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Roller Coaster! Of Blooooooood. (say what?)

The Catapult Health Clinic was at the middle school today, and I had my visit scheduled first thing in the morning. They seemed to be running a little slow, so it took me a few minutes to get in, but it wasn’t any worse than going to my doctor’s office. The difference is that they had me do all the paperwork right there with them while they sampled my blood. That’s about the time that shit got cray.

My first blood pressure reading was 188/122. I’ve never paid particular attention to those goals, so for me it was business as usual. The second reading was 170/111, which was more than 10 points off of the first reading, so I got a third at 186/127. That’s when a different nurse came over with an alarmed look on his face. He called the first girl back over and asked what they should do, and she replied that the video chat nurse would probably just talk to me about it. After a brief wait to go behind the video chat curtain, a nurse practitioner video chatted with me and brought up a warning/disclaimer to call my doctor immediately.

I went to Oakland to do some work and told the girls about my experience, so Leslie took my blood pressure again at 183/114. Nearly an hour later, I had relaxed it down to 174/114. I was less concerned, but already coerced into calling my doctor. I could have gone in right at lunch time, but I was already hangry at that point, so I scheduled a visit for 2 in the afternoon and went with a big group to lunch at Western Sizzlin where I had an incredibly unhealthy salad. It could have been better.

After lunch, the doctor visit went relatively well. They had renovated most of the building, and pretty well removed my old doctor’s name and replaced pretty much every comfort of familiarity. I hated watching the reel of healthcare advertisements in the lobby. At least everything else looked cleaner and less dingy than before. The first nurse got my blood pressure at 160/90 in both arms and said it wasn’t that bad, and blamed the high numbers on the auto-cuffs we had used all morning. A short wait later, the ARNP came in and basically said the same, but then followed that she was prescribing some low dosage blood pressure medication. I’ve officially made it to the stage in life where I’m kept artificially alive. Also, I have ringworm.

I went straight back to the junior high after my visit was over, and had Chrystal take my blood pressure again. She had a manual cuff like the doctor’s office, and came up with 182/110, which served only to confuse me more. Convinced that Death was following me around, I continued on with the rest of my day. Summer left to go to the gym, and I took the girls to Walgreens to pick up my prescriptions before going to my parents’ house for dinner.

My parents seemed not to be too concerned with me getting medication, and leftovers were good. All I had left to do was research my new drugs.

Until I got home.

Bulk item pickup day apparently didn’t include tires or televisions, so both were left in my front lawn. The CRT TV chassis appeared to be split open, so of course it fell completely apart as soon as I touched it. The glass immediately shattered, half on the grass and half on my driveway. I would have preferred to sweep it off of only the driveway, but that would have left me feeling less defeated. My new, concerned neighbor laughed at my response that I was okay, but contemplating life.

We’ll try again tomorrow.

Blood pressure’s like a roller coaster baby, baby. I’m gonna die.

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I Could Chair Less

I haven’t been able to sleep in much this weekend for some reason. I don’t know if it’s just too bright outside or if it’s because of the head cold, but it’s been tiring and annoying feeling so drained. Summer headed home to get her chores done while I spent all morning preparing potatoes to bake in the afternoon.

The girls came home all gross, cranky, and uncooperative because they were tired and apparently good personal hygiene is out of fashion. The twice baked potatoes ended up taking me quite a bit longer to make than I expected too, but I still had them finished right as the girls walked in the door. We made it to my parent’s house about an hour late, so everyone had already started eating without us. The girls weren’t very hungry anyway since they ate with their dad, but Summer and I filled up.

Julie made keto food and said she made cauliflower rice. It was cauliflower, and I don’t get why these people have to call it by the wrong name. I guess if I eliminated a food group, I’d be a little crazy too. As they were leaving, Mr. Houston said he moved in next door, so that will be new I guess. Nobody stuck around for very long after dinner, and we weren’t an exception. Summer and I had to get back to move some furniture out of my house.

Bulk item pickup comes twice a year, and I refused to miss it this time around. I set calendar reminders for both Summer and myself, and we planned to move at least one couch out of the house. We ended up moving three. I no longer have a huge amount of seating, but it seems like nobody comes around these days anyway. It was nice to get rid of so much stuff all at once. Random scrappers came by and picked up two lawn mowers as quickly as I put them out. The rest I suppose will sit until morning. I’ll probably continue to feel guilty about trashing old shoes and boots for the rest of my life, but it made Summer feel better. I really should have cleaned them up and donated them, but it hadn’t happened in this many years, so I guess it was just as well for them to be thrown away.

Cleaning the cat box has become a total nightmare, and I had to do a load of laundry before bed. I guess change will feel better eventually, but right now it’s hard not to feel a little jarred.

Sofa, so good.

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Mow, Mow, Mow your Moat

We got up this morning at a pretty reasonable hour and finished the first season of Battlestar Galactica. Afterward, my parents came by and discussed getting rid of my Fieros, much to my annoyance. I guess it would ultimately probably be best, but I do miss driving them, and I can’t shake the feeling that I should have them fixed up again.

Once my parents left, Summer went to the gym and Bác Vân helped me with some yard work. We trimmed a bunch of branches and cleaned up the front yard so Summer could mow when she got back. It was pretty soggy in some places, but we got it all done and the yard looks a lot better. I’ll have to clear a bunch of brush in the back, but hopefully that won’t be too terrible. The mower seems to do a great job of mulching, and the single battery lasted almost exactly long enough to do both the front and back of the house. I’m sure when it’s thicker, I’ll probably have to bring out the second battery, but for now I’m very pleased.

After all that yard work was done, we came in to shower and then met my parents at Kroger to use some fuel points before going to New China for dinner. Nearly my entire body cramped up from all of the yard work, but I managed to work them out well enough to go eat. When we finished there, we went to Walmart to pick up some things for Easter dinner tomorrow, and then wandered around the store for a while to hunt for deals. We picked up a couple snow scrapers for just pennies, so I call it a win.

Summer went to bed pretty much as soon as we got home, and I played some Overwatch with Clint until bedtime.

…and some Sour Patch Kids and a Coke can!

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Tiny Dancers

Jason didn’t have any projects again for us this week, so after a long, chatty meeting, I went to Oakland to visit for a while before lunch. When I got back to the shop, Jason had me go to central office to run a short line with for him. As we left, several people commented things like, “did you get it fixed?” Jason responded that we had to come back with a tone generator to find a line he had lost, and I added, “why do things in one visit when two will do?” Cindy came back with, “well Jason’s already been here twice already!”

Zach had offered up Western Sizzlin, Stoby’s, or Fat Daddy’s in London as choices for lunch, and because the people I work with have boring, predictable taste, we went to Fat Daddy’s. I tried to slyly load up with Gary, Zach, and Heather, but Gary misstepped and ended up with Heather and Brice while Zach and I drove together and everyone else went with Jason. At least they had expanded their menu to more closely resemble the one downtown, so I got a barbecue burrito. It didn’t seem quite as good as I remembered it, and the menu was misleading in its description of ingredients. That place frustrates me near endlessly.

After lunch, I spent some time at the junior high and visited with Ronda. I had to tell her about the plans for next year, and we discussed getting together over the summer. I think a group vacation could be lots of fun.

When I got home from work, I played enough Overwatch to get another loot box before Summer got here. Then I went to check out the dance at Oakland for a little bit. It was a pretty cool setup they had going on, and most everyone seemed to be having quite a bit of fun. I spent some time backstage with Michael as he played DJ on his iPad.

I didn’t stay super long though, since I was tired from working sickly all week long. I headed back home and warmed up some freezer burned dinner that I had gotten from Zach, and then Summer and I watched Battlestar Galactica until bedtime. I noticed the guys were online, but they were in their last game of Overwatch. They agreed to play one more with me before bed.

The devil you know…

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Good Gollie

It rained pretty much all day long. The storm must have knocked out my power for a brief moment in the night, because I woke up at one point and all the living room lights and TV were on. I stopped by Oakland briefly in the morning to take care of something, and then went on to spend most of the day at the junior high cleaning up old computers. Of course the storm affected some things there as well, so everything in my office was off, and I had at least three projectors fail to come on in the morning. Luckily they all came back up after being unplugged for a few minutes.

Brice and I met Allen and Jason at Morellos because neither of them could hear me offer to drive everyone in one vehicle. It was Zach’s birthday, but I couldn’t convince him to come with us. Those that did go were just as lively and fun as ever.

After lunch, the junior high office staff was making rounds handing out ice cream sundaes, and after hearing about so many resignations it started to feel like an emergency morale booster. Matt had even made a comment about me leaving earlier in the morning, but as far as I know he doesn’t know anything about that yet. I hope everyone understands that it’s not my choice.

Summer started feeling sick in the afternoon, so I went to the Spices food truck to get some noodles for her while the girls went to karate and then dinner with their father. While I was waiting on that, Mollie texted and said she had read the blog about me moving to the high school next year. It always surprises me a little bit when I find out someone has read any of this. I hope it can serve to be at least a little bit entertaining, since I typically only end up using it for fact-checking myself. I’ll have to talk to all of my friends that I’ve made over the past couple years soon to let them know what’s happening. It’s going to be so overwhelming to make the switch.

When I got to Summer’s, she was curled up on the couch staring at nothing on the TV. She loved the shrimp fried noodles, but she slowly dragged down little by little while we watched Parks and Rec until the girls got home and I put her to bed. I was pleasantly surprised to see several of the esports kids in voice chat on Discord trying to organize some games. It’ll be much easier with a larger pool of high schoolers, and it will be interesting to see how the different age groups interact with one another.

Back home, I cleaned up and then got in a little Overwatch time for some event loot boxes. I had been needing some game time for a while. It was too bad that nobody else was around for that, but I couldn’t bring myself to queue LoL with the kids just yet.

Can’t let the kids know their coach is a filthy casual.

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Baader Meinhof Adapter

I was so incredibly tired this morning that work got me into a bit of a cold sweat. I jumped right into things, trying to track down a buzzing sound in the Oakland A/V setup. Jamming to some sweet classics, the lunch ladies came out dancing. I’m told there’s a video of me being unwillingly pulled into that somewhere. The preschool kids got a kick out of Baby Shark during breakfast. Fortunately I was able to fix the buzz with a ground loop isolator. Coincidentally, I ended up needing another one in a different classroom as well, but it didn’t seem to help as much there.

There was a call for Chick-fil-A, but I lead a larger group of people to the far superior Zaxby’s instead. Poor Zach had his order cancelled on the back end and ended up waiting forever to get his salad. Everyone gave me their toast. I ran out of time before food.

The afternoon was slow and I felt pretty crummy. I did replace a Chromebook screen after Ronda and I interrupted Jessica’s class by popping bubble wrap. I stayed late to take Autumn home after color guard practice, and we stopped by Little Caesar’s to get dinner on the way home. I appreciate when companies go out of their way to support and employ people with disabilities, but I wish they’d keep the blind guy away from the cut station.

After dinner, we finished I Am Legend, then finally watched a couple episodes of Parks and Rec Tommy’s Place. From there, I headed home for the evening, but spent most of it steam cleaning carpet stains. Split’s been throwing up a bunch lately, and I’m just sick of it. He’s about to go on a strict diet. I probably should too.

Summer’s resignation was posted in an email out to everyone today, so I guess it won’t be much longer before my changes are made known.

It’s going to be an interesting summer.

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The Existential Review: Year 3

I had my yearly review scheduled for this afternoon, so I spent the morning doing what I could around my buildings. I took a break for lunch and met Dale, Brice, and Summer at Taco John’s for Taco Tuesday. We ended up getting way too much food because of a coupon, but somehow I managed. Getting over being sick again has me regularly hungry, but I was hoping it would help me cut back.

My review went well after lunch. I sat down with Ben ahead of schedule just to get things started, and we chatted for quite a while. It’s looking hopeful for an esports stipend, and everyone seems to be on board with what I’ve presented. I’m just hoping I can keep it from feeling as life-sucking as last week when the kids were super rowdy for no reason. I think that will get better as the teams get more serious though. Dale’s retirement is set, so it’s looking like I’ll be moved to the high school now, which leaves me to clean up and move offices. I’ll lose a window, gain a ton of room and storage, and be left with the best-documented procedures on campus. Hopefully I’ll be able to retain enough free time to keep learning things I want to learn, and also have time out for esports in the afternoons. Time will tell. I’ll miss my friends the most.

Nearing the end of the school day, I dropped by Oakland to move their copy machines for kindergarten registration, then made my way to the junior high for esports. We had several new faces today, which meant spreading to the second lab for the first time. We were really only short by one computer, but several of my quieter players chose to move over immediately when I offered the space, which made it a bit easier to manage everyone else. Unfortunately that lab hadn’t been updated automatically, so we wasted several minutes doing that before anyone could play. It was nice to get to talk to a few of them in that time though, since normally I’m just having to sit back and watch over the entire lab of everyone at once.

After work, I ran home and messed with the aquariums a bit, and experimented with some alternative CO2 dosing by filling some glass bottles with carbonated water and floating them upside down in the tanks. I’ll probably have to try again some morning rather than so late at night, but again I’m hopeful that it will provide noticeable growth improvement. That put me a little behind getting the girls from karate, but they seemed to have other things going on anyway. From there we went to their house for leftover chicken in the form of nachos. They were pretty good, but felt like they missed a binding agent like cheese dip. They just kind of fell apart too much, and missed the flavor of the dip.

My head cold cocktail seems to have worked fairly well the past couple days, so I went for a third night to combat the snottiness.

Welcome to your life. There’s no turning back.

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Custom Cocktail Cures

After doubling up on Benadryl last night, my head seemed a bit more clear when I woke up. I’m hoping I’ve found a combination of medicine that I can take to quickly rid myself of the congestion that normally plagues me for months at a time.

When I got to work, Zach gave me an ice chest full of frozen food he wanted to clear out of his freezer. There was something about a church food bank that always has leftover frozen goods that nobody ever wants to take because it requires more effort to keep. There was a surprising mix of better frozen meals, junk food, and microwavable breakfast sandwiches. I managed to fit it all into my freezer, and it’ll be nice to have something easy to warm up on weekends when the kids are over.

I didn’t get a whole lot done today because I still wasn’t feeling great. I spent a few hours fighting with the intercom system at Oakland, picked up some soup for lunch by myself in my office, and then spent the rest of the afternoon there just picking at things to clean up. The day went by pretty quickly though, and it didn’t seem like too long before it was quitting time.

Summer talked to Matt, and made it official that she’ll be taking the job at the shop. I guess I knew she was leaning that way, but she never really talked to me any more about it. I was hugely disappointed that she didn’t at least try to negotiate a better starting rate. Every time I bring it up, it’s like a deer in headlights and I don’t know what else I can do to help without just pushing her away. This stuff is really important to me, and I feel like it should be important to her too. I completely understand being shy or lacking confidence to have that conversation, but at the end of the day, money not earned is money lost, and that directly impacts the family. At some point, something’s gotta snap into gear where you just get shit done. The weirdest thing is that she’s very much that way in many other aspects of her life, so I don’t understand why this should have been any different. This should have been an easy win.

I volunteered to wait for Autumn and then take the girls to pick up Noah before heading home. The kids all sat around playing their various electronics while I started a load of laundry and confirmed that my kitchen aquarium water was toxic. From that point, I knew I had to jump right into a water change tonight.

We loaded up and headed to Summer’s where the house was filled with the aroma of simmered, shredded chicken breasts. I’d always read about shredded chicken out of a crock pot, but I’ve never actually tried it. The chicken came out way mushier than I expected, but I didn’t know all the variables to correct it for next time. It tasted good though, and made plenty for leftover nachos tomorrow after the barbecue sandwiches today. She scored a key lime pie for dessert, and then I had to head back home to tend to my own chores.

The bettas and snails all seemed to look a little better after a massive water change, but I’ll have to keep doing more relatively soon to make sure the chemistry balances out. I also need to go get some potting soil and sandblasting media to properly plant and cycle another tank or two in order to move things around to where I want them. It’s a shame we’re only given so much time for all the different things we enjoy.

Guaifenesin Diphenhydramine Phenylephrine

 

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I Want a New Drug

My head cold was in full force today, and I had trouble trying to sleep in. We got up and watched some more Battlestar Galactica, and I had a bowl of ramen before Summer left to get things done at her house. She came back with Baconators for lunch, and also brought me some Benadryl to try. I’ve never really found anything that works for my congestion, but I also haven’t really tried much, so this was an easy one to get.

After lunch, Summer went to take care of the girls and I went to bed. I kind of dozed off a little bit, but I didn’t put my CPAP on at first, so I just kind of kept waking up groggy. Eventually I did put it on and got some good sleep, which seemed to help a little. Summer came back with some Sonic for dinner, and I dropped my last bite of chili dog on the floor. She didn’t stick around for long, and I ended up in the living room watching a bit of YouTube until bed.

Must work three times as fast then, right? Everybody wants to be their own doctor.

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‘Cause I am Barely Breathing

Summer had a 5k and quiz bowl tournament to attend today, so I slept in a little bit. It really wasn’t too late though, before I got up and started trying to motivate myself to clean house. I felt my head cold grow all day long, and I just kept feeling worse and worse, but I didn’t want the day to be a total loss. I ate my week old Firehouse sandwich that was dry and not delicious. Then I started cleaning up around the kitchen and vacuumed the living room.

I wanted to get the big pieces picked up before Ronda and Steven came over to drop off some stuff she picked up for me, but I guess they had more deliveries to make and didn’t stick around long. She got me a reptile double lamp and a nice little aquarium with an overly intricate filtration system in the back. I think it will make a nice home for Murderface in the near future.

I went ahead and moved Blue over to the community tank and she seemed to do fine there. I also noticed she only has one ventral fin, and I’m not sure she’ll grow a second one back. It looked like it could have been a birth defect. I watched her for quite a while to make sure she settled in well, and nobody really seemed to take any notice. The heavy plant coverage should help her find a home in there anyway.

When Summer got home, she took a shower before we strapped in for a Battlestar marathon. I got up to make some instant phở for dinner because neither of us were too keen on getting out, and it was rainy anyway. We got a few episodes watched before my head stopped functioning and she was ready to pass out. I loaded up on what meds I could and hoped for the best.

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