April 23, 2001

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prev home mail archive next Momentary Thought Dude. I am *so* *doomed* on this final. Man. High/Low High: No meetings today! Low: But that doesn't mean no work today. Gah. Current Obsession Math homework. And stuff at work. Grin Source Shelley updated! Singing I am the son, and the heir, of a shyness that is criminally vulgar... I am the son and heir - of nothing in particular. "How Soon Is Now" - Love Spit Love Storyteller Bio Dramatis Personnae Who I Read Recipes

There's this stuff, see. And some more stuff. More stuff than I know what to do with. Stuff! Stuff everywhere! "I will explain. No. There is too much. I will sum up." In this episode! Meltdown of frustration on Thursday. Marie's field trip on Friday. Doctor's appointment on Friday. Nothing much of nothing over the weekend. Math doom and gloom. Impending final. Overwhelming amounts of work. Bring Your Child To Work Day. The need to uncomplicate my life for this week. The need to concentrate more fully on my home life, and Calvin in particular. The need to find my new rhythm, emerging from old patterns. In short, an upcoming (brief!) hiatus of a week. No more. ******************** Last Thursday I suffered a personal meltdown of sorts. I'd been feeling oddly for the past couple of weeks. Before that, I was ill to a significant degree for a couple of months. I've been dosed and re-dosed with medications that sometimes caused more problems than they solved, if they did anything at all. Folks, I'd been to the doctor's four times in the last two months, for various reasons. And that's not including the doctor's appointments I accompanied Marie and Calvin on. Thursday I was so damned sick and tired of feeling unwell, I sat down and composed a list of all my complaints. They added up to more than a dozen items. Among them were: Extreme fatigue, sometimes accompanied by nausea and/or headache. Immediate increase of energy after eating a small snack. Tingling sensation in throat and roof of mouth. Nasal congestion that medications can't seem to help in the slightest. Right eye CONSTANTLY TWITCHES. To the point where I want to gouge it out with a spoon. Patches of scaly skin. Constant thirst. Difficulty concentrating, and bad short-term memory (names, conversations). Staring off into space a lot. Interrupted sleeping patterns. Becoming full after eating only a couple of bites. Mind you, these are only *some* of the ailments. The others fall into the category of Too Much Information. But this gives you an idea of the length and breadth of my frustration. I made a doctor's appointment for the very next day (totalling *five* appointments in the last two months). Friday morning I accompanied Marie on her school field trip to Gold Town in Apache Junction. I was the "grown up" (hah) in charge of Marie and her friend K, and four boys of various hyper-active natures. Gold Town is a tourist trap sort of place that displays the history of a mine that existed in the late 1800's and early 1900's. We took a "tour" of the mine - a recreation, really. The guide told us we were going "down four levels deep into the mine". What really happened was that we all packed into the people mover (elevator) via one door, the guide made a big display of operating the buttons and the "brake" while the whole apparatus shook, and we exited through an opposite door into the "mine". Total distance descended - zero feet. But a lot of the kids bought it. Even when they exited into sunlight at the end of the tour via a door at the other end of the "mine", without ascending one bit. Heh. Cracked me up. Next came a tour of the reptile house, complete with four species of rattlesnake, lots of spiders and lizards native to Arizona, and a very VERY grumpy guide. The hit of this room was a California King Snake who was steadily consuming a live rat. Well, it was alive to begin with, anyway. Picture here a chorus of "eeeewww!"'s and you get the idea. Moving onward to a tour of a mining museum, which was so notable I can't recall one detail other than the ancient headmistress of the place, who wasn't entirely convinced that we belonged to a school group and therefore had free admission. Break for lunch. Much grossness, theft of food, running around, hollering, and general nuicance-making ensued. The *kids* were fairly well behaved, though. ~grin~ Finally, a train ride around the perimeter of the property. My "group" and I sat in the enclosed caboose and proceeded to not pay attention at all to what the tour guide was saying. I'm not a very good role model, I'm afraid. But to my defense, whenever I tuned in to the tour guide's words (via the very tinny little speaker suspended over the door), he was talking about his upcoming wedding anniversary, and some digestive troubles possessed by his ancient dog. Anyhoo! The 45-minute bus ride to and from the place was accomplished with relatively little pain. Brought to mind my own bus-riding days in school. We passed around the brownies I had left over in my bag, and I watched the girls play their hand-clapping games. "Miss Suzy had a steamboat, the steamboat had a bell (ding ding). Miss Suzy went to heaven, the steamboat went to... hello operator, please give me number nine. And if you disconnect me, I'll kick your big... behind the 'fridgerator, there was a piece of glass..." etc. etc. You remember it, right? Marie got to skip her last period, as I took her home with me when we got back. Unfortunately, a socially-active planned weekend turned into a very quiet one for her, as she had bad results on her mid-term progress reports. Grounded City. I turned around and went back out for my 4:00 doctor's appointment. Thank God for a very understanding doctor, is all I can say. I'm going to request her from now on. We chatted a bit about the condition of the ailment I was complaining at her about the prior Monday. And then I, somewhat embarrassedly, handed her my list of complaints. She was terribly sympathetic and understanding, and we had a good conversation. The upshot of it all was: A change in my allergy medication was required. Report as of three days on it results in a marked improvement of my symptoms. My old stuff was hindering me, rather than helping. I have, I was surprised to hear, Adult Onset Non-Diabetic Hypoglycemia. Basically what this means is that I suffer from periods of extreme decreased energy, mitigated by the consumption of a small snack. Not a difficult one to work around, as far as ailments go. Add to that (previously unrecognized) fact, a decrease in diet and an increase in physical activity which was making me feel worse. Now that I know what ails me, I can get around that. Huge amounts of changes have happened to me over the past few years. A ready-made-family just-add-Laura, a huge increase in my job responsibilities, and going back to school. I have too much stress, and I don't do enough for myself. (To which I responded "Lady, you just described half the population of the world.") I felt so much better after talking to my doctor. I was ready to change providers, I was so frustrated with their "herd the cattle" attitude. But after this appointment, and finding somebody who will actually *listen* to me, I'm much happier with them. This weekend was a very quiet one, as far as activities go. We cooked, we cleaned, we hung around, we watched TV and movies. The only times we went out were to go to the grocery store and the video store. I took Kye for a walk on Sunday morning. We read the Sunday newspaper, and I farted around on the internet. I think I was trying to gear myself up for this week. Ah, this week. Math finals on Wednesday night, and I haven't even opened the book to try to muddle through the homework. I missed last Wednesday's class because of the Bon Jovi concert, and I know I'll be hopelessly lost. But, "The sun will go on rising and setting, whether I fail in Algebra II or not." To paraphrase Anne of Green Gables. Ah, well, one more class to get through and I'll be done with math classes forever. Plus, my next class doesn't start until May 7th (Quantitative Decision Making), by virtue of the fact that it starts the first Monday of the month. So I'll be school free for 11 days. Bliss! Work is absolutely piled up. Beyond the rafters and reaching to the stars. There's a whole bunch of things I need to give my mostly-undivided attention to this week. Plus, one whole day (Thursday) will be dedicated to Bring Your Child To Work Day. Marie and her friend K will be accompanying me, and there's a whole slew of activities planned. Activities that will take me away from my regularly scheduled duties, which means I have to pile them up on the other days of this week to accommodate. I'm reaching the upshot of this in a roundabout way, aren't I? I'll be taking the week off from my website - until the 29th or 30th. I need to concentrate on my school work, I need to concentrate on my work work. I need to get used to the rhythms of my body and it's newly-understood needs. I need to continue to progress toward my fitness goals. I need to re-focus on some priorities, not the least of which is Calvin. I need to spend more time listening to him and talking to him, messing around with him and being a good partner to him. It's going to be a weird combination of taking care of *me*, at the same time I take care of all my other responsibilities. My doctor asked me what in my life I could drop to make it less complicated. I can't drop *any* of it, nor do I want to. But for this one week, I need to pause for a bit and realign things. Which means I won't have time to update. I will probably update my Notify List if something juicy comes up - it's much easier than coding up an entry. So if you haven't joined, now would be a good time to do it, hey? I'll still be answering and sending out e-mail, so if you'd like to chat, feel free to drop me a line. I'll be in front of the computer for much of the time this week, and a little break now and then to converse with my friends would be a welcome relief, I'm sure. I also urge you to take a shot at this month's Storyteller. Deadline is Monday, April 30th! I plan to write something this coming weekend for it. Other than that, I'll just reassert that this won't be a prolonged absence. Just got too much stuff! See ya on the flip-flop!