singedsun

I've had three full days at the new job, two days of orientation which were great, and then today was all day data dump basically from my new manager. My brain is very full, but in the best way possible. I couldn't have made a better choice to leave the old job, obviously but, I came home today in such a good mood and full of ideas about how to move my new team forward with actual hope I can make positive change... it's a very weird change. All good thoughts. I expected the overwhelm to hit at some point, and the imposter syndrome too, but I've had neither so far. And after a full day with the new boss learning the ins and outs of the group, I just don't feel it. I feel like I know exactly what I'm doing going forward and what's expected of me.

ALSO it feels weird to say this but my Orientation class was like, good, actually? Not only was the orientation itself just really, really great, but the people in the class were cool too. Even those of us who don't really do "interaction" were into it (I know I wasn't the only one). ALSO ALSO I made a new friend in Orientation. We hit it off like immediately, I don't think I'd even been in the room five minutes. She's super cool we have a ton of stuff in common and while we won't be on the same team, she'll be working in my building so I'll be able to see her most days.

I realized while waiting to start this job that this is my very first direct hire position. I've always contracted and worked my way into an official position. This is also my first direct lead position. Previously I've had to work my way up to a supervisor or lead type role. Once I guess I was hired as a supervisor but had to spend about three months as a regular employee first, so it doesn't quite feel the same. It's not my first hire into an I.T. group specifically, but it is the first I've gotten without any experience or knowledge of the tech being used in the group.

So to leave on day three feeling so good, like this is the right fit for me and very hopeful that I'll do well here... it feels like fake news. But I'm genuinely impressed by the company and what a good fit I am for this team specifically.

Unfortunately, because I'm just so tapped out at the end of the day, I'm a little exhausted. Being back in an office, around people and having to just be "normal" all day is definitely an adjustment. I think I'm making it well, but it'll take time. Also the last time I was in an office 8-5 every day, I was taking a whole fibro management med that I'm no longer taking. So the body ache is intense by the end of the day. I don't want to start taking it again and my thyroid numbers jumped at my last physical so drastically that I've had to adjust that med. Thanks, stress. My follow-up lab work said it's getting better but not completely back within range. Which means I'm going to have keep an eye on my ibuprofen usage too to keep my liver numbers good. I hate what a domino effect chronic illnesses are.

Anyway. Things are good at the new job. I've gotten a lot of messages from people at the old place congratulating me for finally leaving too, which is uh... not necessarily unexpected, but still surprising.

I hope you all are having a good week thus far!

While I'm feeling better, I've pinched something in my arms I think from my now perfect set up in my bedroom where i"ve been working 9-11 hour days for the last nearly three months. So I've been trying to stay off the computer/less typing in general right now and sadly a little less time with my Spartan wife in Assassin's Creed Odyssey. 

Saturday, Matt and I went through the back room and did some cleaning and rearranging and I finally ordered a new desk for myself so I can relocate and not be sitting at my vanity all day every day (which was never intended to be a permanent workspace in the first place). Mentally, I'd always meant this space for like casual browing/youtube and relaxing. It's where my makeup and skin care is and all my witchy stuff, so it's supposed to be a calm retreat in my house. Not the place I'm working and stressed throughout the week. My desk should be here next week, so I'm trying to keep non-work time on the computer to a minimum so I can give my arm/hands a break. 

The good news is that no migraines, even with these storms and no more nausea now that I'm off that one med, and no more ear pain since the ear infection gone. I feel like it's all been incremental improvements, but the last like four or five days I've felt better than I have in like two months. I mean I never even would've been capable of moving stuff this weekend to get that back room ready for a new desk before this week. 

We had a survey go out at work this week about a possible interest in returning to the office. I think both Matt and I, given the way our jobs have been handling this time, are probably home for the rest of the year. There might even be an option for me to stay home longer than that, or move to a more half in/half out of the office work style, which both me and my dogs would enjoy I think. 

I hope you all are doing well. <3 I miss reading all your entries and I miss posting more regularly. 

I did turn in my jukebox_fest fic this weekend, which was really an effort for me to write but I think I'm happy with it. I've got my intoabar assignment which I'm so excited about and I just did my sign-up for for justmarriedexchange. So I'm excited to get back to writing in general in the near future.

I went to the doctor today and found out that the migraines I've just been thinking are bad due to weather and stress and you know *gestures everywhere* weren't just migraines. Those migraines and some of the symptoms of the new migraine pills I've been taking have been masking an ear infection that I've only now noticed because the pain was radiating into my jaw, which I definitely knew was not supposed to be migraine related. I assumed it was like a low grade cold or something, but no. Apparently my ear canal is extremely swollen and I really should've noticed by now.

I was doing the thing a lot of us with chronic illness due, especially in times of stress, I was ignoring stronger or slightly more overwhelming symptoms and just sort of gritting through the pain because that's what I needed to do to get through the day. I was dismissing them as eh, it's just this, it's just that. Meanwhile I knew I was more tired than usual, that the nausea was more severe than normal and that I was routinely tracking pain levels between 8-10 every day which is uncommon for me for so many days in the row. And I was working through it without breaks because working from home means I can make my situation work better for me, my screen is darker, I have filtered glasses, I can keep the lights off and a heat pack nearby. All things I wouldn't have or couldn't accommodate the same way in the office.

Were this a "normal" situation I would've already gone to the doctor for the migraines alone, knowing they were too much to handle for me. Instead of gritting my way through each stressful workday and then passing out for two hours each night after work because my brain just needed to shut down. It wasn't normal though I after twenty years of living with chronic illness I K N O W better. I just was trying to live like this wasn't getting to me, because that's what I'm good at.

Except now I have to take off work today and maybe Monday, we'll see while I take some rest and some antibiotics and get better again.

We did also take the Duke dog into the vet this morning. She couldn't find anything specific wrong with him either. She suggested based on the way he was acting and holding himself that he likely slipped a disc in his back or at the very least sprained something in his back. She gave him some pain meds and an anti-inflammatory which almost immediately seemed to be helping. If he's not better in a week we'll take him back and get a work up with x-rays done but based on his response already I think that might not be necessary. The fact that he's eating and drinking like normal is still the best sign it's nothing too serious.

So, so new music post from me today and maybe not from this weekend at all. I plan to chill and enjoy Mother's Day if I can. I might put together another horror movie post if I can muster the thoughts for it. Hope you all have a good weekend.

I'm on new daily med for my migraines and I'm starting out at a fourth a dose and working my way up over two weeks but so far it's not done much. Today was day three with this migraine and the worst day so far. I marked my pain a 9/10 on the app the doctor assigned me for tracking pain and symptoms because the only thing I was really capable of today was sleeping. At the moment, nearly 2:30am Sunday morning, I feel the best I've felt. That's after days of meds, lots of caffeine, lots of water and finally tonight two beers followed by a very, very hot shower. Then a cbd roll-on to my forehead with peppermint, rosemary and lavender. Then some lovely ASMR Reiki on YouTube to listen to while I try to relax before going to bed.

One of the ASMR Reiki artists I listen to on YouTube is saying "nobody wants anything from you in this moment; nobody needs anything from you in this moment" and man is that a powerful feeling too.

Had to forego bad movie night with my friends today because I knew I would not be a very good/fun companion. Between the head pain and the migraine nausea, I could barely concentrate on shows I wanted to watch when I was awake today.

I made it through two movies today, both from Amazon Prime. Though during the latter of the two, I started losing focus gain and had to rewind about twenty minutes of the movie near the end because I realized I hadn't followed anything that was happening.

I finally watched Troop Zero with Viola Davis and Allison Janney, about a group of kids who form a Birdie scout troop in the late 70's in the hopes of getting their voices on the golden record NASA is making that'll go out into space. I don't think it was as cheesy as I expected it to be, nor as saccharine. I enjoyed it over all.

The other one I watched was a new Amazon original called I See You which seemed like it was going to be a supernatural thriller, but wasn't exactly. And it's hard to describe exactly how the movie goes without giving much away. But at the center of it is this family, slowly breaking apart after some infidelity on the part of the mom played by Helen Hunt (nice to see a much older woman playing the mom in a role like this). While the father, a cop, starts investigating a missing kid, strange stuff starts happening in their house. The movie takes an odd turn about halfway through I wasn't expecting, definitely making it even creepier and the family and the missing kid case take a temporary backseat to this secondary story. As a thriller, I enjoyed it overall.

Last weekend I watched one of the the other Amazon originals Blow the Man Down. It's about two girls who in dealing with the aftermath of their mother's death, find themselves enmeshed in some of the shady underpinnings of their small Northeastern town. I REALLY loved this strange little movie. It's short and strange and centers around not just this young women but several powerful women in their town. An unusual kind of movie and very well done.

Bad movie night last week was The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot starring Sam Elliot and Aiden Turner. This was a perfect pick off Hulu for bad movie night. With that kind of title it had to be something amazing and boy, was it ever. I cannot exactly describe this movie to you other than the title says all you really need to know. They really tried with this one and yet... they made this honest to goodness just bad movie.

I'm finding it hard to watch much television right now. So these movies, when I can focus, or for our bad movie nights with friends have been my breaks. I've picked up a couple of cozy shows like Psych and Black Books for when I need a laugh but don't want to binge. Those are nice to revisit right now too. If I can keep this migraine at bay tomorrow we might try a Sunday bad movie night instead. I hope we can make that happen. If not, I might grab Little Women and watch that for myself instead.

Is anyone else finding television binging more difficult right now?

Even though I'm still sleeping through a lot of the day because my sleep is all off, I'm finding that when I am awake, I have a really short attention span. This is to be expected when healing and stuck in the house. I'm not free to drive on my own yet and won't be until my doctor gives the okay on the 10th of September, so I'm stuck here during the day. Since I'm on a lift-restriction and not supposed to bend too much, there's also not much I can do on my own around the house. I've given myself a little project or two, but I really need people's help to get stuff done.

There's also a lot of executive dysfunction that comes from being home and unable to do much, which goes with the short attention span. Sometimes I can just chill in front of Netflix and binge something for hours, but today all I had the attention for was short YouTube videos or half-hour tv shows that aren't following a narrative of any kind. I've been going back and catching up on old episodes of Hasan Minhaj's Patriot Act on Netflix, which is good because each episode has a different topic, there's no narrative to follow.

I did take a writing commission the other night from the person that was messaging my second AO3 account, it's only 2k words and they gave a really detailed outline of what they want. I told them I'd have it done within the week, but after a day like today where I just felt out of it most of the day, I don't really have the focus to work on it. I've got an idea on how it starts already though, so once I have the focus, I feel like I'll just be able to sit down and pound it out in a few hours.

I reached out to my sister and my best friend about coming out to visit me this week. I think if I had someone here with me, I could get a couple of things done and I know that having someone here will keep me from just losing several hours to sleep or brain fog. My sister is going to come out tomorrow and I want to go through the toddler clothes we have just in a big pile right now, maybe give her some if we have stuff that's still small enough for a baby since she's expecting.

My birthday is Wednesday and my best friend is going to come out that afternoon and said she might bring this old movie with her that we love for us to watch. I'm also hoping that the ThredUp bag I ordered might be here by then and she can help me pick out pieces to fill that up with to mail out. Matt's taking me out to a fancy dinner Wednesday night, so maybe if we don't have the ThredUp bag by then she'll be willing to help me do my makeup or something instead.

Maybe I can have Matt's mom come out again on Friday, depending on how she's feeling. Matt's dad was in the hospital over the weekend with low blood sugar/low blood pressure as a result of some medication interaction. He's home now and better, but I don't know if she'll feel up to leaving him alone come Friday or not. I'll wait until Thursday maybe before asking her.

Today I forced myself to make a couple of phone calls I've been putting off. One was to my doctor's office who rejected a medication refill I've been taking for more than a year now. There was no information from the pharmacist about why it was rejected, so I left a message with the nurse to tell me if there's something I need to do to get it filled again. I was just in that doctor's office like four weeks ago for my weekly check-up, so there shouldn't be anything weird about getting it refilled as far as I know. The other phone call was to my benefits company who is saying I'm supposed to go back to work on Monday. There's no way I'm capable of that right now. I had to leave a message with that person too. According to their website, it looks like they haven't gotten any doctor information back, but my post-op check-up isn't until the 10th, so it's not like I have any other information to provide other than the initial info the doctor gave me, telling me eight weeks for recovery. So hopefully I get calls back on those tomorrow and make plans to do whatever it is they need from me.

I tried to go to sleep early tonight, and got maybe three-ish hours before I woke up and knew I couldn't get anymore sleep for the night. The severe stomach pain I've been having the past two nights is finally lessening though. It wasn't the only thing keeping me awake, but I think by the end of the week if the pain stays low-key I might try sleeping in the bed again. Once I get back to actually sleeping laying down, I think I'll be able to get my scheduled back on track. I want to be ready to get back to normal days/schedules by the time I have my appointment on the 10th, so I'll be ready for work if that's what the benefits people say. Though if I have to resort to taking more vacation hours, I could do that too just to make sure I'm actually ready to return physically and mentally before I go back.

I am so behind on this show because I don't have cable, but they just added season one to Hulu, so I binged all ten episodes today. I loved it, it's got all the same dumb and charming energy of the movie. I am in love with Nadja and her protégé, Jen. The episode with them at the college party was adorable. Nadja is also a real babe, the painting of her in the opening sequence is amazing and I low-key would love to be able to buy a poster or something of it.

I haven't played much more of Final Fantasy XV because our Xbox One controller seems to be really dumb and it's stopped holding a charge. This has happened to me before with an old Xbox 360 controller too, it's like if you don't use them for awhile, they just ...stop working altogether. I found a few options online to see if it's fixable that I'm going to try tomorrow. If not I might have to suck it up and buy a new one. I hate how expensive they are though. I do have an Amazon gift card and I hate to spend it on something like this instead of IDK something more fun? so hopefully one of the tests to fix it will work.

Discovered some new pain this evening, I'm hoping it's nothing to worry about just pain from healing. I stopped my meds a few days ago because I'm feeling okay without them. My sleep is obviously disturbed though as I withdraw from them (they were heavy opiates) and this morning I slept in our wingback chair for like five hours because I was so exhausted from not sleeping last night. I'm trying not to have a repeat of that tonight. I did discover that I can sleep for short periods in the bed now, with lots of pillow support. So I might crawl into the spare bedroom in an hour or so and see if that'll work.

Last night when I couldn't sleep I finally started my intoabar fic. Since I got the assignment I've had a strong concept for it, I just hadn't actually sat down to write it yet. I think it's bordering on 1k words already, so I'm over the min word count but I feel like it's really just starting. So I need to be awake enough at some point in the next few days to get it posted. I didn't anticipate the second week of my recovery to still be so tired and out of it most of the time, so maybe accepting a fic challenge was a bad idea for this time period, but I'm also really enjoying what I am writing of it, and being able to focus on something creative, so I don't know what the right answer there is.

I got notice from the benefits company that handles short term disability claims for my office, and they think I should be able to return to work on September 1st, which feels like WAY too fucking soon, given the trouble I'm having getting back to normal in my second week. I know I have an office job that's pretty sedentary, but um... I'm having trouble sitting upright comfortably when I am awake and feeling good. Plus, my first check-up with my doctor isn't until the 10th of September, which indicates my doctor sure didn't expect me to be up and around and working until before that time period. So I'm going to call them tomorrow and try to explain at least the check-up part and see what they have to say. Last I saw they were still waiting on info from my doctor's anyway, so they don't have all the info to make a real decision based on what my doctor had to say about my discharge and recovery requirements. Mentally, aside from the fatigue and sleep schedule being shit, when I am awake I feel pretty with it, just sore with certain needs for sitting/resting comfortably. I could work for short periods of time, but not a full eight hours every day and still feel competent at my job.

I mentioned in my previous post that I've already watched all of Glow season 3 and Mindhunter season 2 in the time I've been home recovering. I don't have too much to say about either, other than that I really liked them both. I thought they were strong additions, although I'll admit that the choice for Mindhunter to more closely follow a single case for the majority of the season, leaving off a lot of the interviews like they did in the first season made it a little of a slower watch (for me) but I still enjoyed it. I'm also still getting a kick out of the small injects their doing of BTK, given the time period, and the link to the research that they're doing as they season progresses. I also like that they're picking cases that don't have these clear cut answers, so you get to see the application of their research and procedures, but that especially due to the time, there's no good way to have all the answers.

I've also caught up on a few movies that I hadn't been able to watch last year. I've seen Aquaman -- which I quite enjoyed. I really liked Jason Momoa's take on the character and despite the uncanny valley that is Amber Heard's wig throughout the movie, I liked it. I think DC does such a better job when they lay back from the super angsty hero take and have a bit of fun with the characters, it's certainly resulting in movies like Wonder Woman and Aquaman which are infinitely more fun to watch than Batman vs. Superman was.

I watched The Favourite, which I found... both interesting if a little boring. It was slower paced than I would've liked and without a satisfying ending. But I can see why it got such high praise for the acting and costumes because it was a beautiful watch with compelling characters. I don't know as much as I would like about Queen Anne's reign, but for what it was, it was enjoyable.

I've also just finished watching First Man, which while I finished it, I found boring af. Damien Chazelle managed to make Ryan Gosling a snooze to watch, and I get that's in part due to his role as Neil Armstrong. Of all the astronauts, Neil was not the interesting one, he was just the most reliable one. So centering the movie around him, makes it slow and disconnected and ...boring. I know not every movie about the beginning of the space program isn't going to be as exciting or as good as THe Right Stuff, or as compelling as Hidden Figures, but I'm not surprised at all this movie did so poorly in the theater. Mostly I kept it on as background noise tonight, so I don't feel like I wasted time specifically, but I'm glad I didn't actually spend money trying to see this in the theater. As an aside, I know a lot of people enjoy Claire Foy as an actress, I've only watched her in one thing before this and I can say that neither that or this has sold me on her. I really dislike her affected American accent in this but given how flat Ryan Gosling is playing Neil Armstrong, I'm willing to blame my dislike of her in this on the director/direction they had.

On my dad's recommendation during his own recent hospital stay, I picked up watching the show Black Summer on Netflix. From what he told me, it was an interesting and kind of scary, but low budget zombie show. Knowing it was low budget going in has helped me kind of keep my expectations low, but I'm about halfway through the first (and currently only) season so far and it's hard to keep with it. For one, I don't find any of the characters particularly compelling and for two, I really don't understand the sort of chapter-esque title breaks every few scenes. It makes it play out slower, especially when after the title break you continue following the same character/story line. Like I'm not sure what purpose they serve other than to slow down the action, which is NOT what I want in a zombie show. I know it's based on Z Nation, which I haven't watched or read, so I don't know if that's an aspect that's carried over from that or not.

Yesterday I finally picked up my copy of The Adventure Zone: Murder on the Rockport Limited graphic novel. It's a pretty quick read, and I thoroughly enjoyed it (as I expected I would). I love Carey Pietsch's artwork for these books and I like the way they've chosen to insert Griffin's GM asides. It definitely feels accurate to the podcast.

Today, I picked up Final Fantasy XV and started playing it for the first time since I got it for Christmas like two years ago. It's different that the Final Fantasy games I'm so used to, but I do like the way combat has changed. The story feels a little underwhelming, but what FF game doesn't leave something to be desired in the plot, really. It's a fun way to pass time, but I'm trying not to get too wrapped up in it for hours and hours at a time. I'm having to learn how to manage my time, especially since I get worn out so easily right now and I don't want to spend it all on video games. I might pick up another game at some point, a friend has been encouraging to pick up Hollow Knight and from what I've seen of that, it might be nice to have something that's kind of level based instead of open world to switch out with every day.

Just a quick post to say that not only did surgery go well, but it was better than expected. No extra procedures needed during surgery and I'm conclusively cancer-free. I should be able to go home tomorrow.

About a month ago I went to the doctor for a nerve issue in my upper back and shoulders. I constantly felt like I was standing with my back to an open window, a cold just settling between my shoulders all the time. Having fibro makes me pretty sensitive to new weird potentially nerve related things, and in 2017 a bout of pancreatitis brought on by gallstones was preceded by about two months of shoulder pain. I ended up having my gallbladder out when that happened, so I knew that was unlikely to be the issue unless I was having another round of pancreatitis, which would've been an indicator of something far worse.

The doctor wasn't sure what to make of it but agreed it was likely a pinched nerve or something and prescribed me a z-pac of steroids to see if that would loosen things up and take care of the problem. Thankfully, after a few days and a really thorough back massage by the masseuse that comes into our office once every other week, it seemed to do the trick.

Unfortunately the side effects to a heavy dose of steroids I'm not used to has meant about a month of bad insomnia and getting my period two weeks early (and then it lasted the rest of the month). My body seems to be settling back into order but getting my sleep normal again is a hassle. It's not good in a normal month where my fibromyalgia pain and fatigue is pretty under control.

I've started to lean pretty heavily on pre-bed rituals, like writing and listening to ASMR videos instead of music to help get my head in the right space. Writing before bed can sometimes fight back in a few ways; I stay up too late with a good idea, I feel more awake once I get through the words I wanted to write, or I finish one thing and get hit with ideas for the next one. It's been worse in the past when I'm listening to music, so switching over to having ASMR videos playing in the background has been helpful. I'm strictly of the simple no talking, no roleplaying, dry sounds only kind of ASMR. I need it to sound a little like white noise without actually using white noise.

Are there any other ASMR fans out there?

I know it can be different for everyone like I absolutely can't do wet sounds or talking or anything like that. If it doesn't sound like scratching or soft tapping, I can't do it. But I have discovered that if I really need to focus on sleep that the videos with really distinct hand motions in them also help. I've also realized I'm very partial to videos where there's a single mic, not the ears or the head or whatever else the mics can be built into. ASMR Bakery on YouTube has become my go to for that kind of stuff. But I've started to build a playlist on YouTube of stuff that works for me.