zeptember

The temperature outside finally broke just before 3pm.

It’s no longer 95F.

It’s only 93F.

gah.

The coolest part of the house is starting to heat up now, too. And there’s two and a half hours left to go in the workday.

And there’s no air conditioned stores within easy walking distance from the house. And I don’t have the base to the car seat because they never gave it to me, so I can’t load the kid in the car and take her somewhere cooler.

Ugh.

Thankfully she’s not overheated - she’s doing fine and well there’s always the baby bath if she does start to overheat.

4pm edit: Ok so now on top of the heat there’s a big fire somewhere. I just opened the kitchen window to see if there was a cool breeze yet. There isn’t - still too hot - with choking forest fire smell.

Somehow I think we’re going to surpass the forecast high again today.

12:38pm Edit: …and there it is…

It’s not even 9:30am and it’s already 76°F outside. The temperature has risen six degrees in the past hour.

I didn’t bring a lunch today because I am dumb. I will need to walk over to the local Taqueria to get something. This could prove challenging depending on when the baby is awake or in need of feeding or whatnot. Glad I brought extra protein bars. I could probably also raid the fridge here.

I was able to get a same-day doctor appointment yesterday and also allowed to leave work an hour early to make it to said appointment.

The doctor felt my shoulders and neck and said what all the doctors always say:

… OH MY GOD!!!

Yeah, it’s tight. I am not lying about this. My back locks up. I went through the whole story of the car accident again, too, because no doctor previous to this one ever takes notes on this sort of thing, or else the current doctor on staff is always too lazy to read my file.

So I got a prescription for muscle relaxers, and she was so nice as to give me 30 of them. I also found out I have a refill on the anti-anxiety meds, so I’ll get that taken care of, too.

With regards to the bump in my hand - not imagining that, either.

The doctor says I have a ganglion cyst, and she’s referred me to a HAND SURGEON.

Great. Two months before my wedding, and I have to have a surgery. Have I mentioned that the health insurance runs out tomorrow? Yeah, my man got a new job, so his health insurance, which I’m covered on, is dead, Jim, until the new job’s health insurance kicks in, which could be a month from now.
So if I DO need hand surgery, it’s going to have to freakin wait.

*sigh*

As if I needed one more thing to worry about right now.

Weather forecasters = FAIL (again)

High of 85 and it’s 91?

The migraine returned by the end of the workday yesterday. I came home with light-sensitive eyes again and kept the lights turned down low if I used any lights at all.

Note to self: heating the gluten-free pizza crust out of a desire for comfort food during a migraine episode is NOT the answer. The crust in gluten-free pizza is quite crunchy and chewy at the same time, and requires a lot of effort on the part of one’s mandible, which in turn affects the rest of the bones and muscles of the head and makes the migraine worse.

I’ve started to wonder if the TMJ is coming back. After the head-on car accident in 1994, I was told that I had developed TMJ (TemporoMandibular Joint disorder) and that if I didn’t wear my new jaw splint every day, day and night, I’d be drinking all my food out of a straw by the time I was 30 (I was 22½ at the time).
I wore the jaw splint for a year, and pronounced myself healed. I had taught myself to be conscious at all times of the position of my jaw so that I would not be clamping down and/or grinding my teeth. This was a bad move, however. Pronouncing myself healed meant that the insurance carrier AAA pronounced themselves free of having to maintain my injury for life as was stipulated in the lawsuit I’d won (I sued my uninsured rider’s policy of my auto insurance on the advice of my father’s lawyer, because my boyfriend at the time, who was driving the car who got us into the accident, was uninsured and under age 25. Even though the SUV who hit us head on was at fault, THEIR lawyer convinced the court that BECAUSE my boyfriend was under 25, he was in fact not a capable driver yet, and OBVIOUSLY didn’t look before turning left. Bugger the fact that all traffic on the left had stopped and waved us through, and the SUV was going 50MPH up the middle turn lane from behind everyone, to make the turn before the light turned red, out of everyone’s line of sight, until it was too late. All I remember was suddenly seeing the grill of the SUV and gasping).
But 23 year olds will be 23 year olds. And that means DUMB.

I took 1½ Tylenol 3 pills last night, ate my pizza and was in bed by about 9pm.

I woke up this morning in worse back pain than I was in yesterday. So the bed and pillows are not helping. But I knew that. Our bed sucks. It’s one of those pillow top super soft beds. I know now that I need a firm bed because of my back problems, and I fully intend to get a new bed once the settlement money arrives. Have I talked about the settlement? I guess that’s for another post.

Anyway, I still have a mild headache today, still severe tightening in the neck and left shoulder muscles, and now on top of it, I’m really stuffed up because I’ve had a fan in the window the last couple of nights because it’s been so warm (today is going to be warmer still, with a high of 85°F / 29°C). The fan blows around dust and pollen and I wake up with a stuffed nose and puffy eyes.

And on top of all of that, I woke up with my left hand feeling like I’d crushed it. So the Tylenol 3 made me sleep hard but made me not pay attention to the positioning of my body in the bed, which apparently ended up very contorted. And with the left hand, I have to add a knot to the list of bodily issues I’m having. Yeah, I’ve noticed I have a knot on the last joint of my ring finger, right where the finger connects to the palm. And it’s painful. I noticed it oh I dunno a week or two ago when it acted up, so I just resorted to not touching it. But this morning it’s causing pain and feels hot to the touch. So I’ve got to go get it checked out.

Good times. That’s all I need is for my wedding ring finger to be having problems, two months before the wedding. Go me. Yeah, definitely making an appointment to see the doctor.

For the past week and a half (going back to since george was here), I’ve been having a hard time again with my left shoulder, upper back and neck.

I’m guessing that when my lower back muscles lock up because everything is focused on protecting the pelvic area, which is in pain once a month, then the muscles in the mid and upper back end up having to work harder to take up the slack… and all the while everything is pulling downward on the spine. This inflames the bulging disks in my cervical spine (neck), and then my neck and shoulder go out in a screaming fit of nerve and muscle inflamation.

Yesterday, I woke up with a very locked up left shoulder. I tried to massage it as best I could before heading out the door.

I went to the new nanny job to get familiar with the mom and baby again, as well as the house. I’ve been to the house a few times before, because my friends M&M used to live there, too.
During the five hours I was there, my neck and shoulder locked up even more. I think I added extra strain on myself by using my neck and facial muscles when interacting with the baby. And there’s a lot of smiling that goes on with babies, too (even gotta fake it to keep baby happy and going).

By the time I left the place, I was developing a headache. It didn’t help that I’d not eaten for five hours. So I ate a protein bar on the way home. But the headache grew steadily worse. I’d have written the headache off as low blood sugar from not eating in five hours, but for the fact that the headache was worse than my ‘low blood sugar’ headache, and I had accompanying light sensitivity so severe that I had to squint because my eyes hurt that badly. Even with sunglasses on in the car.

I got home, ate some protein, took an Ibuprofen 600 and fell into bed to rest my eyes and head. I didn’t get up til my man got home two hours later and woke me.

We went out last night to look at hotels for our wedding night. I was fine for about an hour, and then the headache set in again, while we were out walking in San Francisco and I was craning my neck to look up at some pretty buildings.
The act of craning one’s neck to look up means that one compresses the cervical spine - it’s natural. But for me, with the bulging disks, it’s totally the wrong thing for me to be doing.
The headache came on with such force that I was rendered nearly immobile. My eyes were so sensitive again that street lights and headlights (it was now dark outside) hurt them badly. I got home, took another Ibuprofen and went to bed.

Today I’m babysitting again. Whee. Baby’s up. gotta go.

I can’t remember if I’ve stated this before but 1) I’m too lazy to go back and look and 2) I feel the need to repeat something like this anyway…

This year marks the first year since high school that I have wanted to go shopping for female shirts - shirts with v-necks and u-necks with upper bicep-length sleeves instead of elbow-length sleeves. Shirts which end at the waist, rather than at the thighs like many tee shirts do.

I know I had some initial gender dysphoria when I started wearing an underbust corset on a regular basis, but I’ve changed the type of bra I wear with the corset to one with no padding, no wires, and no support really, because the corset does a lot of the job holding up the breasts on its own. Changing the type of bra and continuing to wear the corset despite the gender dysphoria, I finally got through it within a few weeks.

It’s important for me to record this stuff because a lot of my life has been spent hating the body I dwell in simply because of breasts and distribution of body fat normal to that of a female.

It’s equally as important that I continue to work on accepting the body I dwell in as I approach our wedding day, because going into a marriage having worked so hard on one’s Self is a testament that one will continue to work towards Self acceptance and improvement, as opposed to hoping for eternal acceptance from one’s life partner.

I still prefer to go down a bust size, but I may be able to do this with toning and further weight loss.

Currently I weigh 169lbs (77kg). According to the BMI chart, I’m supposed to weigh 115lbs to 145lbs (52kg to 66kg) for my an adult female of my height (5′5″ or 65″ or 165cm).

So I have 2 months to lose 29lbs (13kg), or I can just continue with the Self-acceptance route and not force anything just because I’m getting married and want to look extra good in photos.

I’m all better as of today. Well, except for the fact that my lower back pain has moved to my mid back, but I think that’s cuz the baby’s demanded to be held more often than usual because she’s sick.

My endometriosis clock resets for 22ish days.

The baby however is not better. Today she puked in my lap. Good thing I bring a change of clothes with me when working with children! Later, she peed through her diaper, then right after I changed her diaper, wiped her down and put new clothes on her, and sat her down, she filled her diaper with diarrhea, which spilled out everywhere. I’m definitely investing in surgical gloves, now.

There was also a tiny bit of a bloody nose because she’s so stuffed up and then sniffly and then stuffed up again, and she cried moreso than usual because she’s sick, and there’s more drool than usual because she’s teething.

So today I’ve had every body fluid spilled upon me except for sweat.

Did you know that people with Endometriosis also always have weak immune systems?

If I’m not sick by the end of the weekend, I will find a deity to praise.

August 26, 2008 Edit: Well I think I managed to stave off The Sick, so I closed my eyes and pointed to a random deity to praise. That deity is Rauni. :p
Lots of Vitamin C and Calcium/Magnesium/Zinc vitamins have been my friend over the weekend.

I’ve already heard that red meat makes the endometriosis pain worse, but now I’m hearing that cows are being fed potato chips and M&Ms (which are made out of corn syrup, which personally makes my pain much worse)!!!

(Thanks to my friend Johnny for telling me about the video!)