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Christine is still having migraines, which is a continuation from before the new year. Most start in the wee hours of the morning, so we look at her CPAP, only a year and a half old, with suspicion.
Her other migraine she got after cutting back some brush. When she came in and proclaimed what she had done, i was trying to figure out what she had cut down and was somewhat ungracious when i imagined she had cut down all the wild blackberries. I quickly noted it wouldn't have killed them and would have made them more manageable. Working cutting things down is hard for her because she is very aware they are alive and she had framed it as rescuing a redbud tree, but instead she was rescuing a sweetgum.
Anyhow.
Last week was hard to get through, but i did. Part of the hard is mental wrestling i have been having since October, struggling to get everything done -- "everything" is hygiene plus medication plus skin voodoo (retinol! vitamin C! H-something acid but not HCl) plus stretch-balance-walk. I'd been blaming a combination of asthma and illness and seasonal affective disorder but really -- has it ever been THIS bad while i was treating it?
Ah, late last week it occurred to me, i had never held any expectation that i would do anything other than take my antidepressant and antihistamine regularly. I tried to do other things, but didn't note when i missed them and didn't have any intentionality and certainly wasn't trying to regularly exercise. And then i learned of ADHD, realized my mother and sibs and i were all in the same challenging space when it came to habits, realized i needed to start small, and started with flossing and brushing my teeth. Woo! Magic dental experience in June!!
But i've never tried this when also dealing with the shortening of days.
So maybe there was nothing particularly bad this year -- just normal seasonal affective disorder and i'd never had a background against which to measure its impact. The absolutely critical things get done: i go to work, the cats and Carrie are fed, i make some effort for the holidays.
Welp.
Realization helped with my mental framing, and it's always impressive how much energy it takes to both give yourself lots of negative messages and to receive them.
So, i've cut back on some of the expectations in the stretch-balance-walk space, been more gentle with myself, gotten over the respiratory infection!! and mostly gotten over the asthmatic cough.
I did look at some sleep measures, since i have all this data: my watch was reporting sleep efficiencies in the low 90s over the summer, but that's become the high 80s. Edward's changed his sleeping to be close - because he's cold? Maybe that's a small disruption as well. And I'm still having more respiratory events this week than in December, despite the cough being mostly gone. So hrm.
Yesterday i did the basic walk, plus the balance and stretches, and ended up with the 8k steps and the hour of standing during meetings (partly because the meeting ran over 30 min at the end of the day.) I am delighted at my physical tone: i've been digging clay -- lots and lots on Saturday, some yesterday in the dusk -- and no (new, distinct) aches! I've some balance to get back, but it's not terribly different from October. I am back to holding on to things while dressing, but i can imagine getting better balance in a few months.
Anyhow, i SHOULD (qv RFC 2119)be stopping here, but i'll note that i have travel coming up. I was near tears trying to make the decision, because somehow air travel across time zones just seems horrible and -- but i have to do the travel for business so why would i be so distressed about leaving earlier for myself? I don't really know why it seemed so hard to make the decision to leave a day plus a handful of hours earlier.
I'll be landing at SFO around 9:45 am the last Sunday in February. I think i will be able to have coffee with friends as soon as car is rented and i can get to Palo Alto. Other than that, plans still to be made. I'll take the Monday off. Tuesday and Wednesday will be super intense work to help W3C browser folks understand authentication and authorization practices. (Hrm, maybe some of Monday will be visual aid development - i don't know that i want to carry on the plane posters of sequence diagrams, but big posters of sequence diagrams on the walls might be helpful.) Then i take a redeye on Wednesday night to arrive home after 9am on March 2, my birthday. Woo.
Her other migraine she got after cutting back some brush. When she came in and proclaimed what she had done, i was trying to figure out what she had cut down and was somewhat ungracious when i imagined she had cut down all the wild blackberries. I quickly noted it wouldn't have killed them and would have made them more manageable. Working cutting things down is hard for her because she is very aware they are alive and she had framed it as rescuing a redbud tree, but instead she was rescuing a sweetgum.
Anyhow.
Last week was hard to get through, but i did. Part of the hard is mental wrestling i have been having since October, struggling to get everything done -- "everything" is hygiene plus medication plus skin voodoo (retinol! vitamin C! H-something acid but not HCl) plus stretch-balance-walk. I'd been blaming a combination of asthma and illness and seasonal affective disorder but really -- has it ever been THIS bad while i was treating it?
Ah, late last week it occurred to me, i had never held any expectation that i would do anything other than take my antidepressant and antihistamine regularly. I tried to do other things, but didn't note when i missed them and didn't have any intentionality and certainly wasn't trying to regularly exercise. And then i learned of ADHD, realized my mother and sibs and i were all in the same challenging space when it came to habits, realized i needed to start small, and started with flossing and brushing my teeth. Woo! Magic dental experience in June!!
But i've never tried this when also dealing with the shortening of days.
So maybe there was nothing particularly bad this year -- just normal seasonal affective disorder and i'd never had a background against which to measure its impact. The absolutely critical things get done: i go to work, the cats and Carrie are fed, i make some effort for the holidays.
Welp.
Realization helped with my mental framing, and it's always impressive how much energy it takes to both give yourself lots of negative messages and to receive them.
So, i've cut back on some of the expectations in the stretch-balance-walk space, been more gentle with myself, gotten over the respiratory infection!! and mostly gotten over the asthmatic cough.
I did look at some sleep measures, since i have all this data: my watch was reporting sleep efficiencies in the low 90s over the summer, but that's become the high 80s. Edward's changed his sleeping to be close - because he's cold? Maybe that's a small disruption as well. And I'm still having more respiratory events this week than in December, despite the cough being mostly gone. So hrm.
Yesterday i did the basic walk, plus the balance and stretches, and ended up with the 8k steps and the hour of standing during meetings (partly because the meeting ran over 30 min at the end of the day.) I am delighted at my physical tone: i've been digging clay -- lots and lots on Saturday, some yesterday in the dusk -- and no (new, distinct) aches! I've some balance to get back, but it's not terribly different from October. I am back to holding on to things while dressing, but i can imagine getting better balance in a few months.
Anyhow, i SHOULD (qv RFC 2119)be stopping here, but i'll note that i have travel coming up. I was near tears trying to make the decision, because somehow air travel across time zones just seems horrible and -- but i have to do the travel for business so why would i be so distressed about leaving earlier for myself? I don't really know why it seemed so hard to make the decision to leave a day plus a handful of hours earlier.
I'll be landing at SFO around 9:45 am the last Sunday in February. I think i will be able to have coffee with friends as soon as car is rented and i can get to Palo Alto. Other than that, plans still to be made. I'll take the Monday off. Tuesday and Wednesday will be super intense work to help W3C browser folks understand authentication and authorization practices. (Hrm, maybe some of Monday will be visual aid development - i don't know that i want to carry on the plane posters of sequence diagrams, but big posters of sequence diagrams on the walls might be helpful.) Then i take a redeye on Wednesday night to arrive home after 9am on March 2, my birthday. Woo.