Migraines

Warning: frustrated rant ahead.

Last year it was an undiagnosed health problem. It involved nausea, appetite loss, and inevitably weight loss. Eventually that cleared up, as mysteriously as it had arrived.

This year it seems to be migraines. And I'm getting rather frustrated.

My first one was in May, and they've been monthly since then. I had one the first weekend after I started work, and it's the only one that was super painful like you always hear about. Fortunately, because of timing, I didn't have to call in sick.

Random fun fact: migraines aren't always super painful.

But even when they aren't excruciating, they can be a problem. I'm finding that my migraines can include a visual aura, confusion during onset, aching eyes (I didn't even know that was possible), sensitivity to light (not sure why that one surprised me), and some amount of nausea. My aura is usually blue lights, but not always. Between all of these things (oh, and unpleasant side effects of migraine meds...don't get me started there) I stayed in pajamas for two days last week.

After the worst of the migraine was gone I suffered mild headaches daily. Not enough to stop me from getting out and about, but enough that I decided Advil is my friend.

And then...last night.

It appears my migraine returned. It's been mild, and not enough to keep me home: a manageable headache with some aura last evening and today. I don't want to call it a migraine, but I suspect I'd be kidding myself if I said otherwise. And I'm frustrated because I hadn't even fully recovered from the last one. Also (warning: possible TMI ahead), my period had seemed to be the trigger each month, which it definitely can't be now since that ended last Saturday.

So. I'm rather frustrated with my body for doing weird things to me that I don't understand. At least when the migraines were coinciding with my period that made them seem mildly predictable, even though they treated me differently each time. So I'm getting particularly frustrated with it today.

And yes, I'm talking to the doctor. I'd been hoping to find some preventative treatment, but if they aren't only happening during my period now I don't know if that's possible.

[/rant]

I'd actually forgotten how therapeutic writing is...I sort of don't want to hit the "Publish" button since this is a rather depressing post, but I think clicking it will also be therapeutic. So please forgive me for being depressing.

Hopefully I'll have other more cheerful posts up soon. I do have some writing ideas, I just need to get myself out of this brain dead state I seem to be in when it comes to writing. Oh, writer's block...is that what it's called? Yeah, I guess this thing has a name...

I've never said this before that I can recall, but if anyone has suggestions for what I should write about let me know. If I have actual suggestions/requests, as opposed to ideas that are just floating around in my head, that may help get me writing again.

It would make work more interesting...

One of my (varied) tasks at my job is doing inventory on old records, and while noting down the destruction dates on boxes I keep imagining certain lines from Lord of the Rings. I somehow suspect that people would look at me funny, though, if I started yelling "Cast it into the fire! Destroy it!" while I'm taking inventory.

Yeah, that would go over well...

Youth

Put this under the category of things I find funny about our culture.

Someone asked me my age the other day, and she seemed surprised at how young I am when I told her I'm twenty-four. Yet when I asked if I seem older, and she was somewhat quick to say that I look young.

I've written before that it seems funny to me for us to be so obsessed with youth, and for gray hair and wrinkles to be bad things. And...and although I want to write about it, I'm not sure what else to say. It just seems sort of sad.

But on a related note, if youth is so prized, why are some waiters so apologetic about wanting to see my ID when I order a drink with my meal? Ok, yeah, sometimes people don't have their ID (or are actually underage) and get irate. It still seems like it ought to be a compliment, considering.

Thus are my random ramblings this evening.

The ducking autocorrect

I actually resorted to profanity a few days ago.

Without going into details, let's just say that I wound up sleep deprived for a very stupid reason, and I was maybe a little ticked. In trying to discuss and resolve the situation I actually resorted to using a few bad words to express my frustration.

That's where I learned that my iPhone's autocorrect doesn't exactly exactly approve of me using profanity. For one thing, it turned fucking into ducking. Which doesn't make any sense at all, especially since I'm sure I spelled it correctly. It also pulled a John Green and turned a (misspelled) bad word into Dickinson. Which I may have found more amusing if I weren't half asleep despite the two coffees I think I had drunk by that time.

Moral of the story? My autocorrect may try to make me say some rather inappropriate things at times, and even succeed in doing so on occasion, but it disapproves when I try to say bad things myself.

I think my iPhone has double standards.

The good news is that I've caught up on sleep, the profanity inducing situation seems to have been resolved, and my supervisor at work was very understanding about me being a zombie that day.

Duck by X posid

And now, a duck. Since autocorrect would probably approve. And if it doesn't, it can go to he'll.

Cheerful Private Jake

In the game Dungeons and Dragons there is one very interesting guard known as Private Jake. When I first encountered him I found the conversation very amusing, and to this day I still find him quite entertaining. Or rather, I enjoy one of the several possible conversations...I can also just ask him where things/people are, or something equally boring. I don't even remember what now, it's so dull.

At first I was able to resist sharing his charms, but now I'm afraid that I've broken down and had to jot down the conversation to share here.

It should be noted that he guards the sewers, and looks exceedingly cheerful. You'd think he were out for drinks with his friends, or ogling ladies in low cut dresses, he looks so happy.

Private Jake: Good day, citizen!

Me: Why are you in such a good mood?

PJ: Why, I'm serving the city! What could make a man happier than doing a necessary job, and doing it well?

Me: You're knee deep in bodily waste -- besieged by kobolds and worse. This doesn't bother you?

PJ: Heavenly Host, no! There's a lot of history and beauty in these tunnels. I sleep well at night knowing that I'm helping keep Stormreach safe.

Me: Wow, I'm... inspired. Really. Keep up the good work.

There's an alternate way to end the exchange, involving a comment about his smell and him sleeping alone. But I figured I should pretend like I'm nicer than that.

The sewers

For some reason I didn't get a screen shot of Private Jake, but I did get this one in the sewers. Parts of it are slightly grand. No idea why. I'm sure Private Jake would be happy to explain it all to me, and would do so very enthusiastically.

Stealing the spoon

At first it was difficult to convince my younger rats to take their meds. We put their medication in muffins, jam, peanut butter, bacon...basically anything we could think of. The problem was probably with the fact that they weren't sure whether treats were actually food, so it didn't really work too well to hide their meds in treats. (It even took them time to figure out that bacon was edible...how sad is that?) I had to resort to force feeding them meds on more than one occasion, which was not a pleasant experience for anyone involved.

But now, that's changed.

Now, they've finally figured out what treats are. And they have figured out that they like ice cream. In fact, they like it a lot. The only time they've hurt me was when I had ice cream on my fingers. And these are the girls who are normally so gentle no matter what I offer them.

Niki is currently on meds for some weird skin problem. (Maybe ringworm, we're waiting for test results back. In any case, it's improving.) I give it to her twice a day, and of course I also have to give a treat to her cage mate Kora.

I've been hiding the medication in coffee ice cream. I know, this may not be the brightest idea in the world. I mean, ice cream already has a lot of sugar, and I'm going to assume there's some small amount of caffeine in it too. I only give them a little, but by the time I finish medicating Niki I've got two rats on sugar (and maybe caffeine) highs. And this happens twice a day.

Hey, I'm just glad Niki is taking her meds.

Oh, but does the post title say something about a spoon being stolen?

A couple nights ago Kora was so enthusiastic about her ice cream that after she had licked the spoon clean, she pulled it out of my hand. She dragged it off to a corner of her cage, and seemed to think that a close examination of the handle would reveal more ice cream.

I thought it was adorable beyond words, especially since the part of it that had actually held ice cream was hanging out of the cage wires. Photographic evidence is below.

Rats. Just when I think they can't get more adorable, they manage to top themselves.

Kora and her prize

Recent lessons in life...

...or maybe lessons that I only recently understood.

1) When I work full time I can get distracted from writing. I think it happened with my first full time job, and it's happening again with this one.

(This needs to change. The distracted bit, not the working bit.)

2) Giving the rats coffee ice cream may be a mistake, but I cannot find it in me to regret this choice.

3) Maybe I shouldn't have tried to move on past the "easy" and/or "boring" parts of Dungeons and Dragons so quickly. That could be why things got so hard that I gave up for a while.

(Don't ask how I deemed certain quests "boring"...sometimes I astound myself.)

4) Tea is good. Tea is very good.

5) Push ups make it easier to lift heavy boxes at work. Duh.

6) While I don't get hungover on gin and tonic, beer is another story. This is an experience I do NOT want to repeat.

7) I miss my apartment.

I may expound on some of these lessons soon.

Detail Of A Cup With Tea by Petr Kratochvil