Daily Log
10:28
Last night, I drove for an hour, then came home, had a banana and some toast, and went to bed. I slept for eight and a half hours, waking up at 08:00, and lay in bed dozing until 10:00. It wasn't that I was especially tired, it's that I did not want to have any contact with other people. I'm rarely extremely antisocial, but it took two hours to convince myself that I could deal with people without crying or yelling at them. By this point I'm reasonably calm, but irritable -- I'm keeping a tight rein on that. I still can't think of anything I would enjoy doing today, and I'm hungry but I don't want to eat.
I've figured out what this is: it's PMS. I get Lupron shots every six weeks, which is a short cycle (the shots are supposed to last eight weeks). My next shot is tomorrow, six weeks on the dot. And yet I'm getting exactly the kind of mood swings I used to get when I was taking hormonal birth control -- this savage irritability is quite familiar to me, I just hadn't expected it.
On the plus side, it'll clear up by sometime late tomorrow. On the minus side, I have to meet with a client in a half-hour, and there are things I need to get done which I'm in no mood to do. It's hard to focus on things like seed sowing and finances when there's some part of you that just wants to shred things.
I'll take one of the Chinese herb mixes which is useful for PMS, maybe that will take the edge off.
18:30
I ate a reasonable breakfast, and spent some time sorting stuff out on the computer, and then I went out and stood in the greenhouse for a half hour or so setting tomato seeds to soak. At that point it was 16:00, and I decided to go to Martinez and walk some of my irritability away.
I drove the 20 minutes to downtown Martinez, then got out and walked, fairly steadily, for 90 minutes. That included a couple of gentle inclines and four or five minutes of climbing a steep incline -- it was just short of needing stairs. Most of the time I was managing about three miles per hour, just a gentle walk. I felt okay; my pain level was pretty low, and my energy only started to flag in the last fifteen minutes. My feet ached slightly but were otherwise fine.
I got back into the car and drove home, and now I'm due to have dinner and TV for a couple of hours.
01:00
After dinner I drove back out to Martinez to drop off a few things, which took 45 minutes. Then I drove a half-hour to get to Clayton. I was feeling pretty good, not sore or particularly tired, so when I got there I decided to get out and walk. I bundled up well, as it's chilly out.
I made three slow circuits of the two main blocks of downtown; it took me nearly two hours. The first circuit was fairly easy, but at the end of the second I started to feel tired, and I started sitting down every few hundred feet. I spent fifteen minutes sitting and resting halfway through the third circuit. Finally I got back into my car for the twenty minute drive home.
Once I got home, I spent another twenty minutes standing while I put the tomato seeds into pots, then I came inside and sat down.
I feel reasonably good. Physically, my feet are sore and starting to stiffen up, and my upper back is stiff and somewhat painful (probably from looking down at my phone too much). I have enough energy to go upstairs and put myself to bed, though, and my head is only a little fuzzy. My pain level is rising with fatigue, but it's still quite reasonable.
Mentally, I feel much calmer and more stable -- physical exercise does help, when I can manage it, and the memory game which is involved in farming more items for Ingress is an activity which I find mentally strenuous and quite relaxing. Farming for an hour or so is enough to make me pleasantly tired and cheerful, like having a couple of beers. I feel content and relaxed enough to sleep, which is much better than the irritated restlessness I had earlier.
(As for the difficulty, I was working at the hardest level, which is five symbols in a row; one has to draw those same five symbols again, in order, within fifteen seconds. I've been getting them in an average of eight seconds, with a nearly 98% accuracy rate; I estimate I did about 70 of these in 90 minutes. It helps that I've been playing this game for nearly six months, and I'm very familiar with all the possible symbols.)
I have an appointment to get my next Lupron shot in the morning, and I expect my feet will be hardly fit to walk on without some work. We'll see.
I have an account as Torquill on Dreamwidth, and that's where I posted this. You can sign in with OpenID to comment on the original post, or you can go ahead and comment here; either way works.
Last night, I drove for an hour, then came home, had a banana and some toast, and went to bed. I slept for eight and a half hours, waking up at 08:00, and lay in bed dozing until 10:00. It wasn't that I was especially tired, it's that I did not want to have any contact with other people. I'm rarely extremely antisocial, but it took two hours to convince myself that I could deal with people without crying or yelling at them. By this point I'm reasonably calm, but irritable -- I'm keeping a tight rein on that. I still can't think of anything I would enjoy doing today, and I'm hungry but I don't want to eat.
I've figured out what this is: it's PMS. I get Lupron shots every six weeks, which is a short cycle (the shots are supposed to last eight weeks). My next shot is tomorrow, six weeks on the dot. And yet I'm getting exactly the kind of mood swings I used to get when I was taking hormonal birth control -- this savage irritability is quite familiar to me, I just hadn't expected it.
On the plus side, it'll clear up by sometime late tomorrow. On the minus side, I have to meet with a client in a half-hour, and there are things I need to get done which I'm in no mood to do. It's hard to focus on things like seed sowing and finances when there's some part of you that just wants to shred things.
I'll take one of the Chinese herb mixes which is useful for PMS, maybe that will take the edge off.
18:30
I ate a reasonable breakfast, and spent some time sorting stuff out on the computer, and then I went out and stood in the greenhouse for a half hour or so setting tomato seeds to soak. At that point it was 16:00, and I decided to go to Martinez and walk some of my irritability away.
I drove the 20 minutes to downtown Martinez, then got out and walked, fairly steadily, for 90 minutes. That included a couple of gentle inclines and four or five minutes of climbing a steep incline -- it was just short of needing stairs. Most of the time I was managing about three miles per hour, just a gentle walk. I felt okay; my pain level was pretty low, and my energy only started to flag in the last fifteen minutes. My feet ached slightly but were otherwise fine.
I got back into the car and drove home, and now I'm due to have dinner and TV for a couple of hours.
01:00
After dinner I drove back out to Martinez to drop off a few things, which took 45 minutes. Then I drove a half-hour to get to Clayton. I was feeling pretty good, not sore or particularly tired, so when I got there I decided to get out and walk. I bundled up well, as it's chilly out.
I made three slow circuits of the two main blocks of downtown; it took me nearly two hours. The first circuit was fairly easy, but at the end of the second I started to feel tired, and I started sitting down every few hundred feet. I spent fifteen minutes sitting and resting halfway through the third circuit. Finally I got back into my car for the twenty minute drive home.
Once I got home, I spent another twenty minutes standing while I put the tomato seeds into pots, then I came inside and sat down.
I feel reasonably good. Physically, my feet are sore and starting to stiffen up, and my upper back is stiff and somewhat painful (probably from looking down at my phone too much). I have enough energy to go upstairs and put myself to bed, though, and my head is only a little fuzzy. My pain level is rising with fatigue, but it's still quite reasonable.
Mentally, I feel much calmer and more stable -- physical exercise does help, when I can manage it, and the memory game which is involved in farming more items for Ingress is an activity which I find mentally strenuous and quite relaxing. Farming for an hour or so is enough to make me pleasantly tired and cheerful, like having a couple of beers. I feel content and relaxed enough to sleep, which is much better than the irritated restlessness I had earlier.
(As for the difficulty, I was working at the hardest level, which is five symbols in a row; one has to draw those same five symbols again, in order, within fifteen seconds. I've been getting them in an average of eight seconds, with a nearly 98% accuracy rate; I estimate I did about 70 of these in 90 minutes. It helps that I've been playing this game for nearly six months, and I'm very familiar with all the possible symbols.)
I have an appointment to get my next Lupron shot in the morning, and I expect my feet will be hardly fit to walk on without some work. We'll see.
I have an account as Torquill on Dreamwidth, and that's where I posted this. You can sign in with OpenID to comment on the original post, or you can go ahead and comment here; either way works.