Monday, October 22, 2012

Frustrated

First things first, my girls and I had a great time at the Halloween Parade on Sunday.  Boo had a great time handing out candy to kids and just being cute in general.  I'm having a lot of fun with the girls this year (not that last year wasn't fun, but this is a different kind of fun with four times the number of girls...).

But....
I have to rant and rave and just scream and pout and whine.  This has nothing to do with my girls or Girl Scouts or anything along those lines, I just wanted to share that yesterday was a great day.  We walked a good couple of miles and the day was beautiful.

But... today I'm tired.  And I'm cold.  Scratch that, I'm not even really all that mentally tired, just tired enough that simple things are pushing my buttons and I couldn't focus worth a damn at work today.  I'm physically more tired than I ever should be for the amount of low-key walking we did.  I'm freaking freezing cold.  Gak is sitting here in shorts and a t-shirt (and complaining he's warm) and I'm in jeans and a sweatshirt and I'm still freaking freezing.  And hot at the same time.
I just don't get it.

I'm sick and tired of being so flipping worn out all the time.  I'm tired of not having the energy to do what I want to do.  To not have the energy to make it through a day of work and come home and play and have fun with my boy-o without wishing we could just curl up in front of the TV or something.  I hate not being able to focus on much of anything for more than a short time without getting distracted or frustrated because I've lost my train of thought.  I'm so sick of feeling freezing cold and the only way to feel warm is to stand in the shower and waste so much hot water.  And even then my skin feels warm, my inside feels warm but I still feel cold if that makes sense.  I'm tired of feeling hot and cold at the same time.

And I'm totally frustrated by my doctor.  Don't get me wrong.  I love Dr. F.  She's been great and listened to me when I first came to her complaining of exhaustion and achyness and general ugh.  She's the one who sent me for such thorough blood work that I felt like I should have just donated a whole unit instead.  But... at my 4-month follow-up she wasn't overly helpful.  Sure, I don't feel anywhere near as bad as I did back in May.  But as I've whined a few times here, my energy level just isn't anywhere near where it was a year ago, or even at the beginning of the year.  I'd say my old energy level used to be around a 7 or 8 out of 10 most days, meaning that I could keep up with Boo if I tried hard enough and I had more than enough energy and attention span to make it through work without too much difficulty.  (My difficulty staying on task last year had very little to do with being exhausted, but just feeling kidna stuck and out of sorts with the job in general... I'm more or less over that, but just can't get through a day it seems...)  Now, if I'm lucky I'm around a 5 or a 6, but probably hover somewhere around a 4.  Back in the spring I would have said I was around a 2 or a 3 for energy.
So, yeah, I don't have the energy I did.
And I want it back.
I want to drop the 15 or so pounds that I picked back up over the summer because the  office snacking has totally gotten out of hand again and I haven't been able to get out of my own way enough to swim more than once a week, let alone get any other real activity in.

And then when I do, like yesterday, I pay for it so badly the next day that it really wasn't worth it.  And all I freaking did was walk in a parade that was around 2 miles long all told, if that (my pedometer app wasn't playing nice yesterday and I didn't map it on Google... just guessing here...)

And what's worse, is that I end up taking it out on the poor innocents.  I grumble and fuss and Gak ends up ignoring me and leaving me alone because I'm in no mood to be fit company.  He wants to do things with me, but he doesn't want to make me feel like I have to, so he just leaves me totally alone.  Which makes me sad. He shouldn't have to feel like I can't be approached with a 10 foot pole.  I shouldn't feel like I have to decide between doing what I want (playing RIFT or something like that with him, enjoying some together time) or what my body says I should do..... And I think I owe Boo about 15 apologies, just for tonight..

Anyhow, back to being frustrated by my doc.  Like I said, she's wonderful, but my appointment last week wasn't very helpful.  I told her my energy still wasn't where it was.  That I was still feeling cold a lot.  She asked me if I still had the muscle and joint aches, and I said no, because I don't.  She asked if I was feeling any depression or anxiety, and I said no, just frustration at my lack of energy and that it's been keeping me from exercising and hasn't helped to keep me from gaining 10 or 15 lb back since the spring.  She said that my vitamin D levels were in the normal range back when I had it retested in August and that chasing a kiddo like Boo around was bound to cause an energy drop and that vitamin D levels don't jump back up right away and we'll check again in December to see if they've stabilized.  Yep, she wasn't listening last week.  I really don't want to have to wait until December for more blood work.  I don't want to have to wait until April for my next follow up appointment.
I wonder why seemingly so suddenly my energy levels headed to the basement.  I don't want to be taking my multi-vitamin and an additional 2000 units of D for the rest of my life.  I want to feel like I have answers and reasons for why I feel the way I feel.

So, I'm frustrated.  And I'm tired.  And I had a Monday of a Monday and couldn't focus on a damn thing past 10:00.  And I've been freezing all afternoon.

On the plus side, Boo and Amma made chocolate chip cookies again today.  (Which is something I both needed and didn't need at the same time.... but the apartment smells soooo good...)

Oh, and then Mom had to give me an update on Dad.  It's breaking my heart.  And there's nothing I can do about it.  And I'm just not thinking about it right now because I've decided to spend this evening wallowing in self pity and ranting about my own personal problems.  But, yeah, not a great news day.  I'm tired and frustrated and just want it all to stop being so crappy.

I promise I'll try and post more "real" posts like the notes one.  I'll try not to wallow in self pity too much, but tonight I just needed to rant.  So, now I'm off to soak away the day in the shower and curl up with a book.  (My crochet project I'm working on is at a tricky spot and I just don't have the concentration for it right this second...)

Peace to all and may your energy be high, your health good and your  life filled with only small frustrations.

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Written Windows

I’m sitting here at work, working on some equations from a customer.  We’ve been going back and forth on these silly things for way longer than I care to think about.  First it was with one person from the site, now another.  It’s going much better with this second person than it was with the first.  With the first it really seemed like even though we were speaking the same language, the words weren’t meaning the same things.

Anyhow, I’m a pencil and paper kind of gal.  I have stacks and stacks of notebooks I’ve filled over the years at my job.  My earlier ones even have tables of contents (listing site/problem and even page number, sometimes date) and several have lots of sticky notes sticking out the tops.  You can trace all that back to my chemistry and other lab classes in college.  If you didn’t take notes, and in your official lab book, it didn’t happen.  Of course, it had to be in pen, pencil wasn’t allowed.
I just can’t take notes digitally.  I draw too many arrows and diagrams.  I write thoughts and cross them out as they are disproved or underline and exclamation point them when I was right.  I doodle in margins while I try and wrap my brain fully around what I’m thinking or working on.  I use color when I need something to stand out, or to differentiate between things that are similar or need to be grouped together.  Somehow the physical act of tracing the letters and numbers onto the paper makes it actually stick in my memory some how, and in a way that typing just doesn’t do.
That’s kind of a side note, leading up to the heart of the post, but a little background I felt was needed.

So, back to the equations I’m tackling for a customer.  I’ve gone through them and in my notebook I’ve written them out, crossed out units of measure that cancel each other out, just as I was taught throughout school and drawn my arrows, written my thoughts and doodled my doodles.  I then typed up my findings into a Word document and send them off to the customer.

What do I get back in return?  A scanned copy of my document with notes and scribbles all over it is what I find.  And he also sent three pages of hand written notes and scribbles on the equations.

I smiled at this.  I feel like this man is a kindred spirit when it comes to how we figure things out.  We physically move things around, even if it is just symbols on the page.  Suddenly, working with this guy doesn’t seem so impossible.  Maybe, just maybe, we’ll finally put these issues to rest and we’ll be able to move forward.

Then I think about how personal sending someone your writing is.  Sending someone the scribbles from your notebook is like sending them a picture of the innermost workings of your brain. 
Mine are messy and dynamic and impermanent in pencil, and colorful yet super organized and downright anal in places.  And yes, that really does reflect the inner me.  I’m a total mess, but if certain things aren’t “just so”, I go crazy and can’t function.  I need my color and my action and direction, but there has to be a central calm to my world as well.
My customer’s are neat, in pen and permanent, with sparse use of color, and no real arrows or anything dynamic to speak of.  He must be a much more organized, calm and “settled” kind of person than I am.

I know I’ve reflected on writing before, comparing my writing to my dad’s, and even my mom’s.  I see a lot of my dad’s stability and logical thoroughness in my notes and how I take them, but I also see my mom’s dynamic attitude and visual and spatial learning.  Those aren’t quite the right words, but they’re the best I’ve got.

I just think it’s really amazing what you can learn about a person just looking at the how they take notes, digitally or with good old pen and paper and by what those notes look like.  The written word is very much a window into the mind and soul of the person writing them, and not just for the verbal content.

I just had to share these observations while they were fresh in my mind.  I’d best head back to my calculations and enjoy the act of writing my notes.  (I really don’t know what would happen if I couldn’t write…)

Peace to all and may you have pleasant surprises in your day and windows into peoples’ souls.

Sunday, October 07, 2012

Where Was I?

Well, it's been a week since I've paid any attention over here.  Any long-time follower (all three of you) know that October is reporting month.  And yeah, it's reporting month.  That's about all I can or will say about that.

I have lots of things rattling around in my head.  Most of them have to do with the fact that my energy level is still nowhere near where I want it to be.  And that what little focus I can muster up are gone way too quickly.  And the fact that I'm sick and tired of feeling cold more often than not.  I mean, I know the cold of exhaustion and used to feel it if I stayed up too late, say past midnight or so, but feeling those waves of goose-bump raising cold starting at 8am?  I mean, I'm not bone-achingly tired or cold anymore, but I just can't seem to get my energy levels back to where they should be.  I'm tired of not being able to (and not really wanting to) get back into my workout routine.    In short I'm tired of being tired.

I did get my blood work checked a few weeks ago and well, it came back normal.  Slightly on the low end of normal, but normal.  I've got a follow up appointment next week.  We'll see what Dr. F has to say.  I'm just grumpy about it and want my old energy levels back and to feel good again.

In other news, I've finished up several crochet projects in the last few weeks (you saw several a week or two back in my crafty-girl post).  I'm glad I've been spending more yarn time, but you know, I just wish I had more time and energy for everything else.

Girl Scouts are going well this year.  I have 19 girls in my troop this year.  Yeah, I went from 5 to 19.  I'm still trying figure it all out and get this herd of cats going in the same, slightly quieter than a rock concert, direction.  We've got some interesting things in the planning.  I just hope we have a good year.

Anyhow, it's 8:30, I want to curl up with a book for a few (I have been reading more, which is nice... but...). I've got a ton of work to head in to tomorrow morning and I just want to get it over with.  Or something like that.  My train of thought seems to have derailed a bit there.  And I'm not going to try and fix it.

Peace to you all and may you have happy times and good health.