Eff it All to Aitch

I'm feeling really crummy, and have been feeling really crummy for quite a while... not continuously, but often enough that the non-crummy days are vastly outnumbered and cower below the surface of memory, making not a peep.

I think it may be coming time to change medications again.  The depression has become increasingly acute in the last months; I initially attributed these downswings to my other health problems, and the usual Vernal Equinox swing that I get every year during February and March.  But I haven't had any major health crises (except for a severe chest cold) in the last month or so, and March has come and gone and taken April with it, and I'm still fluctuating.

Contributing to this fluctuation is The Maw, my new catch-all phrase for the variety of things going on in my mouth.  I had all my extractions done Friday before last (the end of April), and while I was fairly well braced for pain and discomfort, was not even remotely prepared for the frustration of trying to talk with no teeth, the incredible discomfort of wearing temporary dentures that don't quite fit right, and the discomfort/frustration combo of trying to talk with my temporary dentures.

Neither was I prepared for the sinus problems that attended on so many extractions, one breach so big I can shoot water through my nose with it; with so many fluids going through my sinuses (which are supposed to be a closed system), it's no surprise that sinus infections have come and gone and come again.  Between the pain in the sinuses and the pain in the gums, it's no wonder I'm getting depressed... pain is depressing.

And then there's an issue of nutrition: even with my dentures in, I can't chew anything... if it's not soft enough to be mashed against my hard palate, I can't eat it at all.  And though I have never been a big fan of eating hard apples or munching on corn-on-the-cob, I am suffering mightily from not being able to eat cheese and crackers, hamburgers, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, steamed broccoli, or Clif bars. I'm pretty much limited to soup, pudding, ice-cream, yogurt, canned fruit, and canned ravioli.

The only really nutritious foods I can get down are V8 juice and meal-replacement shakes... and of course, if given a choice between a bucket of rice pudding or a big glass of V8, or between a dish of ice cream or an Atkins shake, guess which one I'm going to choose? And so since I'm eating more sweets than anything else, the increased sugar and lack of nutrients are messing with my moods, as well.

Not having a car has been a little depressing, too.  Though I really do enjoy taking the bus to work and back (most of the time, when they run on time), but it's oddly emasculating to always be a passenger in other people's cars.  I have for a long time been very skillful at making myself the designated driver in any situation... "Let's take my car," has been my perennial suggestion pretty much ever since I started driving ten or so years ago.  Part of it is a control issue (I don't like how other people drive), and part of it is an independence issue (I don't like having to rely on others for my needs), but it's a lot more deeply ingrained in my psyche than I thought it was.  I'd prefer to not go places than to have to ask for a ride to them.

So with all that going on, life is just one long moaning sigh.  But this, too, shall pass (it had better!)  I am getting a little more accustomed to the toothlessness and dentures, which have basically required me to relearn speech from the ground up (lots of consonants have had to be moved to entirely different portions of my mouth than I am used to); and I should be getting my permanent dentures around the end of August, which are guaranteed to fit perfectly, allowing me to chew and talk sensibly and all that jazz.  And I'll get another car in the next couple of months, as soon as I can save up a bit (meaning I'm going to have to cut waaaaaaay back on the shopping) so I can at least go to the grocery store when I want, if not take road trips.

Well, that's all I have to say at the moment.  See you next time!

A Little of This, a Little of That

Things have been kind of weird lately...busy, sleepy, sickly, in pain, and involved in other things...hence the lack of blog posts. But I feel like updating today, and maybe gaining some perspective from it.

The biggest piece of news, I think, is that my poor Miss Jane (my first new car, a 2002 Ford Focus SE) has dropped dead; there's a design flaw in that model of Focus, where the "valve seat" (which is the bottom of the chambers that hold the pistons, I believe) cracks or, in my case, simply falls off the engine block; the only repair available is to buy another engine, at a cost of at least $3000 (more than the down payment on a new car) and only lasts a year or so longer since it has to be an engine from another 2002 Ford Focus, which will contain the same flaw.  And since the model is ten years old, and the flaw never manifests until well after 90k miles (on average more than 110k) there's no recall available.

And of course, I haven't the money to buy a new car... nor even an old car.  I mean, I might be able to save for two months to afford a total beater that rattles like a dying whale and smells of old upholstery and french fries, but I'm not really into the idea of driving an old beater again after having had a new car.  So I've decided to become a public transit user.

Winter is of course not the ideal moment to get into the habit of taking buses and trains, especially with the utterly epic rainstorms we had last week; and the walking from home to the bus-stop and from bus to BART and BART to work and work to bus and bus to home is no fun in the rain when I'm not feeling my best to begin with; but after getting used to the timing of it, I find I rather enjoy it.  There are always people to look at, after all, and it gives me lots of mental downtime... I can listen to music, and even read, but most of the time I just sit and look around me without thinking about anything in particular at all.  It's quite restful, in its way.

So pleased am I that I decided to apply for Commuter Checks through my employer, so I can buy my transit card with pre-taxed dollars, having $60 taken out of each paycheck so I can load my Clipper Card with an $80 bus-pass and $40 worth of BART fare (I find I only need to take BART in the morning, though I can take two buses home... a matter of timing and of avoiding high-school students) and reduce my taxable income a little bit further.  So even if I do get a car (and I will have to have a car sometime, I won't be able to live in my neighborhood indefinitely without one), I will continue to commute to work on public transit.  It will save me a fortune in parking fines, I'm sure, not to mention wear-and-tear on whatever kind of vehicle I end up with.

Which left me with the question of what to do with Miss Jane.  Since she's essentially irreparable, I figured I'd just have her towed off to a wrecking yard to be squished.  But then I realized that I'd have to clean all of my junk out of the car first, which delayed my decision-making long enough to find out that I can actually sell her for parts.  There's a place called Pick-n-Pull here in Oakland (it's a chain, actually) that I have visited on a number of occasions with my sister, back when I was driving beaters; they have loads of broken-down old cars that you can go into and scavenge for parts.  So I requested an online estimate, and they offered me well over $300 for the carcass.  It's rather an ignominious end for an old friend, but I think of it as donating her organs to vehicles in need... and getting a nice little bonus for my troubles.

In other news, I have finally launched the process of having my teeth replaced by dentures.  As I mentioned in a previous post, I was able to apply for a credit account to pay for it, so I can get the work done first and then make convenient monthly payments instead of having to save up and pay for them up front.  I had two more teeth pulled a couple of weeks ago when they became painful, and they started taking molds (a vile process) so that I can have a temporary set of teeth available before they pull the rest of them.  I have to wait another week for the first set of molds to be completed, and then have a second fitting to make sure they look right and feel right before the manufacturer mills the product; then another few weeks before they start extracting.

I am going to have to time it just right... after the last two extractions, I was in so much (and such prolonged) pain that I missed two days of work and was virtually useless during the week when I did manage to get to work... the last tooth pulled had breached my sinus, which got infected, and then allergy season started, and the hole was really deep and didn't heal as quickly as other extractions had, and I was just a big old mess.  So when I go in to have all of my teeth pulled at once, I want to be sure that I have time to recover before returning to work, and then a light workload waiting for me when I do return.

But I'm looking forward to it.  I am vain enough to want straight nice-looking teeth, though my one crooked tooth isn't that big a deal and nobody but me notices it; and I'm not so vain that I can't stand the idea of false teeth at age 44...after all, both my parents and my sister had dentures long before my age.

And speaking of vanity, my project to snazzify my wardrobe continues apace.  I never go out anymore without something around my neck, either an ascot (or more likely a large scarf tied as an ascot) or a necktie; I usually wear shirts with collars, most with cufflinks, with either a v-neck sweater or a waistcoat, and though I occasionally will go back to my old layers of thermal tee and sweater, I still dress the neck up with a cravat and stick-pin at the very least.

My latest craze is pocket-squares, I bought an enormous lot of handmade Italian silks in a couple dozen different colors and patterns, and have been coordinating them with my neckwear... though very little of my winter clothing has top pockets for squares, since I don't wear a lot of blazers at this time of year: I'm pretty much in my big black raincoat all the time now.  But I do have a very nice herringbone wool overcoat for the non-damp days, and when spring (or what passes for spring) actually arrives, I'll start back into the blazers and go hog-wild with the pocket squares.  Maybe even launch into boutonnieres.

On the other hand, I'm starting to wonder about my lower half... I'm still wearing khakis and sneakers on a daily basis, and they sort of undermine the dapper look I'm going for.  But I can't wear just any kind of shoe with my balance problems and joint pain; and I don't like wearing slacks, as they tend to be either too thin or too scratchy of material, and have to be dry-cleaned instead of thrown in the laundry. During this cold weather I've been gravitating toward corduroy to keep my legs warm, and they do look a little more dressy than twill, but I only have a few pairs, and most of them are jeans-style.

Oh, well, I'll cross that bridge later on.  If you're interested in keeping track and seeing  how I'm doing, I've started documenting the more appealing outfits by taking pictures and posting them on FaceBook; if it's a really great outfit, I post it on Pinterest, too.

Pinterest is my latest obsession.  A coworker turned me on to it, and though on my first visit I wasn't terribly impressed, seeing mostly pictures of cute animals and overly-precious baked goods, subsequent visits caught my interest with men's fashion, really interesting DIY projects, art, architecture, home decor, and of course beautiful young men in various states of undress. 

If you've never heard of it, Pinterest is a place to share (pin) things in which you are interested (hence the name).  If you're interested in home decor, for example, you can browse the Home Decor category and see things that may inspire you, and that you may wish to pin to your own board; and while you're browsing around on the rest of the internet, you might see something that you'd like to share, and you can pin it to your board with a link and picture to share with fellow "Pinners" and have handy for reference.  You can also pin things into different categories than the one in which you found them...for example, I find things on the fashion pages that go into my beefcake category, or something in an art board that I end up placing on my elephant-enthusiast board... thereby exposing the image to more people.

The interface is image-driven, so if you're interested in things which do not have some kind of visual representation, you probably won't find much to detain you; but if you like crafts, or cooking, or fashion, or any visual or visible art of any kind, I encourage you to visit.  I get a lot of great clothing ideas there (the pocket-square obsession had its genesis on the Men's Apparel boards), and I get to pin things that I've seen online and want to buy or copy sometime in the near future.

One of the best things about Pinterest, for me, is that it's easy-in/easy-out.  You can spend an hour or so browsing, or you can spend a minute checking on the pinners you follow or glancing over a favorite category.  There's nothing there that you have to become engaged with, as there is on FaceBook or other places I visit regularly.  It's the perfect visual respite while doing data entry or waiting for something to download.

So what else...Oh, yes, the CPAP machine... as I posted last time, I have been diagnosed with moderate sleep apnea, and so before prescribing me a CPAP machine at a great deal of expense to Kaiser and to myself (since my plan only pays 50% of "durable medical equipment," or DME) they gave me a loaner to try out for a couple of weeks to see if it works.

At first I was very excited about it, since it's a very nice machine that warms and humidifies the air before forcing it into my nose, and since the mask that comes with it is extraordinarily comfortable.  I had fantasized about being able to get a full night's sleep without waking up three or four times, as I've been doing, spending the appropriate amount of time in REM sleep, and having oxygen-rich blood pumping through my system and restoring my tissues to a more youthful vigor.

Alas, the reality was something of a let-down.  For while I was quite comfortable wearing the thing while I was awake, and enjoyed having the air blown into me, I found it impossible to sleep with the mask on: every time I moved my head, the mask slipped and air came blowing out around my face... sure to wake up even the deepest sleeper.  If I tightened it enough that it wouldn't slip, it pressed against the flesh around my nose and made it harder to breathe.  And finally, the pressure of the forced air (it doesn't breathe in and out like a respirator, it maintains steady pressure) requires you to push your exhaust breath out of your nose, which was surprisingly painful to my inner ear (forcing air into the eustachian tubes...a word I'd always loved until they started hurting); and the pressure on breathing out made me instinctively open my mouth to get the air out more easily, which results in short-cirtuiting the air pressure and sending all the air out of my mouth instead of into my lungs.  It's a very strange sensation, blowing a continuous stream of air out of your mouth (plus it gives you a nasty case of cottonmouth).

So the CPAP is apparently not for me.  Maybe if they have a kind that has variable pressure or something, I might look into that, but in the meantime I'm just going to have to do what I can with other remedies.  I have found, for example, that cleaning out my nasal passages with a saline rinse and then sniffing a Vic's Vapo-Inhaler before bed helps me breathe a great deal easier at night.  A half-dose of allergy medication is also extremely beneficial, and makes me drowsy as well.  And I am planning on getting a larger bed (this one, in fact), which might also help, as I don't think I'll wake up every time I turn over as I do now on my rather narrow sofa.

Well, that's really all I can think of right now... or rather, all I really want to talk about today, though there are some other topics I could explore, changes in my home and work and social life.  But I have gained some perspective from the above: I have an awful lot going on, no wonder I'm so dazed and vague!  Maybe I can be a little bit kinder to myself about it.

Until next time, don't take any wooden igloos!

You and Your Bright Ideas!

The strict diet detailed in my last post turned out to be ill-advised, ill-timed, and ill-making.  I plunged into a particularly nasty depression on Thursday evening which weighed me down like a ton of urine-soaked turds; it got worse and worse until Wednesday (yesterday) when I suddenly wondered if the depression and the diet might be related.  Considering that I started eating normally at once, making two peanut-butter and honey sandwiches (for medicinal purposes, you understand) and having a good snack whenever I got hungry, and now feel miles better, I think I can safely say that the diet definitely caused the depression.

Or rather the weakness caused by the diet sparked the depression and fanned its putrid flames.  I don't know what I was thinking, starting a crash diet when I am still fatigued from the hepatitis.  I'm already physically weak, so I shock my body with a sudden decrease in portions, sugars, and fats?  How did I think that was a good idea?

Of course, I don't plan to go all the way back in the other direction and start eating doughnuts and cookies all day every day, either.  I will continue to make smarter food decisions, eating lots of vegetables and going for the slow carbs (such as whole grains) instead of the fast carbs (such as refined flour and sugar) whenever possible, but not cutting fast carbs completely.

And I absolutely have to pair that smarter diet with plenty of cardio exercise... for weight management and for my depression and for my fatigue.  Daily gym-visits after work are called for, I think.  I can start slow, twenty minutes at a low resistance level on a machine, rather than try to jump on for forty minutes at level 5.  Then I can work my way back into a more regular routine.  But I can't put it off until "tomorrow" as I've been doing... if I don't feel like going on Wednesday, I can't wait for Friday, I have to go on Thursday and Friday.

Which means I have to change my clothes a lot.  I don't much like changing my clothes.  Especially now that my clothes are so much more complicated than they used to be.  With a t-shirt, a sweater, a scarf, a beat-up jacket and a cloth cap, I could just stuff my clothes into my gym bag when I changed; but now I'm wearing dress shirts and vests and blazers and shaped fedoras that have to be hung up and treated carefully.  I always get out of them as soon as I get home, hang them up and get into my PJs instead so I don't get them too frowsty too soon... which isn't very different from changing at the gym, but I have clothes racks and hat racks at home from which to hang my nice things.

I guess I could go back to the crushable clothes, but I've spent so much money on this new look (especially the hats... I spent $95 bucks on one of them, but I look so dashing it was worth every penny) that I am deeply reluctant to let it go.  My cufflinks collection has grown by leaps and bounds, I occasionally rock the ascots, and I have just started in on stick-pins; what will I do with all this stuff if I go back to my schlubwear?

Well, I suppose a solution will present itself eventually.  I guess I can keep a hanger in the car and change there instead of in the locker room (which I don't like doing, anyway, despite the flashes of bootie and peen one gets in there...the smell is awful, and I hate being seen unclothed).

In other news, my fatigue has been given a better excuse than just the hepatitis and the depression (as if they weren't enough): in his quest to figure out what all is wrong with me, my doctor ordered a sleep study for me.  These days the equipment is portable, no overnight in the hospital with sensors all over your body... it's just a sort of wrist-watch affair you wear with different kinds of sensors stuck on your index and ring fingers.  You can do it at home, and it's completely unintrusive.

But it turns out I have moderate sleep apnea: I stopped breathing twenty-four times per hour.  That's once every two and a half minutes or so.  Since I apparently don't wake all the way up when this happens, don't exit the REM state every time, it isn't giving me the awake-all-night problems; but it does keep me from getting as deep of a sleep with plenty of restorative oxygen carrying nutrients to my depleted tissues... and I do wake up during the night, which always bugs the hell out of me.

I have a feeling that some of this has to do with getting rid of my queen-sized bed in exchange for a couch in my room.  I did it because I was sleeping on so little of my bed that it seemed a waste to keep it; but if it's contributing to the apnea, or just to the waking up at night, I may have to go back to it and keep it cleared off so I can spread out and roll around easier.

Well, we shall see.  In the meantime I am going to pursue the weight-loss (with exercise, and a little bit of diet) and indulge in a few home remedies for the apnea, and do what I can to keep myself happy.  And no  more stupid system shocks... even with diets that worked in the past when I didn't have hepatitis or sleep apnea on top of all the fat.

Though, on the plus side, I did lose seven pounds and an inch of belly.  So it wasn't a complete waste.

A Little Less to Love

So I've started back onto my diet, the one that worked so well two years ago but which I completely discarded as soon as a good depression came along.  But with all my illnesses lately, and the ongoing fatigue of the hepatitis, I've decided that taking more positive steps to improving my health and my self-image is the way to go.  And part of that is to get rid of my belly and improve my circulation... and the only way you can do those is through that dreaded duo: Diet & Exercise.

Those as remember all the way back in 2009 (or those who are willing to read the archives), the diet consists of eating a 250-calorie meal every two hours, avoiding fats and carbs, and drinking water or herb tea whenever I feel peckish but it's not time to eat.  Actually, that time I did 200-calorie meals, but I had more weight to lose and a metabolism-slowing antidepressant to work against, which this time I do not; last time, I lost fifty pounds in ten weeks, but this time I'm only looking to lose thirty pounds in the same amount of time, so I can be a little less Draconian in my calories. 

I decided that Chinese (or rather Lunar) New Year was the best time to start, getting off to a good start in the Year of the Dragon (the most auspicious of years).  It's very encouraging, during the dark moments of agitating hunger, that I have done this before, and successfully.  Knowing you can do it is different from thinking you can do it, and that extra little fillip of knowledge has been very helpful this week.

For my next step, I have to get back into the swing of going to the gym three times a week.  Which means that I have to keep gym clothes available, either by maintaining a gym bag or just keeping a change in the car.  To do that, I'm going to have to do a lot of laundry, since the clothes I wear to the gym are also the clothes I wear to bed, and so I tend to run out when I've been sick or depressed for any length of time.

I also have to be extra careful of my back when I exercise, since it's still weak from the injury in November (and I haven't been doing my physical therapy exercises with the regularity that I should).  I have another PT appointment tomorrow, one I've kept putting off and rescheduling because I feel ashamed that I haven't been doing my exercises; but I do want him to see if there's anything else I can be doing that I don't have to do regularly for it to be effective (like a magic potion, or fairy sweat, or something).  Plus my therapist is as cute as a button, which always makes a visit a little more pleasant (and a little more worth the thirty-dollar co-pay).

Not much else going on, I'm afraid.  But I'm looking forward to feeling better... I don't expect that I will be quite back in form until the hepatitis passes, but I can certainly make some improvements before then that will make the return of my liver to full functionality even more pleasant.  And getting back into my thin clothes will be a treat.

Speaking of treats...

Fare Thee Well, Twenty-Eleven

I am so ready for this year to be over and done.  The last two months have been such a trial and burden that I can't even remember what the rest of the year was like... though reviewing the blog for the first nine months, it looked not-so-bad: it got off to a pretty bumpy start, and featured some depression problems, but was otherwise fairly sunny and happy.

But it all went to Hell in October, and kept on going: expensive and tedious Car Trouble #1, even-more-expensive and tedious Car Trouble #2, and various lost key dramas, offset by a happy Halloween; kidney stones, labyrinthitis, strained sacroiliac, bout of depression, and a head cold in November, not to mention the failed NaNoWriMo attempt; I last left you with my Hep A, and since then I have come down with a chest cold and broken a molar, accompanied by a few more random waves of depression.  I'm not even going to wonder "what next"... that way madness lies.

However, I have to say Christmas was very nice this year.  Matthew and Suzie did all the work around the house, took the brunt of Grandmother's weirdness, absorbed my father's one-sided conversations, and basically made my holiday a real holiday, lolling in bed when I wasn't at work.  It was a very quiet Christmas, with only eight at dinner and ten for presents and pie.  And then my birthday was pretty nice (even though I had a broken molar), I managed a full day at work and got chocolate cake and singing; then I went to Old Navy and got some new pants on sale, and then had dinner with Caroline, Suzie, Matthew, and our friend Shelly at Elephant Bar.

But then I felt horrible all day Wednesday (one day up, two days down has been the norm this month), and had to go home before lunch because I couldn't stay awake at my desk; then I went to see my doctor, had a nice long nap on the bench waiting for him while he responded to an emergency down the hall, then had some blood drawn (he thought I might be having a thyroid deficiency and/or testosterone deficiency, causing this horrible dizziness and weakness beyond what one can expect with Hep A) and made an appointment for a CT scan (to see if I have a brain tumor... which I am simply not going to think about).

Then I had my tooth pulled yesterday...which wasn't all that bad, my new dentist is an absolute angel with gentle hands... and spent the rest of the day wobbly with Vicodin and slowly diminishing numbness (which always makes me sleepy, I don't know why).  And then today I'm not feeling my best, what with the Vicodin and the stiff jaw on top of the general malaise, but I plan to plug ahead anyway, hopefully getting some long-overdue filing done; I also have to return the pants I bought at Old Navy, since I apparently lost some weight in the last few weeks and need a smaller size (luxury problem!); then I'll get my CT scan (I am so not looking forward to that, my claustrophobia is already ramping up just thinking about it) and maybe I'll get some nice smooshy dinner somewhere... Boston Market's sweet potatoes are pretty chew-free and quite tasty, or maybe some wonton or seaweed soup from Chinatown.

And then I'll just have to make it through one more day of 2011 (I think I'll do some laundry, watch some Harry Potter DVDs, and go to bed early) and I can start fresh with a new year and a new outlook and hopefully some much-needed good health (I just can't afford to be sick any more... I've been out of sick-leave for ages and now I'm out of vacation time...any more major illnesses and I'm going to have to go out on disability).

I have some plans for next year, which I refuse to call "resolutions": I'm going to get dentures (my dentist offers a credit plan, so I can get them without saving up first... which you and I both know isn't going to happen), and I'm going to get my finances in order, and I'm going to lose some weight, and I'm going to do something about my messy room (as I plan every year).  And I'm going to get rid of the old-man skin tags that have developed on my inner thigh.  That should keep me busy for a twelvemonth, don't you think?

I wish you a joyful and prosperous 2012!

Might As Well Stop Counting...

I mean, really... Hepatitis A?  That's what capped off my November... my mense morbo, if you will.

My blood test results from the last time I visited my doctor came back with a Hep-A positive, but the little note said that since the test identifies antibodies rather than the virus itself, it was more likely that I had been immunized against it than that I had the disease.  But then I started displaying symptoms... lots of symptoms: nausea, fatigue, dark heavy urine, dense heavy stool, and pain and tenderness in the liver (which isn't where I thought it was... I had the impression that the liver was under the stomach, off to the right, and above the intestines; but it's actually above the stomach, directly under the diaphragm, and stretches all the way across, coming closest to the surface under the left front ribs...if nothing else, I have certainly learned a lot about anatomy in the last six weeks).

Of course, there's not much you can do about Hep A; it's not very serious, it doesn't cause permanent damage to the liver and is not very contagious, so very little research has been put into curing it.  I just have to tough it out for three months or so, get plenty of rest and eat carefully, and be extra vigilant about washing my hands after pooping (which I do anyway, but it never hurts to be extra cautious).

My doctor advised me to avoid anything that was hard for the liver to process, such as fatty foods, dairy, and acetaminophen... which sucks, since I love dairy more than any other food group, and vastly prefer fatty foods to nonfatty foods (hence the twenty-five extra pounds); I don't use acetaminophen very often, though, much preferring ibuprofen (which can also be hard on the liver, but not as much, so I'm avoiding it rather than eschewing, shunning, or otherwise cutting it out completely), but it's one of the key ingredients in my favorite cold remedy, Alka Seltzer Cold (citrus burst flavor).

He also advised me to bulk up on fiber and clean out my colon... which struck me as an odd connection, but now that I've done it, it makes perfect sense: I have more room in my abdomen, and therefore less pressure on my liver, which then reduces the nausea and the discomfort.  So I've been eating FiberPlus super-bran cereal (which looks suspiciously like my turtle's food pellets but tastes OK) every morning, slugging down orange-flavored Metamucil (which is surprisingly tasty) three times a day, and swallowing FiberCon tablets every night.  I'm probably taking three times the recommended daily allowance of fiber, but it feels great.

Of course, my back is still giving me some trouble: because of the injury to the sacroiliac ligament, and the extended bedrest needed to let it heal, my back muscles have become rather weak in that area.  I pulled a muscle again while reaching for the alarm clock on Friday morning, and had to spend another day in bed with the hot pad and the cold pad and the laptop and the boredom; fortunately it was just a small muscle and not the whole ligament this time.  My doctor has referred me to physical therapy to restrengthen the area, but I haven't started yet; in the meantime, I simply have to be more careful of my movements.  Nothing sudden, especially stretching, is allowed: slow and steady wins the race, I have to keep reminding myself.  And since I am still intermittently suffering the labyrinthitis and occasionally lose my balance for no particular reason, I'm basically walking around as if I was made of glass.

This business of getting old really blows.  But like they say, it beats the alternative.

One bright spot, though: I have discovered NetFlix, and it has kept boredom at bay longer than any other form of entertainment.  I've been watching lots of fantastic British TV series (Poirot, the original Being Human, the new Doctor Who, etc.) and some very interesting movies.  The free month's trial definitely has me sold.  Of course, a lot of the movies I want to see aren't available online, I'll have to spring another eight bucks for the DVD service... but I'm certainly considering it.

Another bright spot: I wrote earlier about trying out a new look?  I left you dangling with uncertainty whether I wanted to start wearing waistcoats all the time and/or start on a fedora fad or an ascot craze.  Well, I settled on waistcoats, largely because I became enamored of pocket watches, and there's nothing classier than a pocket-watch on an Albert chain across the front of a waistcoat... just like my adored Poirot (in the David Suchet incarnation, of course).

It started innocently enough: I bought this one pocket-watch just because it was a commemorative for a favorite anime series (Black Butler), and it arrived in the mail the same day the strap broke on my Timex; so I started using the pocket watch to keep time, and I absolutely loved it!  The act of taking it out of my pocket, pushing the button to open the case, checking the time, then snapping it shut and putting it back in my pocket... it has a flair of ritual, and is immensely more entertaining than merely glancing at my wrist.  And so, as with all new things, I had to have three or four of them, as well as watch-chains, fobs and charms for the chains... it's endless!

Of course, the waistcoat thing is still very expensive.  The cheaper ones I bought didn't work out, so I've gotten in the habit of buying inexpensive three-piece suits, just to get the vest.  I've found that the brands that are marketed to African-Americans (such as Stacy Adams and Falcone) are built longer in the torso, and are usually available on eBay for the same prices I've been paying for just the waistcoat.  I've also found a Pakistani garment called a "sadri" that fits a little loose in the waist but is the correct length, very cheap and available in a number of colors.  So now I have eight waistcoats in fairly constant rotation, which I'm wearing with collared shirts, French cuffs wherever possible, and the occasional loose necktie.  And most of them have pockets in the front, so I can wear my Albert chain with my Charles-Hubert Paris pocket watch with the Ganesha silver-and-crystal bubble charm (I also have a Colibri Titanium that I wear in my front pocket, attached to my belt-loop, if I don't have waistcoat pockets).

So despite everything going wrong with my body all at once, I am rather enjoying life.  Christmas is likely to be a little hairy, especially in my weakened condition, but my nephew is there to help, and my sister is likely to come stay that weekend; and since I have a doctor's note (as it were), I have a perfect built-in excuse to not do too much, so nobody will complain about cut corners or half-assed decor.  All I have to do is avoid too much sugar and too many resentments and too much bending and lifting.

So until we meet again...

Worst. November. EVER!

The Universe did not listen to my appeal at the end of the last post... or it listened and decided that I was being impertinent by addressing it so casually.  It decided that no, I had not had enough yet, not by a long shot.

While I was suffering from the labyrinthitis, I hurt my back: I was trying to get to a ringing phone, and lost my balance; in the ensuing eel-like wriggling to right myself before I fell over, I pulled something in my back that hurt like the dickens.  But since I was lying down to avoid dizziness and nausea for the next few days, I didn't really notice it.  When I returned to work on Monday, however, I noticed it plenty.  It didn't hurt all that much, but it hurt enough to make me uncomfortable.

However, as I was grocery shopping that evening, the same thing happened: reaching for a bag of frozen shoestring potatoes, I lost my balance and pulled something in my back while trying to keep from falling.  It was the same something as before, but I was not quite aware of what part was hurt.  I assumed it was a muscle-pull and ignored it.  I continued my shopping, put away the groceries when I got home, and went to bed.

Well, the next day, my back was screaming with pain, so I thought I'd better stay in and let it rest.  I got out the hot pad to soothe it, and took a hot bath, and all that sort of thing.  The next day was the same, it hurt to move, and the dizziness was still there, so I took another day to rest and recuperate.  On Thursday I pulled myself together and back to the office, doing what I could to avoid too much stress on  my back, needing to be there because the career-center coordinator was starting his vacation, so I had to be there to cover his position (which is part of my job).

But it was no good.  After four hours of valiantly trying to do different things to relieve my back pain, I gave up and called Kaiser to get a same-day appointment to see a doctor.  Fortunately, I was able to get an appointment with my own doctor, though I had to wait three hours to see him.  I spent one and a half of those hours flat on my back in the file-room, a sweater balled up under my lumbar and a ream of paper under my head, reading a book.

Turns out I strained my sacroiliac ligament. Not  a mere pulled muscle, as I had thought, but a strained ligament, which takes a lot longer to heal.  My doctor ordered me to stay horizontal for seven days.  SEVEN!  All while the career-center guy was on vacation, and while I am waaaaay behind on my filing, and while we got a new phone system at the office that I don't know how to use yet.  I never thought I'd find myself resisting a doctor telling me to get in bed for a week and stay there, but the guilt over so much missed work was monumental.

On the plus side, my injury gave me an opportunity to bond with my doctor... as you may remember from previous posts, my doctor is incredibly attractive, handsome and athletic and built like a brick outhouse.  But he, too, has suffered from lower back troubles, and told me that I was lucky I didn't have sciatica, as he'd had, which required surgery and five months recuperation in bed.  He told me he got the biggest books on Russian history he could find and learned all about everything that had ever happened in that country since the dawn of time while he was down.

Before this, he had always been friendly but sort of distant... I'd never spent more than a few minutes with him, and he did not seem very interested in any of my complaints.  But now that we had something in common, he joked with me and chatted with me and complained about the printer setups in his new office, and we had quite a nice little visit altogether.

Anyway, I figured this could be a blessing in disguise.  I did need some rest, and with all the extra time on my hands I could devote myself to my novel-writing.  What I did not count on, however, was the mental malaise that comes with taking Vicodin three times a day and having almost no mental stimulation from being around other people.  And then the lack of exercise, the effects of the Vicodin, and eating way too much sugar (I finished off the Halloween candy out of sheer boredom) while I was not exercising sparked a really foul depression.  With all that going on, my writing suffered terribly; and by the middle of last week, I decided to abandon The Vicomte is Dead and concede defeat for NaNoWriMo this year.

What I did manage to do was develop the floor plans I created for the Chateau in the story, researching French 18th-century design, and coming up with room designations and outbuilding locations, which were very valuable in creating the scenes in my mind.  But having those locations so developed unfortunately bogged me down in the details of my writing: I knew too much about the place all of a sudden, and lost track of the people and the situations.  I got to a point where I was talking about the castle more than its inhabitants; and when I spoke of the inhabitants, I was too bogged down in what they looked like and what they were wearing to concentrate on who they were and why they were interesting... and there were so many of them that I couldn't possibly continue to describe them in so much detail.

This happened before when I didn't have the story well-developed enough in my mind.  The story ends up taking a back seat to the creation of the mise en scène of the story, and everything goes flooey.  However, as I learned last year with The Math Teacher is Dead, having that aborted overdetailed first try makes creating the story easier the next time I approach it: having the places and houses and people all nailed down makes it easier to tell the story without worrying about the background details. I have to have the background completely developed in order to tell the story with any kind of authority, but I need to have some distance between designing the stage and writing the play.

The more I learn about my own processes, the closer I get to being able to write what I want, when I want.  So after I let the Vicomte stew for a while, I'll come back to it and finish the story.  I may not wait for NaNoWriMo 2012 to do it, though.  I enjoyed what little writing I did so much, I feel like I want to keep doing it, even if only in little bits rather than a big thirty-day orgy of it.  On the other hand, I really want to go back and finish Worst Luck, and I still want to expand and develop The Math Teacher is Dead to prepare it for real-paper publication.

Well, it was kind of a load off to let go of NaNoWriMo, but that left me with even less to occupy my mind.  I had been watching Poirot on YouTube all week, and continued to do so until I'd seen every episode; I watched some other movies and TV shows as well, on YouTube and on Hulu as well as on the television and DVD player.  And I read the new Dexter novel, which was pretty good though still not as good as the first two, which inspired the cable series (the main character is unraveling, which is interesting psychologically but makes for a somewhat frustrating read... it was the character that made the stories good, and if the character starts falling apart, what have you got left?)

Thanksgiving came along, and for the first time in my entire life, I had Thanksgiving dinner somewhere besides at my or a relative's home... there were only five of us around this year, so we went to Kincaid's on Jack London Square, and had an amazing meal and a really good time.   Then we went back to my aunt and uncle's house and had pie and watched football and visited.  It was a bright spot in an otherwise wearying month.

Of course, being up for the first time in a week, driving here and there, then sitting in a chair that was not ergonomically correct for a couple of hours, was more than my not-quite-healed back was up for, so I suffered something of a setback and had to retreat to the bed with my heating pad and my laptop.  I went out on Black Friday to get some groceries, and while I was out I went and got some back-related stuff: a vibrating heating massage pillow, a portable lumbar support chair-back for the car and the office, and a lumbar bracing corset-like gizmo that makes walking around and doing stuff easier and more comfortable.

I discovered, however, that I had picked up a head-cold somewhere along the line.  I didn't notice it at first because I had been so still, and I didn't have an awful lot of phlegm and mucus spewing about; but I did do a lot of coughing, and I felt woozy when I tried to stay up out of bed for very long at a time.  I thought that since I was already in bed and taking good care of myself anyway, the cold wouldn't be a problem; but it has lingered tenaciously; so today when I was supposed to return to work, it flared up and knocked me down.

Let's review: kidney stone; labyrinthitis; strained sacroiliac; depression; head cold.  I don't dare wonder what else can befall me before this month is over with.  But I am not going to keep taking it lying down.  I'm going to knock this cold out today and practice being upright and doing things, so that I'll be prepared to return to work tomorrow.  So today I'm going to drink a lot of Alka-Seltzer Cold and orange juice, do some sweating if possible, and get some laundry done so I have something to wear to work.  And when I get back to work tomorrow, I am going to tackle the work that has inevitably built up while I've been away.  And then it will be December and hopefully the beginning of a much better month.

Of course, historically December is not my best month.  But I shall continue to hope.