We're now entering the second third of May. Two more thirds, and by my own standards, so long as I don't have more than one migraine day that I can't work through, and I can start seeking work. Seek work in June, start work in July. OH man, I am SO excited! But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let's look at all of this as if through the 'catching up' lens as well as the 'getting back to work' lens.
Migraine
I made another milestone for migraines. I had a migraine on the 29th. It was mild and wouldn't have prevented me from working. And it as gone the next day. I think it's been about a year since I had a single day migraine. And even then, it was a one day migraine, a day off, then a multi day migraine. I really really really can't wait to return to work.
I know why I chose the 'one migraine day that I couldn't work through' test to return to work. It makes sense. I more or less earn one sick day per month and can use that one sick day per month on my migraines. I keep my job safe and I'm good. But looking backwards, when is the last time I only had one day like that in a month? It has to be pre COVID. We're talking 5 years. This could be more than a return to work, it could be a true return to Happy Days!
Mental Health
I'm doing well here. The side effects of the meds keep teaming up on me, but I'll talk more about that in the Physical Health section. I honestly had the 'worry' the other day that I'm not 'worrying' enough. It feels strange to come up to 12:30, my worry time, and not have anything to write down. Nothing is bothering me. I'm not fretting over anything.
Physical Health
I got a call from my primary doctor's office. Evidently he was writing some new prescriptions for me (renewing some prescriptions) and realized he needed to see me again. I can understand that, some meds do require being seen more than once a year to be properly prescribed. Fine. As long as I'm going to see him in May as opposed to waiting until November, I may as well bring up all my physical maladies.
The first one will be the urinary issue. I really don't want to go to the urologist for this, but I'm fairly sure that's what he's going to recommend. Just to catch up, I'm back where I started when I complained about this last November. Hard to start urinating, feeling a weak stream while urinating, feeling unable to empty bladder. The only symptom that's gone is dribbling. It got a little better when I started the Flowmax, greatly improved when we upped the dose, then got worse when we started the Cogentin. It unfortunately didn't improve when we stopped the Cogentin.
Another issue is what I'll just chalk up as drug side effects. Still feeling muscle tremors, but they're controllable and I don't want to seek a remedy. I just want to mention them to the doc. I'm experiencing night sweats. They got better for awhile there, but they're back almost every night in varying degrees. It's really quite disgusting. But it's not like I share my bed so its only a bother to me. Again, I'm not seeking a solution, just mentioning it.
Then there are the more concerning issues. Increased GERD and dizziness.
The GERD (Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease... heartburn that in my case leads to vomiting) has gotten worse starting in January. At least once every couple weeks I wake up and feel that burning in my chest/throat and end up at the toilet vomiting without nausea. When I was helping the nephews put up the car port the other day I had to keep bending down to hold a pole that I was hitting with a hammer (technically, I was hitting it with the back of an axe, but that's neither here nor there). Just about each time I was bent forward, I'd feel that burning coming up. I didn't pay attention to it as it rarely hit me bad during the day. Well, when we were done and I went inside, I just got to my computer and sat down when I realized it was going to pop. I then barely made it to the toilet before vomiting. And as it was vomiting in the middle of the day instead of the middle of the night, it was rather voluminous. If I can trigger this just by bending forward, it can be real problem when I get back to work. So it has to be dealt with.
The dizziness I first noticed a few weeks ago. It was low level and lasted just a few seconds, but it was distinctly there. Then one day, when I had a particularly bad headache, I noticed it several times while I was out and about. It was bad enough that I had to stop and hold on to something, otherwise it felt like I was going to fall. And then when I was helping with the car port, it was particularly bad when I was bending forward, just like with the GERD. Bad enough that I had to stop and hold on to something. It felt like a loss of blood pressure, but my blood pressure doesn't run that low. It's ran lower than this before. Maybe it's a side effect of a new med? I don't know, and that's why I need to mention it to the Doc.
I saw my endocrinologist for the last time just before my last Update post. I wished him well in his retirement. He's my first doc that I've 'lost' since getting my own medical team. Just yesterday I got the call from my new endocrinologist's office and have an appointment in July. I'm hoping that we have at least half as good a relationship as I did with my previous doc. We'll see.
Finances
My finances are... fine. I have plenty to get through this month and will get paid for May in about three weeks. At the very least, if I don't get extended, I'll get a payment at the end of June that will be about half of my normal monthly payment. If I start working in July, I should get my first check at the end of July. Again, that should work fine. I'll just have some credit card bills building up that I'd have normally paid off, especially with the vacation.
A part of me wants to worry about this. But seriously, it's fine. So long as I don't go crazy and over spend, I have plenty of cash. I'll do my mid-month finances in a few days and that'll be a soothing balm. And if push comes to shove, without my savings in place, I can always get that 401k money out. I'm fine. Just because it sounds scary... only getting 1.5 more LTD payments... doesn't mean it IS scary.
Family/Friends
I mentioned R painting the dining room in my last update. Just about everything is done. The ceiling and walls are all painted. The border is up. The bathroom door is painted. The only thing remaining is the bathroom door frame. Mom and R wanted to pull the old frame work down and put up some newer one that will match the door frames we have elsewhere in the house. I really don't have a big care in that. I think it looks fine as is (so long as it's painted either the same color or a similar color to the walls), or would look nice with the wood trim as it is in the other areas of the house. But you know what doesn't look good? Leaving it AS IS FOR TWO MORE FUCKING WEEKS!
Goddess Damn it, I hope this isn't like the bathroom where it just sits there undone for weeks/months/years.
I am VERY looking forward to seeing A and E in Texas in a few weeks. I have it on my calendar as starting on June 5th. I might try to make that trip in one day. I talked about the way the cruise works, automatically changing its speed to the speed limits, so that will be an interesting change for the drive down.
Entertainment
I finally decided to NOT finish Mr. Mercedes. I might swing back and wrap it up as it's only nine more episodes, but I wanted to move on. I picked up The Outsiders on Max. It's kind of like a next part of Mr. Mercedes as it has one of the same characters in it but she's cast by a different actress. And now that I'm into the real meat of the show, she's written completely different. Don't get me wrong, the show is very good. Great acting, great cinematography, great story telling. But it's like a bad itch when I see that character as she's just different enough that I can't help but be disappointed. She's played well and even written well in the show... it's just different than the book.
I think I'll move back into fantasy and sci-fi and such for my next binge. Andor is going and is supposedly good. DareDevil finished its new season. Peacemaker is having its second season soon but I could watch the first season. Vox Machina is calling in the back of my head. The Last of Us is rolling its new season. Severance is going... maybe done... with its second season. But then again, I also might watch Tulsa King's second season, go back and watch Reacher as it's now three seasons with a fourth in production, or even start a new show like Lioness.
I'm really just hoping for something that not only catches my interest, but holds on to it and doesn't let go. Like the Day of the Jackal did recently.
Music wise, I broke down and added a bunch of Bon Jovi back to my playlists. Oddly enough, it looks like the song I'm most excited about having 'back', Bad Medicine, wasn't ever on my playlist before. All the others, It's My Life, Blaze of Glory, You Give Love a Bad Name, Wanted Dead or Alive, and Livin' On a Prayer, I've all had before.
I'll talk about why down below, but I've found it important to keep YouTube music up to date. I still think Apple Music is a better service, even if the app is shitty, but I need to use YouTube music and it needs to stay as updated as Apple Music is. Previously, when I was flipping between Google Play Music, Spotify, iTunes, Apple Music, and YouTube Music, I had a service called Tune My Music that's a web based system. It logs into each service and pulls the playlists from one and transfers it to the other. It'll only transfer so many songs on the free version, but for like $4 a month it's unlimited. So when I needed it, I'd just consider it a one time fee of $4 to transfer my playlists over. It certainly isn't perfect as some of the songs aren't the same version, but when we're talking about 3000+ songs on 8 or 9 playlists, I can deal with a dozen or so song errors.
Anyway, I started with that service to at least update my YouTube Music playlists. While I was on it, looking at the sign up page, I saw that part of the unlimited fee was automatic transfers. In other words I could set up the playlists to transfer each day. That made the whole situation easy and I went ahead and took advantage of the annual fee discount. For $24 Tune My Music will keep my YouTube Music playlists up to date with my Apple Music playlists.
New Tech
I have the weirdest combination of 'new tech'. Tatiana, which is the newest bleeding edge tech there is, and... towels.
Tatiana. The more I drive her, the more I love her. It always takes a while to get used to how a new car drives. How it accelerates, what it feels like at different speeds, how it brakes, stuff like that. I knew it would be even longer on Tatiana because she's a hybrid. If you've ever driven a hybrid or an electric car before, you know how that affects the brakes. There's the regenerative brakes that basically spin the ICE electric motor backwards to generate power and put it back into the battery. It's great because you don't even use brake pads for that. The problem is that regenerative brakes aren't as good as regular brakes. And at some point as you continue to apply more and more brakes, the car will realize that you need more stopping power and will engage the regular brakes. And that causes a jerk. Well, I was expecting that from driving Ginger and other hybrids. But Tatiana takes it to the next level since she's just a couple hundred pounds shy of 5,000lbs. The regenerative brakes slow her down even less and it makes the regular brakes seem even more jerky when they catch on. It's not bad per say, it's just something to get used to.
Then there's acceleration. I was driving down the main drag earlier today. It's a 35mph road that I regularly drive at 40mph. 5 lanes, a good amount of traffic, and hardly anybody goes 35 or less. When I looked down at the speedo, I saw that I was only going 33mph. So I gave her a little more gas and looked back up at the road and the buildings and the sky and whatnot. I felt, more than heard, the engine rev up (with an eCVT, it doesn't shift, it just revs higher), but I didn't really feel it accelerate. So maybe 5 or 10 seconds later I look down at the speedo again and... yeah, I was going 55mph. 33mph and 55mph felt exactly the same. That is NOT good as it will be so easy and comfortable to speed in Tatiana. Again, something to get used to.
The other thing I noticed in Tatiana today was the YouTube music app. I finally got it to my 'Drive' playlist. It wasn't surprising that it started with the 'first' song and had them in alphabetic order. I prefer them in the order that they were added to the playlist, the most recent addition as the first song, but whatever. I generally just keep it on shuffle all the time anyway. But when I pulled the app up full screen and found the shuffle button, it wouldn't activate. I probably wouldn't have noticed if it hadn't started with all my songs that start with numbers. And once I recognized that it was doing that, it immediately got under my skin. So, I had to connect back to Android Auto to play music. As it's Android Automotive as an operating system it's similar to Android and Android Auto, but it's not the same thing, so I'm kind of stuck on how to trouble shoot it.
That's new new technology, not let me regale you with my towel story. Or more specifically, my dish towel story.
Since I've become a nurse and had actual extra money, I've tried to upgrade the simple things in the house. Some things Mom and Dad got really good things and they've held up. The dining room table was terribly expensive when they got it 30 years ago and it's holding up just fine. We'll be able to pass it on to my niece or nephews once me and my brothers pass. But on some basic things like towels and wash clothes, they continued to use the same ones year after year after year. I found the biggest, thickest, heaviest, fluffiest towels on Amazon and bought us 10 of them. And once they arrived, and everyone used them and agreed they were good, I tossed all the old towels. We didn't have room for both sets and there was no good reason to keep the old. A few years later (and no, I don't know why it took me a few years to follow through) I did the same thing with washcloths. I had to get two sets of new washclothes as I liked the first one we got but they were a little heavy and rough for mom, so I found a fluffier set for her.
I really should have done the same thing for the dish towels and dish rags at the same or at least similar time. But I didn't. For dishrags we have three actual purpose made dishrags. Thin, light, absorbent, rough, dishrags that clean dishes well. We then have about a dozen old washcloths that have been transffered to the dishcloth division of the military. Yes, R saved money by doing that when I bought new wash cloths. A few years back mom bought a set of two dishrags that was a dishrag on one side and a scrubby on the other. Basically a mesh that was good at scrubbing things. I LOVED THEM! As I'm the primary dishwasher, I bought four more of them. This was years ago so they're all old and worn. On the dish towel front, it was worse. Technically all of our dishtowels were dishtowels, but only two were good. They had the perfect texture to soak up water quick. There was another two that could get the job done but these were ancient. I mean, I think my grandparents used them. They were beyond threadbare. The other dozen or so? Crap. Terrible. It felt like they were hydroscopic where they pushed water way rather than soaking it up. The problem with the good ones is that I didn't know how to search for ones that were similar. I mean, you can't just search Amazon for 'Good dishtowels' and expect to get these. So for years, I was stuck like that (Yeah yeah, I could have actually gone to stores or performed random searches on Amazon to find similar ones, but I didn't so buzz off and let me finish this story).
Fast forward to Tatiana and I was buying up all the cleaning supplies I needed. I've talked about the bug cleaner sponges, and since I wanted to get the bugs off the windshield too, I got two microfiber cloths that were designed specifically for the windshield. When they arrived and I pulled them out of the packaging, I realized they were the same texture as the good dishtowels. And they were labeled as 'Waffle Weave' texture. A quick search through Amazon later and I had ten new waffle weave microfiber dish towels being delivered overnight. And as long as I was replacing those, I bought 8 new half dishrag half scrubbys as well. I got the chance to put them through their paces today and they're perfect. The dishrags are on the smaller size, but they'll still work. I'm now in the process of moving all the old dishrags and dishtowels out to the garage where R will use them as garage rags.
Writing
Still not writing. I got one chapter out, but at this rate I might not finish this part of Gamer Gurl until the end of summer.
Michigan Football
Nothing new for football. B and I are discussing what the weekends will look like. Since he's changing his shifts at work and I'll be returning to work and will probably work some Saturdays it will definitely be different than the past two years.
Computer Issues
Apple Music continues to prove that it's a shitty app. There's a problem with the app's volume now. Occasionally, especially when I'm listening to streaming music as opposed to downloaded songs, it will hitch and catch on a volume. No matter what I do with the software controls, I can't make Apple Music louder or softer. That's particularly annoying on Sunday mornings when I'm going through my New York Times playlists of new music and am trying to hear it just loud enough to be able to judge it, but also quiet enough to not wake anybody else in the house up.
My solution for this at this point is to close Apple Music when it happens and restart it. Annoying.
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