Ramblings of a total Zack girl

Stupid weather changes. Stupid arthritis.

OWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOW.


This always waits to happen until I have a big paper due. WHY IS THAT?

DEAD.

We saw EIGHT apartments today.

EIGHT.

In the good news, we have it narrowed down to two pretty awesome choices.

In the bad news, one has awesome roommate people but has several disadvantages to do with distance and parking and bathrooms, and one is an awesome apartment but I don't get to meet the people first.

Bleh.

For most of today I've been sitting--driving to College Town, driving from apartment to apartment, driving back from College Town--why am I so EXHAUSTED??

Also, I should make myself break down in a trust-locked entry, because I've been having mild dizziness, which is a sure sign of stress (nothing like as bad as when I was on gluten, but still happening.) But I'm too tired to have a nervous breakdown!

ETA: To clarify, for those of you just joining us (and I swear, a getting-to-know-me post is forthcoming) for about fifteen months I've been having random, unexplained, crippling dizzy spells. Widespread testing has mainly proved that doctors are completely unable to explain them. It's been worrying a lot of people.


Someone else's post on health reminded me that I need to update all of you on mine.

The best part of the news is that we may have an answer. I was out to dinner with MusicalGirl and some friends, discussing my health problems, and she pointed out that many of my problems are like her problems before she was diagnosed with and began to treat Celiac's disease. It's in my family, and often associated with fibromialgia, which I get from the other side of my genetics. Get this, it explains:

*Mild allergic reactions, especially to nutritious foods like fruits and vegetables (I'm allergic to carrots, but not chocolate)
*Depression
*Anxiety
*Sleeping problems
*Digestional issues
*Joint pain
*Worse symptoms when stressed (hint: I have been getting dizzy under stress, which is why we thought it was panic attacks)

It affects the absorption of nutrients, which may well explain even the mysterious dizziness, if my blood wasn't getting the right stuff to my head. I've been experiencing all of those symptoms for what feels like forever.

The doctor took some of my blood, but--a first for my doctor, but possibly he didn't want to look like he dismisses all of his patients' concerns in front of the med student following him--admitted that it looked like I might have it, and said he would authorize further testing if the unreliable test didn't work out!

It's a hassle, if it's true--watching MusicalGirl change her diet gave me a small idea of how huge a change it would be--but...answer. SOLVABLE problem, instead of mumbo-jumbo that translates to, "we have no idea, and we can't fix it." This is just...this is a blessing from the gods, if it's true.


Also, I have been taking a natural sleep aid recommended by a friend of my mother, which I cannot praise too highly. You've no idea how much difference just three nights containing seven hours' sleep has made to how I feel, how much patience I have, my ability to focus and to tolerate. If I can keep up this pattern, I can't even imagine how much better my whole life will feel, with or without other answers to my problems.

SLEEP. Not drugged sleep, which usually makes me feel worse; not troubled, snatched sleep, which is insufficient; not coma-like exhausted sleep lasting fourteen hours which a) is hard to get when you never have more than ten to yourself and b) is like an overdose and is limited in usefulness. Just ordinary, everyday sleep that keeps me from snapping at children and lets me write my school papers without wanting to stab the books.

SLEEP IS THE BEST STUFF IN THE WORLD.

I? Am so tired. My brain is lagging, here. It takes me about five seconds to process such basic questions as "What did you want to drink with that?"

Not the best place for class; especially not when I so desperately need to be impressing this teacher.



For once it isn't the insomnia's fault; I've actually been sleeping pretty well when I make it to bed. However, it is crunch horror time in my life: huge assignments being due, midterms, doing double or triple duty in my private-employment jobs, a visiting superboss in my public-employment job, busy weekends so that cleaning and laundry stare at me accusingly, family scraping across my last raw nerve, and creative pressures out the wazoo. Last night my room was in such a state that I drank half a can of Dr. Pepper and stayed up until five (after finishing my paper and admittedly adding probably half an hour by trying to get some computer tasks running in the background while I worked.) Sometimes I declare "screw it all!" and go to bed; generally I only feel worse in the morning.

At any other point, at least the creative pressures would be welcome. I miss writing; I'm really excited about all of these bunnies. All...let me see...SEVEN major fannish projects that I am in the process of working on (vids, fics, meta) are things that I really want to do. I'm not, mostly--I'm being good!--but I'm thinking of them wistfully and resenting everything else ten times as much because I can't do them.

SO DAMN TIRED.

And I still have papers to write and midterms to study for and need to spend my post-class Saturday--off the clock!--in the preschool where I work getting my classroom to look pretty. Tomorrow I have work nannying from eight-thirty to three o'clock; work teaching from three-thirty to seven; a promised evening with a friend whom I have neglected shamefully; trying for early bed because of class next morning. Somewhere in there I should be trying to manage a trip to the post office before I can't exchange my internet order any more and a trip to the mall before they stop selling accessories for my discontinued cell phone model.

I try to take it one step at a time; not to look at the maelstrom and just drown in it. I am trying. It's just hard.



At the moment my teacher is talking about kinship establishment and family trees and things and all that keeps running through my head is the discourse on centaur genealogy from that Diana Wynne Jones book.

Someone send back my brain. I think it went to bed without me.

Not content with merely keeping me up till five-thirty this morning, my body has now seen fit to send me dreams in which my alarm goes off when, in fact, the alarm is set for a good forty-five minutes later and has no intention of going off at all.

I'm going to go faceplant in a bowl of oatmeal, and you can't stop me.

So the thing with the insomnia is that in order to avoid KILLING SMALL ALMOST-INNOCENT CHILDREN at work, I drink caffeine (not normally a part of my diet, but desperate times...) Then I have caffeine in my system and it won't let me sleep until, oh, four in the morning.

This is the kind of cycle that makes people take lead bats to their washing machines.

ETA: I just remembered the errands I have to run tomorrow. I think I may cry.

Today sucked. I have a long, hard day ahead of me tomorrow, lasting at least eleven hours. Probably without a lunch break.

Is it too much to ask that I not have freaking insomnia??




(Apparently.)


(ETA: And the most likely cure is a shower and the shower? Is still broken, because the plumber is a twit and fixed it wrong. GAH. I'm too stiff for something constructive and active; too brain-dead to write or read or revise (not that it needs it, I never knew I was so freaking neurotic), nothing I have on my hard drives or on DVD sounds appealing...kill. me. now. WHY ISN'T THE SWIMMING POOL OPEN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT??)

(ETA2: I have too much hair. I am going to cut it off. Yes, all of it, dammit, I'm sure I have an attractive skull.)

I pulled my third-in-a-row all-nighter last night (and, exhausted, accomplished basically nothing) and when I finally got home I was forced to give myself permission to take a nap. Which basically means this paper is irretrievably late, and also it will probably suck because I'm still hideously exhausted and can't process anything.

( DREAM: )



( Interpretation )

So: Around four this morning I took two migraine pills that are basically extra-strength Tylenol plus caffeine. Which means that when I arrived at work at six-thirty I was high as a kite--it felt like my arms and legs were floating, not attached to my body, and I was singing "It's a Beautiful Day in the Neightborhood" and stumbling a lot. Luckily, it wore off to just making me feel like I was supposed to be awake just in time for the influx of many thousands of children.

I will mostly be living off these pills until I finish everything I need to...until tomorrow night, probably, which is when my deadline is for catch-up work. I'm hoping I'll build up a bit of an immunity...I need to feel like I'm supposed to be awake, not like I'm not actually connected to the ground.

I've gone brain-dead again. I'm going to have to stop at a grocery store on the way home and invest in enough caffeine to let my brain process like a living thing instead of a zombie.

Seriously...I have to get this fic written. I know how this fic is supposed to go. But it takes me so long to string words into a sentence and shove the sentence through my fingers that I can't actually follow my train of thought through a whole paragraph without stopping to re-read what I've typed two or three times, which is not much help when telling a story. Especially a story that is so twisted from my own ideas and general ships/moods/etc. for my writing that it can only have come from my muse, who is a sadistic little wench when she wants to be (which is most of the time). My brain has apparently decided that if it doesn't get higher-function levels, then it gets to knock her out with a brick in the meantime.

Joy.