep report said I used the machine for five hours.  I thought I was going to die climbing the stairs to a seat at the auditorium, but that might have been because I skipped all medication that might make me have to pee more until I got home.  Then when I came home, I took those pills and went back to bed, but only for forty minutes.  Apparently taking all those pills on an empty stomach was a huge mistake because I developed heartburn like I have not had–say it with me–since having a baby.  That sleep report claimed forty minutes of use.  I got up, had a drink, ate some chips, and went back to bed for another reported five-ish hours.  These hours were uninterrupted, because I cranked that mask down so freaking tight my face begged for mercy.  Apparently there’s a tiredness zone where you no longer care if a hunk of plastic is cookie-cuttering your head.

I went back to bed as soon as the dishwasher finished, around one-ish a.m..  Before I went, I used some of Cobie’s witch hazel to clean my face, because I read that mask slippage may be caused by skin oil.  I normally don’t wash my face at bedtime unless I’ve worn makeup, which is to say, almost never.  But witch hazel is cheap, and I don’t want anyone to say I haven’t given Project Horton a genuine effort.

I also read that my hair might be causing slippage.  I think manufacturers need to make headgear that can accommodate hair, because I am not going to shave my head or grow a ponytail.  Ponytails give me headaches.

Day Four:  Ten hours, no leaks until the very end, and only woke up once to tinkle.  I still feel droggy, though I’m not yet fully outside my morning coffee.  Also I discovered when I broke my medication routine on Day Three, I completely forgot to take the Victoza (injectable).   That probably contributes at least somewhat to me feeling less than ideal, although I have not checked my BG.  I have also not been checking my BP like I should.  That is allegedly one of the first things that responds to CPAP therapy, so I should start checking it.

And that brings me up to today.  I know none of this is fascinating to anyone, and I am just as obnoxious about posting boring stuff as a new mother, but this is what is eating my brain these days.

Things going on in the background include my attempts to prioritize my creative endeavors so that I can actually accomplish something instead of spending the entire summer wallowing in overwhelm, and catching up on some housework.  Well, not catching up.  I’m never going to catch up.

Once I figure out my priorities, I can hopefully establish a routine.

Oh, and I started reading a book.

That’s kind of huge.  I just can’t express the depth of actual grief I feel when I think about never really reading again.

CPAP Day One

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Yesterday, after a few hiccups and a major meltdown on my part, I picked up my Xpap machine.  I named him Horton, and warned everyone here that it is ok for me to make elephant jokes about the machine, but it is a crime punishable by slow death to make any remarks that might be even remotely construed as comparing me to an elephant.

I do not like Horton so far.  Or, more accurately, I don’t like the mask.  It’s the same mask they put on me during the titration study, and it presses too hard across the bridge of my nose and the adjacent cheekbones, it rides up, and then it leaks into my eyes.  I told the therapist this, but she insists it is the best one for me because I am a mouth-breather.  Well this mask should soon break me of that, since if my lips part company even briefly, the sheer force of air blows my lips and cheeks out so that I probably look like a floppy-flewed dog with its head out an airplane cockpit.  That wakes me up with a quickness.  So do the leaks, especially when they make flatulent noises against my face.

If I were at all classy or refined, I suppose I would call those sounds razzberries.  I hate them too much to bother with pretending to be refined, however.  I’m overly sensitive to touch and sound already, and having that sensation-and-noise in my face just hisses me off.

After an eternity or three, Mr Moth left for work and I turned on the television.  The bedroom TV has never served any purpose other than to let me watch school closings in winter without getting up, and since I’ve been able to get closings via text, I don’t even use it for that; it’s just a big clunky dust magnet.  But I turned it on, just loud enough for me to hear it, not loud enough for me to understand anything said, and afterwards I sort of slept, a little.

In between, I dreamed.  Wow.  Such dreams.  The Hound featured prominently.  I don’t recall ever dreaming about somebody else’s characters before, ever.

I woke up still exhausted.  No more or less exhausted than any other day.

While I was peeing, I noticed that, in spite of my fatigue, I do not have the splitting headache I’ve awakened with every other day for months.  So progress?  Maybe.

I still want a nap with all my heart.

Horton generated his daily Sleep Report, which alleges I used the machine for six hours.  I guarantee I was not asleep all that time, or even much of that time.  This time matters though, because if I don’t achieve some level of compliance–and I forget already what that level is–the insurance company will stop paying for Horton.  They’ll know because Horton is a spy, who reports via memory card.

My bedroom is still a cluttered mess from putting in the new bed, and adding Horton and his attachments made it worse.  Therefore I don’t want to take a photo at this time, but here’s a stock image:

placebo sleep

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Bear with me; I am obsessed with sleep.

I have always believed sleep was one of the things I had going for me, that sleep was something I was good at, not by skill but by good fortune.  If I was tired all the time it was because Mr Moth snored and kept me up, or because I hung up in dream sleep and never achieved the other stages of sleep where rest occurs.  But I have never had trouble falling asleep.  Shortly before the apnea dx, I posted on Facebook and had a discussion with my mother, about how strange it is to me that (I had read that) people make a conscious decision to close their eyes and wait to fall asleep.  I have never done that, ever.  I just put my book away and go to sleep.  And I have rarely had trouble staying asleep, unless I was ill, or the dogs were restless, or had a baby.  Even when I had to tinkle eleventy times a night, I had no trouble going back to sleep each time–although, come to think of it, each awakening did seem to require a disproportionate amount of extra sack-time.

I used to dream a lot, and vividly.  That’s apparently a sign of moderate apnea.  I haven’t dreamed in a long time.  Apparently that’s a symptom of severe apnea.  If I could remember when I stopped dreaming all night every night, it might give me a time frame for when this problem tipped over into severe.  It’s been since we lived here, but beyond that I don’t recall.  I suspect it happened when the Actos shoved me past some tipping point weight-wise, because everything really started snowballing when I went on that drug, but it happened slow-ish, and going back off it has not completely reversed the symptoms–because they are apnea symptoms.  I hope.

Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to talk about today.  I wanted to talk about placebo sleep.

I surfed from Facebook to “14 Amazing Psychology Facts Everyone Needs To Know” because I am too brain dead to read anything real, and I was waiting for the plagiarism checker to process my final exam paper (because I am also too brain dead to trust myself not to accidentally steal someone else’s concepts or ideas simply because I can’t remember where anything came from.)  I was initially interested in the graphic that said, Don’t tell your goals to anyone, but I was quickly sidetracked to list item #10, that said:  Convincing yourself you slept well tricks your brain into thinking it did.

Did I mention I’m obsessed with sleep?

Here’s the source article for that, which in turn cits a study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology conducted by Colorado College, which seems to indicate that being aware of how tired you are makes you more tired.

I’m not going to try to track down more links to back this study up. Instead I’ll just say that, if accurate, it explains a lot.  As soon as the sleep lab said, “You aren’t sleeping, you’re smothering, and we have computer readouts that prove it,” I nosedived, and hard.  Went from barely functional to practically crippled.  This study explains why that happened, if they took away my placebo sleep and that was really all I had going on, sleepwise.

And if that’s true, believing the xpap therapy will work, will make it work, at least to an extent.

I wish I were more convinced it will work.  I’ve been chasing this for so dang long.  I lost most of last summer to dizzy spells, and now this summer is here and even the bathroom seems too far away.

The Home Medical people finally called, and I’m supposed to go pick up the machine tomorrow morning.  Wish me good luck that this goes as smoothly as possible, because I am so tired.

apnea and stuff

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I suspect I’m not unusual in that, when I am diagnosed with anything, I go to the web and research it.  Probably everyone who does this, does it for the same reason I do–to get some idea what to expect.  That result is iffy; everyone is different.  But the internet really helped me, back when I was practically paralyzed with anxiety and discovered Sam-E.  I really think that, in addition to alleviating the anxiety and enabling me to function emotionally again, Sam-E (and the B-complex I necessarily took with it) has also protected me from the worst of the MTHFR issues I might otherwise have developed by now.  I have also not suffered any major boil eruptions since I began taking Sam-E, and I can’t even express how huge that is.  So while I have no idea how that might work, thank you for that also, internet.  (And sorry for the TMI-grossness.)

But right now the top headline in my health news is the sleep apnea.  I have googled around, and not really found any reports, blog entries, etc., on the topic that quite reflect how I feel.  And, yanno…we don’t really know yet that how I feel is entirely caused by the apnea.  We won’t know until I get my machine and commence treatment.  If it works, it’s the apnea causing my problems.  If it doesn’t, we’ll have to resume the search, and the next step will be a neurologist because pretty much all other possibilities have been eliminated.

I’m hoping it’s the apnea, frankly.  I’m so tired of the hunt.

It’s been two weeks yesterday since the last sleep study.  They said I should have the machine in three weeks.  I still have not heard anything from anyone, except a call from the Lung Doc wanting to schedule a follow up.  His employee sounded surprised I hadn’t heard anything about the machine yet.

Frankly the delays annoy me.  Everything annoys me.  Apparently this is not an uncommon symptom among people who are chronically sleep deprived.

I kind of miss the days of not knowing I was sleep deprived.  Now I notice that I am waking up repeatedly, panting like I have just run a marathon.  Less so, if I fall asleep sitting up on the sofa, but that is only good for a couple of hours, when my legs go to sleep and the tingling wakes me up.

I also try to sleep on my stomach, but that is not extremely comfortable either because, well…boobs.

Sigh.  What a whinebag I am!

And yet I whine.  Today’s whine is, I should not have to sit around for three weeks waiting on a phone call.  (It has taken me four days to write this entry.)  My three weeks is up on Sunday, so I called today (Friday) and spoke to a fellow named Mike who said my xpap is n the “final stages of pre-approval with the insurance company.”  That would be BCBSAnthemWhatever.

Color me unsurprised, and put some symbols in a little balloon over my head.  Rassafrassin sassafrassin insurance.

One of the side-effects of apnea is emotional instability.  So when you read on the news that some crazy middle age fat lady fed her pet dragon exlax laced with napalm and flew over the Anthem headquarters, you won’t have to wonder why.  You’ll know why.

She was tired.

Mike said that I should hear early next week, and if I don’t hear by Tuesday I should call their Respiratory Therapist Anne and inquire again.

Nagging.  It is my super power, and remains so even in my depleted state.

Making a grocery list, not so much, so I need to go do that.  Zor, our living-with-us adult kid, got a restaurant job this week so she can save up to buy a car and pay her tuition at the next school, and we are all adjusting to that.  They feed her there, so that means I don’t have to take her taste into account for some dinners, whee!  On the other hand, I don’t know what her schedule is going to be, so boo!

Flexibility.  I heard of that once.  I think it’s something reserved for people who don’t have obligations.

Peace.

memory is hunger

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Today I am mourning my brain.  In between the wracking bouts of anguish, I have ideas of where I will go from here if the cpap machine doesn’t resurrect my ability to remember things, but losing the ability to learn (quickly) and write are huge losses for me, very tied in to my identity.  And I have already mostly lost the ability to read for pleasure, since I don’t retain what I read for any length of time.  I might remember what I read at the top of the page by the time I get to the bottom, but too often I don’t, and re-reading and re-reading might or might not work.

And writing.  How can I write when I forget what I have already written?

Hemingway wrote, “Memory is hunger.”  Of all the things I forget, I’m trying very hard not to remember that I read somewhere that at least one factor in Hemingway’s suicide was that electroshock treatments had zapped his memory, and thus his ability to write.

Anyway, ideas.  Possibilities.  Hope bucket stuff.

Regarding reading:  My old memories seem more or less intact, so I am thankful I read so much.  That means I can possibly still enjoy re-reading old favorites.

Regarding storytelling:  godlight is finished.  No one may want to represent and/or publish it if I can’t produce more, but I can still publish it myself, since that has long been my backup plan.  At least it won’t languish in a drawer.

I mentioned old memories are still intact, so perhaps I can still finish Gallows Dogs.  I still remember what is supposed to happen, although not everything, because I hadn’t decided on everything yet.  godlight‘s grand finale didn’t reveal itself to me until I wrote it, and I assume surprises will happen in GD as well.  But maybe I can deal.  Maybe.  I can’t know unless I try and see.

Truth:  I’m afraid to try, because the answer might be a big ol’ nope.  I’m putting off trying until I’ve tried the cpap; the doc recommends three weeks.  Maybe I am (not) panicking over nothing.

Another thing I might be able to manage even with my memory impaired is, a sequel to godlight.  Again, this has always been the long term plan.  But since I already have the backstory and characters built for that one, making a series might be a little like writing my own fan fiction.  Again, I won’t know this unless I try.

Maybe I could read new books in old series, also.  I saw where Miss Julia has a new book out.

Storytelling Plan B:  If the cpap doesn’t sufficiently alleviate my memory and cognitive issues, and if I am unable to write fiction, I will switch to another medium.  I’ll finally have time to really explore photography (I still haven’t truly got good use out of my new camera) drawing, or digital painting, or any of the myriad other art skills that I so badly want to practice, but for which I never have time.

Previously, when considering which if any of those activities to pursue, I have always thought, “I’d love to do that, but I’m not really good at any of that anyway.”

Maybe that’s because I haven’t put my 10,000 hours in.  But if I put those hours in, I’d almost certainly get better at them.  The upside of losing my mind could be…gaining time.

I would be reinventing myself.  Again.  But I have done that (hence the again, and could most likely do it again.

Not today though.  Today I am still grieving.  But later.

For now, I need to post this.  Mostly in case I forget.

sleep apnea and keeping the hope

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bottle of yellow Joy dish detergentI remember when the film Dances With Wolves was a thing. People jokingly, or not, gave themselves “Indian” names. Mine was Mops Walls With Joy, because when the topic first came up, I was mopping the walls of my apartment. With Joy.

More recently, when I watch Game of Thrones, I find myself envious of Daenerys Targaryen, not for her dragons, but for her extensive list of cool titles: Daenerys Stormborn of the House of Targaryen, second of her name, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lady of the Seven Kingdoms, Protector of the Realm, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Chains, the Unburnt, and Mother of Dragons. I may have forgotten some.

Me, I’m Mops Walls With Joy. Maybe I could also be Mother of Meatloaf.

Blah.

In another conversation with a friend (same who inspired Mops Walls With Joy), well, she is going through some tough stuff. The kind of stuff where it is hard to hope, because hope will get you hurt. And I told her I would hope for her. And I have been doing that, relentlessly. I may not believe in much, and my spiritual beliefs are hazy at best, but I thoroughly believe in hope. No matter what, everything is going to work out. Bad things will happen, yes. But the bad things will end, and good things will happen again.

So I posted on Facebook that hope is my superpower, and in my head, gave myself the sobriquet Keeper of Hope.

Sounds nice and all, but yeah. Lately, it’s been hard.

My health has just been UGH. My team seems to be in agreement, after over a year of very expensive testing, that the severe apnea is the thing. It’s causing all my symptoms. At over 72 AHI (that means I stop breathing over 72 times per hour, more than once per minute, and for over ten seconds each time), and with my blood oxygen dipping to OMG 40%, it causes the crushing fatigue and extreme weakness–sometimes I can barely raise my foot high enough to step up on a curb, and forget climbing stairs; I simply can’t.

When your brain (my brain) realizes it is starving for oxygen, it screams for help. “Wake up dumbass, I’m dying up here!” And you do, I do, wake up, breathe, and then fall back asleep. Chances are you don’t even know you woke up. You’re too exhausted to remember, and also, everyone who is sleep deprived is prone to memory problems.

Going a step further, severe apnea causes actual brain damage. There are these little structures in the brain, called mammillary bodies (because they look like breasts) that process memories while you sleep, and in cases of severe apnea, these structures shrink by as much as 20%. Hang on, it’s taking me a minute to find some documentation on this that’s both credible and readable…here we go. Good ol’ UCLA. (This article also explains why this damage didn’t show up in the brain scan I endured.)

I didn’t really start out to write a post about sleep apnea, but the thing is, after all these months (over a year) of testing and decline, and thinking–hoping!–that this time we’ve found the problem, or that this next test will find the problem, I find myself in the same position as my friend, afraid to hope.

Watch as the blogger rambles all over half a dozen topics. Welcome to my brain off oxygen. Scattered. Please accept my apologies for that.

I am a blue collar housewife with a medical team. There’s a heart guy, a lung guy, and my regular Primary Care Provider. They seem convinced that this is it! This is the problem. It probably underlies my “original” medical issues as well as the more recent things, because apnea contributes to diabetes, unregulatable blood pressure, and pretty much anything else you can think of, because it breaks your brain, both grey matter and white. I didn’t even know we had white matter. Brain damaged though I may be, I learned something new.

Still afraid to hope, though.

The articles don’t quite seem to agree whether treatment (CPAP therapy) will completely restore my brain function. Most seem hopeful that there will be at least partial improvement. (Sorry, I’m too tired to chase links on this.)

If it happens, it may take a year.

The Keeper of Hope needs a bucket to carry hope in, because it is bleeding away through her fingers.

Which brings me to this very small idea I have had, that there is a fine line between hope and things to look forward to. I think I need things to look forward to, to hope for. Not so long term, either, although I do retain hope that there will be a long term. I’m just not sure what my capabilities will be, either physically or cognitively.

So stay tuned for the Hope Bucket:  things to look forward to, things to hope for. May be, or may not be, the same things as One Good Thing, or Thankful Thursday things. I’m not going to overburden myself with technicalities that will make this harder than it has to be. Life makes things difficult enough at times already. Not that I won’t post about those types of things, because I will. But the worry bucket needs balancing out.

Seems to me, it can’t be good to set down the good stuff so you can lug around more bad stuff.

woman carrying buckets of water near leningrad

No more mopping walls, with Joy or otherwise.  I have a new use for my buckets.  I am now Holly, first of many names, Mother of Meatloaf, Protector of Puppies, and Keeper of the Hope.

perceptions, a personal epiphany

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The other day I was having some dental work done–scaling and root planing–and my hygienist said, “You’re really one tough chick.” And, “You have a very high tolerance to pain.”

I was actively dozing when she said the latter, so I went, “Huh?” and had her repeat it.  Even when I was sure I had heard her correctly, I was confused because I wasn’t feeling any pain.

Later when I was driving to another, much dreaded, appointment, a thought came to me.  Maybe that is a high tolerance to pain.

All my life I have assumed that people with high tolerances–to whatever–were just iron people who felt things the same way I do but somehow, via some inner strength, they just took it, and that if I were a good enough person, a brave enough person, a strong enough person, a person with enough willpower, I could ironman it through those same experiences.

If I were strong enough, I could tough it out through the fear, the anxiety, the pain. That I should be able to. That everyone, or everyone over the age of 18 or so–should be able to man up, toughen up, gut it out, take it on the chin, ironman it.

Whatever you’re afraid of, whatever hurts.  Just do it.  Just deal with it.

I can’t help but feel I should have known this already, but evidently not everyone experiences fear and pain, or anything really, the same. I knew (or accepted, is there a difference?) that psychopaths don’t experience fear or guilt or empathy the same way other people do.

But now I believe there are not just two levels, psycho and us/everybody else.

It’s all a spectrum.  More than that, a limitless assortment of spectrums. A pain spectrum, an anxiety spectrum, everything a person could possibly experience lies along a spectrum of perspective.

I’m not trying to take away from firefighters who race into burning buildings to save others. But I’m guessing they are not as afraid as others or they would choose some other line of work. This doesn’t lessen what they do at all.  Their stakes are as high as anyone’s, the risk of serious injury or death is the same whether they perceive the risk or not.

So yes, I am throwing out that definition of courage that says, “Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is feeling the fear and doing it anyway.” I am redefining it as, “Courage is knowing the risk and doing it anyway.”

(Feeling the fear and doing it anyway is something far beyond courage, and only each person can know for him/herself what overcoming it cost.)

So we (I) don’t know and can’t know and should stop pretending that we (I) know how other people experience their experiences, and stop judging them based on our (my) perspectives. Others are living inside their own perspectives, which are almost certainly different than ours (mine).

Anyway, that is what I learned at the dentist this week and wanted to share.

oliver

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If you’re connected to me on Facebook, you know that a little while ago, I rearranged my office, and used an online room planner to experiment with the layout. This is what I ended up with. The big round thing wedged in next to the white desk is a floor fan; the site didn’t have one so I made do. The white desk is an old tank of a steelcase, and I should probably dedicate an entire entry to it. Hell, maybe I already have.

The planning site also didn’t have a cat dish to put on the macdesk (the brown one.) Every morning when I get up, I race to pee, and then eventually get dressed, let dogs out, make coffee, etc. Sometimes the Ckatten (Artemis) is in Zor’s room, and if she squalls, I let her out. Sometimes she is loose in the hoose, and if she wants, she goes out with the dogs. Sometimes she is already out, and wants in. The TL;DR of all this is, whatever the Ckatten wants, the Ckatten gets. Oliver, too. Whichever cat is in wants–nay, demands–canned food served in a dish on the kitchen table, and Friskies (junk food) served in a dish on the macdesk, where the dogs can’t reach. Well, Kelly can’t reach and Cobie is too polite to just get up there and steal it, at least while I’m looking.

Both dogs want Friskies too, of course. Sometimes I give them a few, but they have their own other-brand kibble that they think is treats, which I hand out. Cobie has learned to catch them out of the air; someday I plan to video that. Kelly can catch them sometimes too, but she really seems to prefer racing around hoovering up Cobie’s misses.

And so it has slowly evolved that my mornings are not much my own, but more a critter-dictated ritual, most of which happens before I’ve actually got outside of any coffee.

Pretty much only animals can get away with that.

Anyway, the point of all this, what I started out to say, is that Oliver can’t jump so swell anymore, so there is now a padded-seat folding chair in front of the steelcase, so he can jump up on it, and from there to the desk, which he then crosses before making the short leap (about his body’s length) to the macdesk, and the kibble thereupon. Except he doesn’t want to leap; he wants sky trammed over, which I do. Except when he decides he’d rather have delivery, whereupon he sits behind my laptop, reaches over, and claws it. So far he has missed the screen itself, but dammit, cat.

Sometimes I forget why it is I like critters.

Then he sits on my aching shoulder and purrs and I remember that he is 13 or 14 years old—68 to 72 in human years, at which point I decide I can stand him a while longer.

Don’t ask what that is in his headfur, because I have no idea.