Category: health

Stay Up

Jen has to stay up a little late. I’m trying to stay up with her but I can’t do it. It makes me sad.

I’m also starting a new mask and filter in Mr CPAP machine so once I Konk out I’ll maybe stay out for hours.

Look at me, letting everyone down again.

Crappy Sleep and Personal Time

My CPAP machine pissed me right off last night. I went to bed at 11:00 and then woke up a little before 2:00am with the mask sliding all over my damn face and leaking like a… like a… like a something that leaks a lot, I don’t know. I sat up and screwed around with all of the harness straps and stuff and eventually was able to get back to sleep.

How much does it suck when the thing that is supposed to help you sleep stops you from sleeping? It sucks a lot.

Change of subject…

When the hell am I going to use all of this time off? My company changed the way they dish out time off, including taking a bunch of holidays that we used to have off and turning them into floating holidays and rolling that together with the couple of personal days and the huge pile of vacation days and renaming it all Personal Time Off. We accrue x number of hours each month and there is a cap on how much we can carry before we stop accruing more.

The good news is that we get a shit load of personal time off. The bad news is we actually have to use it if we want to keep getting more. Oh, the webs we weave. I am about a minute below the cap right now so I have to use some time this month… and next month… and every month. That’s a good thing, but it’s also a logistical struggle, you know? Times are tough. Anyway, what I really need to do is take a week off and get the accrual down a bit so I have some breathing room. Good idea! But when? The best time would be a time when kids are here. Bellana won’t be home for months because she’s going to be in Europe for the next semester. Harry will come home on breaks. Good idea! When is the next break? March 7-11! I’ll put in for that week!

I love it when a plan comes together.

What Will Go Wrong?

The kids are coming over today.
There’s a new Star Wars show premiering today, The Book of Boba Fett.
We are going to have the Christmas dinner we were supposed to have on Christmas but didn’t.
It’s not too cold out (forecast calls for mid to high 30s).
I got a pretty good night’s sleep last night.
I put down all of the midi tracks for two songs this morning before work.

That’s a lot of good stuff for a Wednesday, don’t you think?

I wonder what’s going to come along and blow the happy vibes?

Hang in there, kids. Only two more work days until New Years Eve.

Cat Barf

Jen told me she found a cat vomit stash in Bellana’s room* and she asked me to clean it up. I took a look and found a cat vomit stash and didn’t think much of it. It took me a few days to get to it. It was nothing a little swiffer mop couldn’t handle in two seconds. I cleaned it up. Boom. Then I saw the actual vomit stash Jen was talking about. It was big. It was chunky. It was spread out over a surprising surface area. It was solid as a rock and stuck so thoroughly to the floor that it was essentially a part of the floor. The two had become one and would not be separated.

The swiffer mop didn’t touch it. Hell, the vomit laughed at the swiffer mop. The scouring pad on a sponge barely made a scratch. The vomit scoffed at the scouring pad. A quart of 409… well, that was a good start. That plus the scouring pad took up a lot of it. When I couldn’t get any more, I had to go at it with a second quart of 409, another round with the pad, and then another round with the swiffer.

Yeah, the vomit is gone, but I may have weakened the structural integrity of the entire house. Next time that cat pukes in Bellana’s room it might be the end of us all.

Beware.

*I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but Patches the Cat likes to puke. She has some food issues that often upset her stomach and she ralphs it up. We didn’t know what was going on so we asked a Vet and after an examination, the Vet told us that she just eats as much as she can as fast as she can and then gets sick. It’s really gross. It’s even more gross because I am the one who cleans it up.

Bellana’s room is probably her favorite puke palace. She’s not terribly picky. She likes the living room too, and just the other day she let off a bomb in the office. Bellana’s room though… yeah, that’s the stuff. It’s probably because Bellana went to college first and her room is empty the most often so it’s nice and private. Patches sleeps in there a lot too, though when Harry’s not around she likes to sleep (and hurl) in his room too. Bellana’s is definitely the favorite though, and with her coming back on Wednesday we want it to be as vomit free as it can be.

Oh, and did I mention that Bellana’s sheets are in the washing machine because Miss Patches dropped a stomach bile bomb on the bed as well as next to the bed and under the bed?

Yeah, Patches sure loves to yack in Bellana’s room.

Less Productive

I’ve completed about half of the projects I set for myself today. The snow cocked it up, even though we only got a little more than a dusting. Is a wet dusting a thing or is that a precipitation oxymoron? Whatever, I shoveled the tiny bit of snow and cleaned off the cars and my back has been royally pissed at me ever since. I did the trash too, and I’m about to cook dinner.

There are a couple of boxes that need to go into the cellar, haven’t done that. There’s a shit load of laundry to do, haven’t done that. The cat left a mess in Bellana’s room, haven’t cleaned that.

I want to but my back stops me every five minutes or so.

Here’s hoping 2022 (2020 too) leads to the elusive weight loss surgery, and that leads to a reduction in stress on my back, and that leads to less back pain.

It probably won’t, but a boy can dream, right?

Three Rings

I closed all three rings on my Apple Watch activity app today. I’m trying really hard to get back into it after slacking off for a month. It’s so difficult.

The watch has me burning way more calories when I walk in place than when I ride the exercise bike. I’m not sure why, but over the last week the bike has been better for my back. I did 40 minutes on the bike today, the goal is 30, and I wasn’t even close to the calorie goal.

I’ll have to figure something out, just so long as I don’t stop exercising. I can’t let myself stop again.

Good luck tomorrow, self.

Forgetful Doofus

Every few months I get a package in the mail with replacement parts for my CPAP machine. Masks, filters, hoses, harnesses, and sometimes water tanks. I should swap out parts more often than I do, but instead I tend to use each component for longer than expected and I end up not using all of each month’s delivery.

Over the last week or so I have been wanting to update everything, but I knew a delivery was coming soon and I decided to wait. It finally came two days ago and tonight I got around to swapping out parts. That’s when I realized what a forgetful doofus I am.

I keep all of the unused items in my closet. I figured I’d take what I could from the last box before using anything from the new box. I took the box off the top of the closet. It had a harness with a mask and a bunch of filters. Okay, that’s a good start. That’s when I noticed there was another box. Not the latest shipment, but the previous shipment. I hadn’t opened it yet. Ugh, really? I had a full box of parts sitting in the closet and I still waited for a new box to be delivered? What a moron.

So now the box from two deliveries back is empty except for a few filters (which I moved to the end table next to my bed. Don’t forget that, Robert. The next time you swap a filter you don’t have to go into the closet. Remember, you absent minded putz). The box from one delivery back is open and available for use. There is a hose in there and a few masks and another harness. The delivery from this week is in the closet now too, and it’s still unopened.

The machine now has a new filter, a new mask, a new harness, a new hose, and a new tank. Literally everything that can be changed has been changed.

Stop being so damn forgetful and start replacing parts more often. It’s nice that I clean them regularly, but stop being weird about replacement parts. Just stop it. Doofus.