Category: health

Temper Fail

I was just reading posts from one year ago today, like you do. Just trying to see how the beginning of the covid clusterfuck was comparing to the current covid clusterfuck. There was a post where I was talking about how everything was different but how it hadn’t sunk in yet. Mostly I was talking about work, but I also got personal a bit. I challenged myself to do something and reading it today I realized that I have failed in that personal challenge many times. This is what I wrote:

I can’t lose my temper… ever.  The stress level world wide right now is insanely high and am nervous that my temper’s fuse is now really short.  I cannot cannot cannot lose it.  I have to pay close attention not only to what I say to people, but how I say it.  I can’t snap.  I can’t sound pissy.  I can’t be anything other than cool and supportive. 

Okay… well… I think I’ve lived up to that more often than not, but there have been many times… many times where I have let something get under my skin that under normal world circumstances wouldn’t have bothered me at all and I’ve turned into a snapping prick and just lost my cool completely.

So allow me to take a moment to apologize to any and all people who have seen me lose my temper. I should have been a better person than I was and I am sorry.

Maybe as things start getting back to a more 2019 flavor of normal I might be able to be less of a dick when things get stressy. Here’s hoping.

D’OH!

Damn it, Roomba!

Our bedroom used to be the garage. There is a heavy door between the bedroom/ex-garage and the mud room that used to be an exit for the house proper. On Roomba nights we close that door most of the way. It’s closed enough that Roomba won’t come in, but open just enough that Patches the Wonder Cat can get in if she wants. The mud room is tiny, more like a breezeway than a mud room, but we call it the mud room. There is a door between the mud room and the kitchen that we always leave open. Sometimes if we have all the windows in the house open the breeze will blow it shut. Otherwise, it’s open.

I got up this morning. I needed to go into the kitchen. I was still 80% asleep and it was dark. I pushed open the mostly closed bedroom door, took two steps without really paying attention to what I was doing or really even opening my eyes all the way and

BAM!!!

The kitchen door was closed about 50% of the way and I walked straight into it. I took most of the hit with my foot, I stubbed my toe something fierce, and the rest of it got me square in the face.

It looks like our friend, Man Servant Mr DJ Roomba, Esq tried to clean behind the kitchen door last night and left it part way closed. Fortunately there were no permanent injuries. Except for the injured pride.

Also, my iPad tried to install updates last night and I got an error stating that it was out of storage space. I don’t store anything on it. I put movies on it and music too, but only when I know there won’t be wifi, like when I was going on a plane to Florida 13 months ago. I’m not sure how my browser ended up with a billion gigs used. Like… what the hell?

11 Days

It has been 11 days since I played the guitar. That’s a week and a half or so.

The desperation is intensifying. I need to get some playing in this weekend. I don’t know if I’ll be able to, but I feel like I have to find a way.

My mental state demands it. My playing chops demand it too, but it’s more impressive to mention how it’s important to me not going crazy and stuff.

I need to play the guitar! I also need a shave, badly, but that’s not what this post is talking about. I need to play the guitar!

Heart Rate

Since I started keeping track of sleep stats a couple of years ago I have learned that one number is pretty much as important to a good night’s sleep as the amount of time I’m asleep. That number is the average sleeping heart rate dip.

For the last month or so my sleeping heart rate dip numbers have waffled between eh and uh. For the few months prior to that, my sleeping heart rate dip numbers were more like WOW!

What changed? Why are things different now?

Is it a statistical anomaly? I haven’t been exercising. Could it be that my heart rate dip is less because my daily average waking heart rate is lower due to not getting jacked through the roof while exercising?

Or am I just not sleeping as well because I’m not exercising? I bet I’m reading too much into this. Whatever, I need a nap.

Though for the record… my exercise ring on the Apple activity app has been closed for today. Let’s get back into it, fatty.

COVID-19 Numbers

When the shut down began last year I started keeping track of the daily COVID-19 statistics for the city, the state, and the country. It was depressing but I did it almost every day. On February 28th I stopped. I just chose not to look up the numbers and that was it. I had my state and US spreadsheets (the city had stopped regular updates long before) open on my desktop for almost a year and I closed them. That was it. I don’t know why, but that’s what I did.

I opened them up again today. I don’t know why I did this either, I just felt I needed to. The pandemic is funny that way, I guess.

597073 cases in Massachusetts. 16551 deaths.
29286650 cases in the United States. 530829 deaths.

Now I am thoroughly depressed again.

Long Day

Today was a long day. Just busy from start to finish. I didn’t have a chance to stop for dinner until around 8:00. I was able to talk to my father at the rehab place for a couple of minutes but my mother’s phone kept going straight to the answering machine. It’s a landline and sometimes when you press the button to hang up it doesn’t actually close the line. That’s probably what happened.

Tomorrow is likely to be another long day. I hope it goes smoother though.

We found out this week that the building my group works in is likely to be sold. I guess someone approached us out of the blue with an offer too good to refuse. They asked us to go in and clean out our desks. They set up a schedule so there will never be more than five people in at a time. I signed up for the last day on the sheet, April 9, 2021. The last time I saw my desk was March 13, 2020. what a fucked up world, eh?

I’m so tired of it all.

Intermittent Fasting Fails

My intermittent fasting goal is 16 hours. 9pm to 1pm. Roughly. Sometimes I start early but I rarely finish early. I just go for a smidge longer than 16 hours. The goal though, is always 16 hours. If I fail to reach the goal it is because something came up. We had lunch plans with the kids, or someone was nice and made brunch. Stuff like that.

Yesterday I stopped an hour early. I didn’t have a reason. I was just hungry and really wanted some lunch. It was one of those times where I felt uncomfortably hungry. Not quite sick, just not right. Every time that happened previously I stuck it out and was proud of myself when I hit the goal and was clear to eat. Yesterday I more or less chose to fail.

It hasn’t happened yet today, but it’s going to happen again. I am going to eat breakfast this morning. I just hit the 12 hour mark a few seconds ago (8:45am) and I have decided to make some eggs. I am choosing to fail for the second day in a row.

I’m not sure if this is a trend or not. The more stress I feel right now the harder it is to stay on the plan, and I have been feeling the stress ramp up to hitherto unknown levels (hehe, he said hitherto like some smarty pants). I didn’t exercise this week either. It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve done that. It is effecting everything. I need to get back to marching in place for 30 minutes a day. That helps my appetite, my sleep, my energy levels, and sometimes even my back and leg pain levels. I think if I can get back to exercising a little each day I can get back into the intermittent fasting swing of things.

I’m sure I’ll let you all know all about it.

Vaccine FOMO?

I spent a good chunk of this morning going through nearly every vaccine distribution center in Massachusetts trying to luck into booking someone else’s cancelation. No dice.

Is it possible that part of my frustration at not being vaccinated yet can be chalked up to FOMO? The Fear of Missing Out?

No. No, it can’t. Not getting an invite to the Dispo app is FOMO (even though the entire concept of that app is flat out dumb, I still want in damn it, let me in!), but not getting vaccinated is not. The frustration over not getting a vaccine appointment is due to not having a vaccine appointment. That’s all, folks.

Jen is working today and Harry is at his dad’s so I am on my own. I’ll think of a cleaning project to do for a while then I’ll mess with my amplifiers. I said Jen is working, but the cat just ran into this room and Jen followed. Sometimes the cat gets into “Timmy’s stuck in the well” mode and makes us follow her places. It almost always ends on the bed where she just wants us to focus all of our attention on petting her. Our cat is both smart and powerful.

I am also trying to cheer myself up over my lack of a vaccination appointment by listening to Rush. Clockwork Angels, to be exact. Allow me to say that “Seven Cities of Gold” is possibly the best song ever recorded. The music annoyed the cat enough that she left the room (and allowed Jen to leave as well) but to me it’s pretty much the pinnacle of human accomplishment. I mean, that and the moon landing, but mostly Rush.

Okay, now that “Seven Cities of Gold” has finished, I’m listening to “The Wreckers” and I need to correct myself. “The Wreckers” is the high point of human accomplishment. There, fixed that.

Sleep

Why am I so damn tired? Why can’t I get a good nights sleep? I had a great nights sleep two nights ago but I was still exhausted all day. Then last night it was back to the usual crappy and now I am so tired I can’t read the words on this post. I have no idea if I’m spelling this thing correctly or not.

Why can’t I sleep, damn it??