Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness

Today I was (with the RNIB campaigner) at a bus depot talking to drivers as they passed through the canteen.

I'd love to say more about how it went but as soon as I got home I slept for almost three hours and woke up just feeling differently terrible. Andrew says I look like I'm coming down with something, not just tired. I kinda feel like it, though I'm not in any specific pain and it could just be postdrome from the migraine yesterday.

I think I may just have been way too busy for too long.

In the hour I've been awake I've only managed to trickle downstairs to the sofa and watch this week's Brooklyn 99 (which was very good so at least that's something).

I didn't sleep well last night: the first time my sore throat woke me up was about 1am. It's such a miserable way to wake up, in pain that you didn't have (at least, I had only an ignorable amount) when you went to sleep. Again I admire my chronically ill friends and others who deal with worse painsomnia on such a regular basis.

I also woke up at 4something and 5something and worried I was up for good at 6:30 but I did manage to doze a little more eventually.

So while I didn't have a lot to do today, it was still exhausting. Nice to see mother_bones's youngest, who's just moved to Yorkshire from much further away. He said he thought of me the other day when he was making pancakes, because he was visiting his mum for Pancake Day last year and he and I made such a lot of them, savory and sweet, for everyone. I love pancakes, so it was a nice thing to be associated with!

This morning before we left York we had breakfast at the place we'd had lunch on Friday, because we'd noticed then that they did tasty-looking pancakes. Because I was so excited about the pancakes I jokingly planned to order them as a second meal after my tasty huevos rancheros. I'd forgotten all about this in the whirlwind of activity since, but I was glad diffrentcolours remembered it and planned it. I ended up with French toast (with fruit and ricotta and a drizzle of honey; yum) but it's still pancakes that'll make people think of me.

My sinus infection is really bad today. I couldn't even get myself up in time for uni, and I hate missing things in the first week. I did too much today (but all boring stuff -- cleaning the bathroom, getting the spare room in a habitable state, doing dishes and laundry -- so no anecdotes there) and now I'm exhausted and my eyes hurt so this is all you get. Sorry.

Me when I got home from work two hours ago: I am so headachy and nauseous, I can't get any work done. I should try a nap and see if I feel better when I wake up.

Also me: Noooo, can't afford nap, must get essay work done.

Me: But I'm too sick for that.

proceeds to spend two hours not even in same room as computer, wasting time on phone and staring into space when too sick to look at phone

Also me: OH NO WHAT A COMPLETELY UNPREDICTABLE WASTE OF AN AFTERNOON.

Google says the thing making my feet horrible is probably... eczema! "Often caused by stress." Well, that explains why it first arrived when my parents visited! (Yes I know that was a long time ago. It's been flaring up and then almost-going-away ever since and every time it goes away I think it'll stay away and at least I'm doing something about it now.)

Can't even really make a GP appointment until I have a better idea of what my schedule will be like. Nnnrgh.

Plus I already have a follow-up appointment about my new meds, a smear test, and my first meeting with the Disabled Students Office this week, which is quite enough Health Work to be getting on with right now.

By the end of the week I will definitely know my class schedule (since it starts the week after that!) and will be able to make an appointment about my horrible feet. So at least I have a plan.

My period showed up today, a rare and surprising event because the birth control I'm on means that I have only a few every year.

Usually they're pretty easy to manage but occasionally I have one that reminds me why I started taking the birth control in the first place. I used to be one of those people who'd miss a day of work a month with them. Missing a 5k obstacle course seems even more understandable.

But I'd been eating myself up about it. I worried that I wasn't "really" sick, or not sick "enough," that it's "just anxiety," that I was making excuses... This is common enough but I think it was especially bad because I was missing an exercise thing. The most virtuous of all things, exercise!

Skipping that wasn't just bad in a "I've already paid for this" sense, or a "I'm supposed to be doing this with my friend" sense, but in a moral sense. I try very hard not to attribute Goodness and Evil to various habits but obviously I'm failing miserably at that based on my reaction here. I know it's illogical but if you could logic yourself out of what society has ingrained into you, the world would be a very different place.

It might also explain part of why my emotions have felt so uncontrollable lately. Obviously some of that is legitimate--life has been demanding and stressful--but I've also been unsettled at the feeling that these reactions are unusual for me. That's been going on for too long to be PMS, but it means it's likely things are not as thoroughly awful as I'd imagined. Which is good, because everything has seemed pretty bleak lately and it'd be great to be wrong about that.

So my mom's sister -- the nice one who moved back to Minnesota to look after my grandma who couldn't stay in her house on her own -- has cancer. All my mom's told me about it is "she'll need surgery as well as chemo."

My grandma, meanwhile, has just been told she has macular degeneration.

So my mom has something wrong...something something temples something probably arteries?...that if left untreated could make her go blind. Of course it's being treated, but with something that could affect the functioning of her one remaining kidney. She's having a biopsy today and will let me know the results of that when she does herself.

Until then, my parents seemed cheerful enough on the phone yesterday (my dad thought I didn't know what Super Tuesday was, bless him; my mom was talking about my cousin's family; all seemed pretty normal).

But, and perhaps because today I've got no plans and not enough to distract myself, and maybe because a friend is having I-don't-live-in-the-same-country-as-my-aging-parents issues, perhaps because my life lately seems full of worries about the health of people I love...I'm utterly exhausted and not coping fantastically.

The hard sculpted plastic of the facemask bumped into my left shoulder. Then a jet of cool air shot directly into my left ear as Andrew moved slightly shifted position, to give me a squeeze before he turned to face away from me.

Ah, love in the time of CPAP machines!

A friend once described sleeping next to a partner who used one as "Darth Vader in an arctic desert," which does pretty accurately convey the feel and sound of this multimedia experience.

But...somehow, in a nice way. Really! I'm not complaining. Maybe because we both sleep so much better since his sleep apnea has been diagnosed and treated. And at times like this it does liven up a (otherwise really terribly dull and frustrating!) bout of insomnia!

James assures me whisky is a good idea, even at nine in the morning, because it's medicinal. Bless him. For now, at least, I've stuck to tea with honey in it.

But whisky does sound like a good idea. Did I mention that there was water leaking from the bathroom through the kitchen ceiling last night?