Category: health

Lunch Break

Twice in the past when my foot was hurting like hell I had two different people suggest a stretching exercise that should help.

  1. Roll up a towel
  2. Put your foot on the center
  3. Take the ends in your hands
  4. Keep your leg straight
  5. PULL

It has worked for me in the past. I am not sure if it is working for me today, or if the fist full of Advil I took about five hours ago is working, but one of those two is working and my foot feels a lot better. It still hurts, but it’s manageable.

I’m on my lunch break. I’m listening to podcasts discussing Rick and Morty. I’m eating a bowlful of M&Ms*.

What to do, what to talk about.

I have a candle burning. It is going to burn out soon. Does that mean that I’ll start a new candle tomorrow and do a time lapse from the very beginning? Wait a tick… what if I did a time lapse on a new candle and didn’t shut if off until the candle burned out. It would take days, but the iOS app would reduce the whole thing down to less than a minute. How epic would that be?

There is a new episode of Marvel’s What If…? today. Last week we were able to do a watch party with Harry. I don’t know if we’re going to try that again. Partly because I heard a rumor that tonight’s episode will be Marvel Zombies and Harry doesn’t do zombies. He’s also in his second week of college and by this point he should probably be dealing with 3+ hours of homework each night.

Okay, time to start the dishwasher, check on the dehumidifier in the cellar, and go back to work. Maybe do that stretching episode for a minute or two too, then back to work.

*Does anyone else take bags of M&Ms, pour them into a bowl, and then eat them one color at a time? Am I the only one? Is that a sign of a defective brain? AbyNormal, as the movie implied?

Can I Please Catch a Break, Please?

Enough already. Uncle!

On top of all of the sources of stress and guilt and shit that are just making me feel terrible all the time, I now have crazy amounts of physical pain to add the proverbial cherry on top of my shit sundae.

Last night, just before I did my last 10 minutes of exercise for the day, I noticed that there was a little bit of pain in my right foot. It was sort of near the instep but also kind of on top. It was hard to place. I did my 10 minutes and everything was fine. A couple of hours later though, it was starting to really hurt. When I took off my shoes before bed it started hurting a ton. Now, the next morning… holy shit does it hurt like a mutha. It hurts like the end of the world.

I’m pretty sure it’s just my usual undiagnosed case of plantar fasciitis rearing it’s ugly asshole head again. I’ve been doing the stretching exercise that is supposed to help. It’s too soon to tell how it’s working though.

Can I please just catch a break? Pretty please? This insult on top of all of the other crap… How am I supposed to deal with it? Yes, I know it could be a lot worse, that doesn’t change the fact that the current situation Sucks.

Guilt

We were originally thinking of keeping me isolated until tomorrow night. I was going to take another Covid-19 test, both rapid and PCR, and when the rapid came back negative I would be in the clear. Today, after a little consultation with the CDC, we decided to stretch that to Friday. I cancelled my test appointment and rescheduled for Friday morning. It’s just another day and a half, and while we all agree it is likely a massive overreaction, it just feels a little safer and a little smarter. I just wish it didn’t feel like such a crushing blow. Come on, Robert. It’s only about 36 hours more.

On top of all of the other shit though, it just adds to all the guilt. I should be able to do more for my parents. I should be able to do more for Jen. I should be able to do more to keep everyone safe while still helping with everything that needs help. Shit, man. I shouldn’t really feel this guilty, but I do. It’s weighing me down and making me tired all the time.

I feel like I need a good, solid win. Followed by a good, solid, long (permanent?) vacation to someplace where it never gets too cold and snow is a fairy tale told to kids to scare them into being good… or something like that.

Ah, hell. I think I’m just tired. I’m sure I’ll feel better in the morning. I did get my 30 minutes of exercise in today, so hopefully that will lead to a really good night’s sleep.

Wish me luck.

CPAP Fail

I’m really tired right now and it might be my CPAP machine’s fault. Well… my fault, but related to my CPAP machine.

I turned in around 11:30 last night… I think. (We’re using lots of ellipses in this post already. We might be shooting for a… world record) My watch told me I was asleep around midnight, which seems a bit later than I remember, but whatever. I woke up at about 1:30am (the watch didn’t catch that though) and realized I didn’t have my mask on. I laid down on the couch, expecting to spend some time reading before I went to sleep, and next thing I know it’s like two hours later.

Now if I fell asleep while reading, I would expect my iPad would have fallen out of my hands, right? Given how I was laying on my back and holding it in front of me, I could reasonably expect that it would have actually bashed me in the face. Nope. It was actually laying down next to me with the alarm clock app open and the alarm set for 6:30am. Did I set the iPad up the way I always do when I sleep on the couch (thanks to the CPAP machine that is a super rare occurrence now) in my sleep? Because I don’t remember doing it. I remember setting the alarm, but not putting it down with the clock app having focus and the screen turned off.

So I realized what was going on and put the mask on and switched on the CPAP machine and had a decent night’s sleep for the remainder of the night… but that whole experience was just… weird.

I mean… weird.

Now it’s 2:00pm and I am wrapping up my lunch break and I am seriously ready to go back to bed. Go figure.

Back At It-Ish

The five day weekend is over. Not that I had a five day weekend, but I digress. I’m still isolating in Harry’s room, and today is the first day that I will be on video conferences with folks at work. I’m going to have to explain the Harry Potter book cover poster on the wall behind me. It’s actually not a poster, it’s a puzzle. Harry was able to put it together and hang it up without having it fall apart. How amazing is that? What the camera can’t see is the Star Wars poster off to my right. That one would need no explanation.

I have the windows open and the mini USB fan on low. The goal is to keep the air moving. Something about all of that time at my parents house in the sweltering heat with fans blowing right on my face all day has made me really want to have the air moving around me as I work.

I closed all three exercise rings yesterday. I weighed myself today. Closing the three rings once did not magically reduce my weight at all. What the hell? It was my first weigh in since mid August and I was up a pound and a half since then. I think we can probably attribute that to stress eating over the weekend so I think maybe what I have learned is that Intermittent Fasting is helping me hold my weight steady more than it’s helping lose weight. I will take that as a huge win. Now the exercise can start lowering that astronomically high weight total, and then we can throw in some diet and some bariatric surgery to get it down the rest of the way. Wait, what?

Okay. Punching in to work. Have a good Tuesday, everyone. Labor day is past, summer is over, it is officially winter in New England. Bite me, Mother Nature.

Until next time……

Two Therapy Sessions

I was able to sneak into the cellar and play the guitar twice today.

I got a lot done for 50/90, which was nice, but I reached the point on the second go-round where my hands just wouldn’t do it anymore. That’s actually not a bad thing. I really need to build up more stamina, but I’ll get there.

On a gear note, I have my little recording nook in the master bedroom that has my current recording pedal board and my little 15 watt Fender amp. My big use-with-the-band pedal board and my Vox 15 watt amp (and my 30 watt Fender amp) are all in the cellar because Covid was slowing down and I thought they would be traveling to Mike the Bass Player’s house soon… and of course that hasn’t happened because the universe has intervened. The upside is I could set all of that stuff up in the cellar to keep working on 50/90 while I’m locked out of my bedroom. I bring my new Les Paul and my MacBook Pro up and down with me, as there is no way in hell those puppies are staying down there in the humidity. I set everything up far away from the flood zone, but you may note from the previous pictures that none of the electrical stuff is actually on the floor. The pedal board is, but the pedals themselves are not. That’s for flood damage prevention reasons.

So that is what I am doing to keep 50/90 going this week.

I also wanted to start with the exercising again. I started a couple of weeks ago and then fell off the wagon. I wanted to start up again today, what with it being a Monday and the iPhone Activity app starting its week on Monday. Jen wanted to do the same thing and she totally kicked ass all day today. Me? I was at two minutes of exercise as of 7:00pm tonight. Looked like I was going to fail for the day. Well, screw that folks. I’m up to 17 minutes now with 3.5 hours left in the day. I’ll get to 30 minutes, you betcha.

Okay. I need to go get a bottle of water and do another few minutes of exercise.

Looking for the bright side of self isolation. It’s tough to find, but it might be out there. Probably not, but maybe I might be able to pretend.

Clueless

I don’t know what to write about today. It’s Labor day, so have a good one.

Clean up in the cellar has been taken care of for now. All of Harry’s left over laundry is done, though I still need to put his sheets back onto his bed. There is a mountain of laundry in Bellana’s room that I’ll probably start today. I set up a new music nook for quarantine in the cellar last night and am hoping I’ll get a chance to use it today. Maybe.

No cookouts for me today. Just isolation and stress and work and guilt and the usual. It’s hard to explain what is going through my head at this point. I am sad about how my mother is handling the change (did I ever post what the change was? I’ll get to it), I am guilty because I am not there to help, I am pissed off because I have to isolate for Covid (even though I’m positive this whole thing is an overreaction, even if the overreaction is still the smart move) and I don’t get to hug my wife, and I am filled with relief that my parents are finally in a place where they can get the help and care that they need rather than have my idiot ass pretending like I know what I am doing.

I don’t know.

Here’s the Covid music nook:

Hopefully I won’t have to use it long and can go back to the bedroom. I haven’t received a call from the urgent care place telling me I have a positive result so that’s good. I have an appointment for another test on Wednesday. If that comes back negative then it’s back to reality for me. I know it will because I was barely exposed and people who had much closer exposure are all testing negative. Whatever, isolating is the right thing to do, I just want it to be over.

I want isolation to be over, I want Covid to be over. I want my parents’ difficulties to be over. I want being guilty to be over. I want to be able to get a good night’s sleep again. I want to be able to work without having to think about all of this other stuff. I want my wife to not have to worry about me. I want my kids to not have to worry about anything except their educations. I want my band to get back together.

Call me selfish, but I just want normal back.

Shit. I had nothing to write about when I started and then I turned it into another downer. Sorry about that. Next time I post I’ll try to include some jokes or something.

Source

I just paid a visit to Lake Asshole. I think it’s pretty clear that the source is not the Merrimack River but instead our water heater.

Oh yippee.

Once the Covid quarantine-esque thing is over, we’ll have to get a plumber in here. Insert a frustrated sigh here.

I’m so tired of all of this. Covid, my parents situation, not being able to help in any way that makes any difference, water in the basement, all of that shit. It’s just piling on and there is nothing I can do about it. I’m just so tired.

I’m going to eat a bag of Reese’s Pieces and hope E.T. gets his alien ass over here to do that glowing chest thing and make all of my hurts all better. I just hope he gets here before The Walking Dead comes on at 9:00. I don’t want to make him wait until after tonight’s zombies before he fixes my broken ass.

That Sucked

I called my parents today just to say hello. My mother gave me both barrels, right in the face. Boy is she unhappy about moving into an assisted living place. Boy did she let me have it. My favorite was when she said you’re not going to help me get out of here, are you. Yeah, that was the best. Honorable mention goes to the time she said if she had to live there the rest of her life then the rest of her life is going to be really short. No, I am not going to get you out of the place that will take care of you better than anyone you have ever met before can take care of you.

Yeah, that was fun. It was easy to pay attention to work after that. Sure it was.

Self Isolation Day Three-ish

So… what day is it today? It’s the second full day of our little self induced quarantiney thing-a-doo. Does that mean it’s day two or does Friday count as a day even though it was only a partial day? How do these things work? I’m going to call it day three. I don’t know how long it’s going to go. I don’t have the ‘rona so I am never going to get my pabst blue ribbon test results (you gotta read back a few posts to get that joke. I think I pulled it from two previous posts… sorry about that) so when am I clear to re-enter society? We’re thinking about another rapid test on Wednesday or so? If that comes back clean maybe we’re okay? Maybe another pabst blue ribbon to go along with it? I don’t know. Maybe I just stay in Harry’s room for the rest of eternity? Fun, huh?

I didn’t forget to liberate the CPAP machine last night. On Friday night I slept for four hours and 45 minutes and the restful sleep percentage was something stunningly low, like 46% or something. Last night I got seven hours of sleep and the restful sleep percentage was 71%. That’s more like it. I did wake up around 5:00am and didn’t get back to sleep until almost 6:30 so that’s a pretty colossal fail. Other than that, the sleep was pretty good. I feel almost awake now.

When I came home from my pabst blue ribbon test on Friday (that joke getting old yet?) I told my beautiful wife that I was going to need junk food to get through this. It was all like, engines full, stress eating ahead! Then last night I finished dinner before 7:00pm and didn’t have a single bite to eat afterward so I guess the stress eating commences today. I guess. I started my intermittent fast two hours early, which means I can start eating again two hours early, which means 11:00am which is 14 minutes from now so… there is likely to be a significant amount of M&M’s devoured during much of today’s weekend work day and shit.

Okay. Back to it.

Shit.