i hear the voices when I'm dreaming

Health: is kind of on the crappy side of good. Still have fatigue. Still have hand pain, plus fingers are going wonky. Wonkier. (Fun note: one finger is doing a weird click-shift thing when I flex it back, i.e. hyperextension. The hand therapist gave my hand a weird look because apparently that's unusual. Half my finger problems are reduced mobility and half the problems are too much mobility. Only me, lol.: Had headache Sunday and Monday, Also, yesterday my chair decided to Not Tilt for like twenty minutes, while I was at maximum sideways tilt, which meant my back was in screaming agony by the time it decided to behave again.

I did finally break down and get a mask because of air quality issues from fires -- vogmask.com has masks that are good at filtering and also look cool. (I got the rainbow parrot one. If I remember, I'll upload a pic of me wearing it. (I wish DW had Ravelry's photo-upload interface and backend and stuff; it's so *easy* to add pictures there,)) Air quality here hasn't been as bad as Seattle-etc, but visible ash and haze seems to be the new normal for fire season.

Reiki: is still awesome. I'm doing a lot of it, with someone that ... okay, so, some Reiki practitioners just kind of wave their hands above the body (to manipulate energy stuff or whatnot), but others include physical touch, like a very gentle massage, and my reiki person is one of the second sort. Which means even if reiki were just new age mumbo jumbo, the sessions are a way for me to a) relax and n) GET TOUCH. Which is huge. I do not get enough touch (my aides dressing/washing me don't count) and I crave it SO MUCH, especially not being in a romantic relationship. And I still don't know how or why reiki *isnt* just new age mumbo jumbo, but somehow it works. It's not magic, it doesn't cure stuff, but it pain levels and stress levels always go way down after a session.

Oh, and for IHSS purposes it counts as a medical appointment XD

IHSS: had my yearly re-evaluation thing. I was worried they would take away hours. I actually got *more* -- it's up by an hour a day (!!!). Granted, that still leaves gaps where I don't have sides available (it works out to s bit under 7.5 hours a day), but it's a really really good result.

And I am mostly not in an aide crisis any more. At one point I was down to two caregivers -- V doing weekday afternoons and K doing everything else -- but I've hired two more people. S is super awesome and I want to keep her as an aide forever. J is ... 90% awesome and 10% frustrating (she picked some stuff up really quickly but there are other things she just can't get at all, like how carabiners work) but at least she's reliable. I still don't have someone for Sunday mornings -- K gets me up after her other client, which ends up being like 12:30 at the earliest -- but I'm not quite in as much fear about someone getting sick.

However, I am going to have to start searching for a new roommate soon, and wahhh I donwanna. It's annoying and hard and I don't like change wahhh. But current roommate is leaving in December so ... meh.

Pet news: Everyone is still adorable. Yahtzee does not look his age (he still looks and acts four-ish -- he'll he 9 next month wtf). And in huge news, Loki, who has been in a cone since December, is FINALLY back to being a cat rather than a lamp. I have no idea what if anything changed, but he stopped trying to attack his tail through the cone, so last time I was at the vet she let him out to see what he would do and he gave one halfhearted air-chomp in the direction of his tail and spent the rest of the time grooming and then exploring the sink. So we tried taking the cone off and leaving it off, and it's been almost a week now with no blood \o/ I'm not quite declaring complete victory, because I'm kind of waiting for the other show (paw?) to drop, but for now, both of us are a lot happier.

That's enough for now, partly because I should be getting to sleep' but I have part two to write up, including such things as Not-a-job news, crafting updates, design updates, language updates, and other things I'm forgetting.

I am feeling...

I don't even know how to describe it.

Wibbly and discouraged and tired and blah.

Factor A: migraine hangover (it wasn't a bad migraine as far as they go, but my brain is still somewhat leaden)

Factor B: cleaned off my desk, which should make me proud but just kind of reinforces how much mess there is

Factor C: Got to a new level of wanikani, and made the mistake of looking at what all is involved (33 radicals, 38 kanji, >100 vocab) rather than just letting it come in the lesson chunks (5 at a time, radicals first and then when that is semisolid the kanji, then vocab), so I'm overwhelmed and discouraged and my brainweasels are throwing me "logical" reasons to give up, which I don't want to do but augh so much

Factor D: it is after midnight and my mood always drops at night

Factor E: Loki is still lying on me 85% of the time, which is adorable but slightly frustrating and occasionally cold and wet (the cone gets soaked when he drinks, and then he comes onto me and shares the wetness). Particularly at night he does this thing of shoving his face in my hand -- and he seems to like it when I squeeze, kind of like juicing an orange but gentler; I was wondering why and "because it makes my brain stop buzzing" popped into my mind as his answer, and I don't think he's really talking to me but I worry that the gabapentin is doing weird side effects and making him feel crappy and he can't tell me

Factor F: I am not getting much crafting done, mainly because Loki, but also because I've been low energy and crafting takes some amount of inertia to get started. And I know there will probably come a time when my hands change and I can't crochet and I get mad at myself for not doing as much as possible while I could (like I wish I'd done more cross stitch while it was possible, though at least I had the excuse that I thought I had forever with that)

Factor G: some aspects of my life seem like constant stressors. Aides are one -- and my weekday aide has decided she doesn't want to do Wednesdays for a while, and the only aide that can cover has wed-thu as her "weekend" (since sat-sun she does a lot of work for me and for another client. But she wants two sequential days free) so *shes* pissed off now, and I just want to stop having to deal with life shit.

Factor H: I think my depression meds may be starting to crap out (I've been on them for a while and usually meds stop working after a while and I have to change) but I can't tell how much is meds not working, how much is situational stressors and the effect of chronic stress and chronic uncertainty and chronic pain, how much is just a weakness / failing on my part and I should try harder, etc.

Factor I: I have been a crappy friend lately. Not directly crappy, just ... not keeping up here, not keeping up in other social groups, not keeping up anywhere. Two of my childhood classmates have had babies and I haven't sent so much as a congrats email. I have no clue what's going on with you all. (I have little clue what's going on with the world, but that's deliberate.) I just ... suck, I don't know.

I miss when I actually used to be ... well okay not normal, I was never normal, but. Social and writing and being productive, instead of just metaphorically struggling to keep my head above water.

But uh. What *is* up with you lot? Links to entries of consequence or importance? (*very small voice* reasons why you're still my friends?)

I currently have two cats: Loki, the Eternal Kitten, and Monkey, the Mostly Dignified Cat. Since I got her, Monks has been ... not standoffish, exactly, but more in favor of being near her people rather than on. She will loafcat on the back of the couch and purr like a pneumatic drill, and she will headbutt people she likes, but she doesn't climb on. This is opposed to Loki, who has always been a shoulder cat (Or back cat, if you bend over).

This has changed.

Loki has been in cone since sometime in December, because his tail just won't heal; also notable, my roommates changed, and while old roommate would have Loki in with her all night, new roommate isn't as much of a cat person so that room is closed off. Loki in a cone is a very needy kitten, and he has started climbing on me -- both at night and during the day -- to demand scritches (especially neck and face, where he can't reach right now) and cuddles and such. This generally also involves flopping as awkwardly as he can manage between me and any device (tablet or phone) that I might try t use for entertainment while encatted.

Monkey, probably in an effort to reclaim her territory, thereafter started climbing on to me at night. Staking her claim, declaring me her human, and swatting Loki if he gets too close. Sometimes she does this before I'm asleep, and settles down purring (between me and the tablet of course), and after a while she will rest her head on my hand or tuck it down against the tablet so my thumb is against her throat, and I can feel her purr vibrating through my hand, and she will even sometimes go to sleep, and I can feel the tiny sleep-twitches and tremors that run through her, and it's heart-achingly sweet. Sometimes I just wake up, or half wake up, with a warm furry purring blob on my stomach or chest, and it's sometimes Loki but more often Monkey.

Once they were both on me in a sort of truce, one on my left arm and one on my right shoulder, but I was only half awake and didn't really grok that it was two (instead of just one very long cat I guess, idk) until one got up to leave.

It's one of the best things.

I really really hope that Monkey's nocturnal snuggles don't stop even once Loki's cone is off...

... so I've been kind of quiet here lately. This is largely due to a lot of freaking the fuck out.

So -- roommate and I realized about a week ago that neither of us had seen Loki for a few days; by itself that doesn't necessarily mean anything, because cat, but his food was untouched and his litter box was untouched. (Yes he sometimes eats Monkey's food, but in addition, not instead, of his own, and rattling his food dish usually brings him running.) And he is not a quiet cat -- if he were trapped somewhere he would be howling his head off -- so it was increasingly clear he wasn't in the apartment. And of course he doesn't have a collar.

Cue the litany of lost-cat tasks: calling vets, calling the shelter, talking to neighbors in case one of them brought him inside, making up fliers, etc. Also cue my brain being an asshole and constantly returning to worst case scenarios.

To add to the stress, my roommate had a scheduled trip for a grad school interview, leaving Tuesday and getting back this weekend. Having her gone is stressful even normally because there isn't backup if my aides flake and because I don't have the stress relief option of venting to her and because my mom is the one driving me home from rehearsals argh. Having my roommate gone *and* Loki missing meant I've been a gigantic ball of anxiety and stress.

Then yesterday I went to go to rehearsal, and Loki goes scooting out from under my van to under another car. Tea deer versonnen: My aide scoops him up and brings hm inside, I sulk about going to rehearsal because I want to be at home with a Loki making sure he's okay, but I do the responsible thing of going.

I don't know where the fuck he was all week or what he was doing; he seemed scared while hiding under the car, but was back to his usual self, including jumping on shoulders (and my mom's back, when she made the mistake of bending over to try to pet him). Possibly slimmer, but he had some pudge. We will probably take him in for a checkup but I'm waiting until next week so roommate can help with that. But he seems okay.

( pic )

Meanwhile, today I was pretty much a complete mess -- you know how you can hold it together (at least sort of) *during* a highly stressful event, but then crash afterward? Yeah. Some amount of paranoia (which I predicted yesterday would happen) that when I haven't seen him in a few hours it's because he's gone again, rather than hiding somewhere sleeping; a lot of crying, both random and not. (And I ducked up scheduling a ride -- Yahtzee had to go to the vet for yearly vaccination stuff today at 3, and I had someone lined up to drive, but told her 3:40 for a pickup time rather than 2:40, and didn't realize until 3:03 -- and even though I was able to have my aide, who was there, drive instead, and call the vet to give a heads up that Y would be a few minutes late but was coming, I then just burst into tears because ~clearly~ (that's sarcasm font) I'm a horrible failure. )

Oh, and my chair has wonked out again -- lateral tilt not working, stuck in turtle mode, though st least not super tilted -- and I *still* don't have the new chair working. (Well, it works in general, but there's a comfort issue and if doesn't tilt back as much as i need.)

So ... yeah. I'm having ~fun~.

Sleepy kitty picspam!

( Read more... )

Loki is home. Thin and wobbly, but active and alert and as ridiculously adorable as always.

This doesn't mean I get to stop worrying about him, of course, but he's home.

Now there's just the vet bill to stare at...

My roommate has set up a GoFundMe for Loki's vet expenses: http://www.gofundme.com/z4vjqbc4

Please don't feel obligated to contribute, but we would greatly appreciate any support ♥



(Signal boosting as appropriate would also be appreciated.)

So my roommate sent me a photo of a kitten that was looking for a home. Now, mind you, I have a cat and a dog, so I don't really need another pet, and i tend to prefer acquiring adult pets rather than babies. But I saw this photo:



...and had an immediate visceral "omg I need that cat" reaction. Which apparently my roommate did too, and there was much whimpering, before we came to the conclusion that while *I* do not need another cat, my *roommate* clearly needs a kitten.

She went today (when the bunch of kittens, of which this was one, was available), and apparently when she cuddled him he kind of stretched out and went all limp and purry, and everyone there was like "yup, you belong to that cat now."

Soooooo, there is now kitten.

Kitten is named Loki. Which bodes so well, heh.

( obligatory pictures )