We soldered and messed around with these light-up wheel kits all of yesterday! Imagine how sad we were when our LEDs didn't light up. Could it be our extremely amateurish, blobby soldering? Did we damage some components? We need expert advice!
I made soup again, and two loaves of bread in the bread machine. Housecleaners and pest control people came. So our house is sparkly and slightly less ant-y.
People from out of town don't understand that you can't do a damn thing about the ants. It doesn't matter if you have food out, or if there are cracks in the tiles, or if you battle the ants daily. They come in for water, warmth, or just to hang out because they think we're cool. In California, there are just rivers of ants. They're all related, and live in enormous underground colonies with millions and millions of ants that are impossible to destroy. It's not like pouring boiling water over the anthill is going to do it. The ants we live with probably are part of a colony that runs underneath an entire city block. Anyway, if you live here, now you know why our roses die.
On the other hand, our house probably won't be having termite problems, since Argentine ants eat termites.
I'll just stick to the occasional futile visit from pest control... and the more usual spraying with Dr. Bronner's Peppermint.
Hamster is here for a sleepover with Moomin! And soon Quilty & M. will be over to hang out - I can't wait to see them again.
It's been mostly eating fancy food, loafing in bed, mild cleaning and bustling, and as I said the marathon day of soldering, here.
I drove Zond-7 up to the city on an errand and back and while there we had a bizarrely nice moment eating tacos in the car on 24th. I can't explain. But it was the sort of thing I usually do on impulse, alone, so that it won't annoy anyone else. Instead of feeling like I was imposing my vile need for tacos on a person who'd rather be doing nearly anything else, it was a weirdly nice shared moment and made me have funny cozy flashbacks to times I spent drinking hot chocolate from a thermos in my dad's Toyota in between sledding and toboggan rides in 1975.
Chefily was (is) here! We hung out a bit and hot tubbed! She's going back to Moscow soon...
Pain report! The warmth today helped me a lot. I kept the house warm and it was a sunny day. It helped that I didn't go out. The last few days when it's been cold, I've been noticing things like, if I have my feet on the footrests of the wheelchair, even in two pairs of socks. the pressure and cold of the bars sets off painful spasms in the bottoms of my feet and up through my ankles and calves. It was very apparent. My hands hurt a lot. Last night I was walking around a bit in the evening but then after I got out of the hot tub could barely move and my calves and some sort of inner thigh muscle near my knee went crazy... i collapsed in a lot of pain. Yesterday (before the soldering) and the day before, my left arm had a lot of spasms (sometimes painful, sometimes just odd-feeling). Little ones in my hands and then big deep weird ones in the back of my upper arm. The hand pain I can mostly ignore but am not having very good grip strength in one hand... Early this morning I woke up with something that has never happened before. My entire quadriceps muscle was in a horrible spasm and i felt like i was going to barf. The feeling was oddly like how my legs felt during labor during the "transition" phase. I woke up Zond-7 and got him to gently straighten out my leg. Once I was rolled over I could control my leg again. But before that... not.
Zond-7 said I don't really whine much on this blog or on any blog. (He must have a high tolerance....) And that I should not talk about it as whining but that I'm open about what I'm going through. Though... often I'm really not that open. Or when I am, it's not like people hear it. It becomes background noise, or else people want to believe the best thing out of a range of things. They want me to be okay, or improving. I am adapting better to the situation and to rapidly changing abilities and pain levels. But I am not improving. I've bounced back from a few awful rock bottom days or weeks, but over the last 9 months I don't feel any improvement in what I can do functionally. Instead, my grip on capabilities and independence feels tenuous, and it seems like a new bit of me hurts every few days.
I made soup again, and two loaves of bread in the bread machine. Housecleaners and pest control people came. So our house is sparkly and slightly less ant-y.
People from out of town don't understand that you can't do a damn thing about the ants. It doesn't matter if you have food out, or if there are cracks in the tiles, or if you battle the ants daily. They come in for water, warmth, or just to hang out because they think we're cool. In California, there are just rivers of ants. They're all related, and live in enormous underground colonies with millions and millions of ants that are impossible to destroy. It's not like pouring boiling water over the anthill is going to do it. The ants we live with probably are part of a colony that runs underneath an entire city block. Anyway, if you live here, now you know why our roses die.
On the other hand, our house probably won't be having termite problems, since Argentine ants eat termites.
I'll just stick to the occasional futile visit from pest control... and the more usual spraying with Dr. Bronner's Peppermint.
Hamster is here for a sleepover with Moomin! And soon Quilty & M. will be over to hang out - I can't wait to see them again.
It's been mostly eating fancy food, loafing in bed, mild cleaning and bustling, and as I said the marathon day of soldering, here.
I drove Zond-7 up to the city on an errand and back and while there we had a bizarrely nice moment eating tacos in the car on 24th. I can't explain. But it was the sort of thing I usually do on impulse, alone, so that it won't annoy anyone else. Instead of feeling like I was imposing my vile need for tacos on a person who'd rather be doing nearly anything else, it was a weirdly nice shared moment and made me have funny cozy flashbacks to times I spent drinking hot chocolate from a thermos in my dad's Toyota in between sledding and toboggan rides in 1975.
Chefily was (is) here! We hung out a bit and hot tubbed! She's going back to Moscow soon...
Pain report! The warmth today helped me a lot. I kept the house warm and it was a sunny day. It helped that I didn't go out. The last few days when it's been cold, I've been noticing things like, if I have my feet on the footrests of the wheelchair, even in two pairs of socks. the pressure and cold of the bars sets off painful spasms in the bottoms of my feet and up through my ankles and calves. It was very apparent. My hands hurt a lot. Last night I was walking around a bit in the evening but then after I got out of the hot tub could barely move and my calves and some sort of inner thigh muscle near my knee went crazy... i collapsed in a lot of pain. Yesterday (before the soldering) and the day before, my left arm had a lot of spasms (sometimes painful, sometimes just odd-feeling). Little ones in my hands and then big deep weird ones in the back of my upper arm. The hand pain I can mostly ignore but am not having very good grip strength in one hand... Early this morning I woke up with something that has never happened before. My entire quadriceps muscle was in a horrible spasm and i felt like i was going to barf. The feeling was oddly like how my legs felt during labor during the "transition" phase. I woke up Zond-7 and got him to gently straighten out my leg. Once I was rolled over I could control my leg again. But before that... not.
Zond-7 said I don't really whine much on this blog or on any blog. (He must have a high tolerance....) And that I should not talk about it as whining but that I'm open about what I'm going through. Though... often I'm really not that open. Or when I am, it's not like people hear it. It becomes background noise, or else people want to believe the best thing out of a range of things. They want me to be okay, or improving. I am adapting better to the situation and to rapidly changing abilities and pain levels. But I am not improving. I've bounced back from a few awful rock bottom days or weeks, but over the last 9 months I don't feel any improvement in what I can do functionally. Instead, my grip on capabilities and independence feels tenuous, and it seems like a new bit of me hurts every few days.
Whine? You? Nah.
Sometimes you're angry or enraged or miserable, sometimes you're really happy. You're always very out there about your moods - well, anyway, specific moods come through loud and clear in most of your postings. I don't read you as doing anything I think of as whining. I mean, if you're in pain, hell, that is something to complain about!
Posted by: Lisa Hirsch | December 31, 2007 at 07:23 PM
Oh, and I meant to say, dammit all about the lack of improvement. That sucks, and I hope you see some improvement, preferably sooner rather than later.
Posted by: Lisa Hirsch | December 31, 2007 at 07:24 PM
I haven't had ants at all this year, yet. It is possible that lack of cooking & lack of heat have something to do with this. About 5 years ago, there were actual drifts of dead ants every time I opened the freezer. Having cats and a dog, there's a limit to what I can do on the toxicology front, but that orange oil stuff seemed to help.
I don't think you whine. Announce stupidity of others, yes. Announce the annoyance of the non-functioning body parts, yes. But whine? Nah.
Posted by: Liz D. | December 31, 2007 at 08:13 PM
Yah, I didn't experience it as whining either. And I guess you're right about that "wanting to believe the best thing out of a range of things" thing. Also, I think most people are frozen in friends' and relatives' minds as more or less the way they were the last time they saw each other in person, so it's hard for me to get my mind around the pain and illness you're dealing with now. I'm grateful for the honest reports.
Anyway, mostly I'm just reading and hoping things go well for you, and being pissed off on your behalf when they don't.
Posted by: elswhere | January 01, 2008 at 11:00 AM
Speaking as a person whose cardinal rule of Life and Manners is No Whining, I categorically declare that what you do is Not Whining. Whining is fundamentally a manipulative behavior; it is complaining which is targeted at others, for the purposes of evading responsibilities and garnering special status and treatment.
I believe that you are so averse to this sort of behavior in yourself that you actively conceal factual and important information about your condition in order to avoid receiving special treatment, or being relieved of responsibility. Stating the facts about the state of your body and mind is not whining. Those who care about you want and need to know those facts.
Posted by: Pretty Lady | January 01, 2008 at 02:50 PM
Yah, he's totally right, you have an unusual ability to report pain and bad things without whining, like they are just a part of the things that happen in your life. And I don't mean some kind of fake stoicism, it's just like...I don't know. It's good to be able to talk about that pain and upsetness and fear are things that happen and we have to deal with them.
Posted by: vito excalibur | January 04, 2008 at 11:16 AM