Tag: anxiety

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Low Down Dirty Dogs

I started a batch of cold brew yesterday before I left work, so I was excited to start the day with that and some cold foam. It turned out pretty well, but I forgot to fill my cup with ice before I left the house. It also didn’t take very long for me to find out the lid leaked, so I had a wet shirt for most of the morning.

It was a much quieter day, so I just kept chugging away at different little problems. I did get a couple of calls from Tesla just before lunch time. I had emailed the service manager at Tulsa last night, and apparently there was a new one in training that called me first. He said he was going to make sure I got a loaner, and reached out to the service manager in Little Rock. Then I got a call from him, assuring me that they would work something out.

I brought the last of the roast for lunch, but I couldn’t finish it because it was so much liquid and rice left over. I also started with another leftover salad from the weekend crew, so it was a decently good lunch. Teisha stopped me when I went down to visit the microwave, and said a couple of the guys in the plant wanted the dogs to stay out of the breakroom because that’s where they eat. Of course that was no problem at all for us because they’re well within their right to ask for that, but I did kind of have to laugh at the fact that I can’t lean up against any surface in that room for fear of getting my clothes dirty.

The afternoon went by a little slowly and I had an anxiety attack that left me exhausted again, but we made it through. The drive home wasn’t too bad, and we arrived to find Summer cleaning a huge section of the kitchen. Then she cleaned up some fresh veggies to make cold sandwiches and chips for lunch, which was really good.

It was still early and hot, but I took Muad’Dib for his best run since the fourth, and we visited with Dad for a bit. Then we ran a trimmed route the rest of the way home, but still more than he’d run all week. Summer and I finished thee penultimate episode of Funny AF, followed by most of Jeff Arcuri’s special. We gave up early so we could get to bed on time. She said Eaddie went to Clarksville to work, and wouldn’t be home, so it was just a quiet night after that.

Don’t ruin it for everyone!

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See? See?!

Teisha texted me this morning just as I left the house, to say that the internet was still down. I saw it go down during the storm over the weekend, but completely forgot to check that it came back up. I raced in and started working on it right away. Of course I also had Heaven stressed from getting a new computer, so there was a lot to do right off the bat.

All of the equipment lights were on, but it looked like the firewall/router had choked. Of course as soon as I reset that, Joel reset the AT&T equipment and everything came back up, so he felt like he fixed it. I think one of the firewall pair was still having trouble, but I never had a chance to circle back to that because of everything else that broke. I had several unexpected devices at every level start pulling dynamic addresses, which ideally would have been set statically or by reservation. I just couldn’t understand why the Sophos wouldn’t allow for reservations, but it’s what we’ve got.

I was up and down the stairs several times as Heaven encountered new issues, but I think I finally had her satisfied by the afternoon. I ended up taking lunch late, which was fine since I brought leftover roast. Teisha also announced that there were several salads from Colton’s in the refrigerator that the guys who worked over the break didn’t eat. The entire day went by super fast, and then I ended up staying late trying to help Rhonda with a weird phone issue that may also be due to the outage this weekend.

The drive home was infuriating, as I followed someone at 40mph down the entire offramp, watching as the huge, wide-open space passes us by and was replaced by two lanes of trucks and other vehicles. I just barely squeezed around them and took off, but later got stuck behind two cars needlessly locked side-by-side under the speed limit. We finally were able to pass one of them on the right, I think because the person on the right realized how stupid it was and sped up.

We made it home where Muad’Dib was anxious to get inside, still fearful for the fireworks. Eaddie and Eli would be joining Summer and me at Cici’s for dinner, but she didn’t want to load everyone up in her car for some reason, and we didn’t want to have to unload the dog hammock. We left him in the bedroom to watch Spider-Man and met the kids at the restaurant for the pizza that all of us were craving.

After dinner, we came straight home and I tried taking Muad’Dib for a run. He absolutely refused to leave the driveway toward my parents’ house, so I tried to lead him in the opposite direction. He refused to go down our street or Tanglewood, but we made it very slowly up Inglewood. I felt so bad, but he needed a run. I had an anxiety attack just as we got to my parents’ house, and it left me pretty dazed for a while. Afterward I felt like I hit a brick wall of exhaustion, but we made it back home, just barely with a dead Onewheel.

Eaddie and Eli watched TV all night, and I tried to finish up quickly. There were still a few fireworks in the distance, but hopefully they quit soon, because I can’t stand seeing Muad’Dib so anxious. He spent a lot of time under the bed again, so I gave him some calming treats and went to bed.

EVERYBODY MOVE

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Check the Cable

Today was very busy for me. We got to work immediately started prepping the new computer for Heaven. I brought my adjustable power supply to see if it would help, and that was when I learned that Dell power supplies have a data feed to confirm OEM power, otherwise the CPU gets throttled. I eventually remembered there was a bigger power supply on the breakroom computer, so I stole that for the rest of the day.

It was a good thing I had a frozen breakfast sandwich that I could eat late, because it was another long day without leaving for a break. I had a random anxiety attack just before noon, but luckily it passed quickly without any lingering effects. I eventually got the new computer in place in the early afternoon, but then the video would work during POST, but quit before Windows would load. I went back and forth before giving up until after hours.

Then Amanda needed help with the check printer. I fought it with drivers, but it ended up being a loose USB cable on the computer side. We had only checked the printer side, but the cable was hanging off the edge of the desk, which caused enough tension to lose connectivity.

I skipped lunch and had some watermelon that Teisha had cut up and divided out for everyone. I did some more troubleshooting, and then went back downstairs after Heaven left to try and figure things out. An hour and a half later, I figured out it was the video adapter I was using. Apparently it was having trouble negotiating the DiisplayPort signal, which didn’t make sense to me, but I found an adapter that worked.

I finally left, proud to have maybe finally worked longer than Janice. Of course, that wasn’t the case. She and Elizabeth were there much later trying to finish up something else.

I stopped by Harp’s for some beer, and Casey’s for some free slushies. It wasn’t until after I checked out that I realized it wasn’t Friday, and I wouldn’t be getting the slushies for free. I just paid and headed home.

Summer had volunteered to stuff race packet, so I beat her home by a little bit. She took a shower and then we went to New China for dinner. Some of the food was impressively good, but some of it was well below average. While I was getting my first plate, I heard my name from a table behind me. I didn’t recognize him, but it was my old classmate Cecil. If anyone had asked me, I would have said he didn’t even know my name back when we were in school, much less 25 years later. We fist-bumped and carried on.

Muad’Dib had been in the car the whole time we ate, so I took him for a run when we got home. It was dark, but he did great with his headlamp. He ran or jogged swiftly the entire time, almost never slowing down to walk. I let him lead, and he took me on the full route, but skipped the basin on the way to my parents’ house. We visited Dad, then made it home.

Summer went to sleep, Eaddie was out all day and night, and I ended up messaging Dan to ask about his Steam Machine reservation. He had posted earlier that he won the lottery but would probably pass on the purchase. We ended up catching up for a couple hours until I finally had to go to bed, itchy with residual poison ivy oils from something.

POISON!

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Not Your Grandfather’s SpaghettiOs

I had an anxiety attack in the middle of the night at one point after I had been awake for a moment. When I did finally get up for work, I was able to cut my morning short and warm up my last burrito before showering and heading in to work. I was aware of my afternoon meeting with Aptean yesterday, but somewhere along the way it fell off my radar.

I took a late lunch, but fortunately I had brought leftovers from home, because a few bites into it I noticed the calendar alert. I hopped onto the call about five minutes late and felt terrible for it, but it was still a mostly pointless and short meeting.

A little while after that, I started to feel some generalized anxiety again, and I didn’t understand it. I think that hung around for an hour or so before it let up, but I had trouble focusing after that. I tried to just relax on the way home, but I pressed on as usual.

Eaddie was home from band camp, but Summer had already eaten earlier in the afternoon. They sat around talking and doing things on the couch while I processed Vine stuff and put together a couple motorcycle stands. Then I took Eaddie to La Villa for dinner. I got a seafood pasta that had so many calamari rings that it looked more like giant SpaghettiOs. She talked all about her experience as a counselor and how terrible the entire event was. It sounded like the complete lack of adult oversight could have easily caused enough of a parental stir to get Tech into big trouble, but it’s more likely that nothing will happen.

When we got home, I took Muad’Dib for a quick run to my parents’ house as it got dark. Eaddie left, Summer went to bed, and I fought sinus issues the rest of the night.

Just a trickling.

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Leftover Day

I had an anxiety attack in the shower this morning, followed by a dull headache. I couldn’t tell if the headache was from the attack or just the lack of sleep, but it eventually went away. We got to work with some leftover chicken pasta and the expectation of a long day inside without much of a break.

I finally got a reasonably good combination of configuration profiles for my plant computers, but there’s still a little more tinkering I want to do. We ate in the office and then had a quiet afternoon until quitting time.

Summer had been working from home all day, but was upset that she was kicked out of another meeting due to some restructuring. Evidently they forgot to tell her, so she showed up without the agenda and then left.

We found some more leftovers for dinner, I started draining the basement again, and then I took Muad’Dib on a slow run. It felt really nice outside, so it was disappointing that he didn’t pick up the pace. We made it to my parents’ house and helped Dad get the robot out of the pool. Eli had come by earlier in the day to help drop it in, and it got most of the leaves out until they get the filter repaired and it stops spitting sand out.

We made it back to the house where the sump had actually finished, then cleaned up a bit before an early bedtime.

“on time”

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Goats of Music Past

Summer left the house super early this morning to run up Mt. Magazine. She decided to start extra early so she could join some other ladies, and let me stay home to sleep. I didn’t really sleep in much though, and got around to shower pretty early so we could have the day together. Eaddie left fairly early as well, to prepare for the celebration of life concert for Cooper and Shepherd. I had an anxiety attack after my shower, but fortunately it was super quick without any haze afterward.

When Summer made it home, she cleaned up and we went to La Huerta for lunch. Muad’Dib got to hang out on the porch with us, and it was just on the hot end of comfortable. The humidity had me sweating, so I wasn’t super thrilled to learn that we would be rushing to get to the concert. We ended up leaving Muad’Dib at the house, and barely made it to our seats as they played their tuning note.

It was a very long event, with four speakers sharing stories between multiple guest conductors. I didn’t realize that it was a community concert either, or I would have suggested we sit it out. Summer enjoyed it though, and then we waved Chance down as we were leaving, just to say, “hello.”

Muad’Dib was in bed when we got back, but he was excited to see us. Summer spent the rest of the day in bed while I cleaned up a bit around the house. It felt a bit late, so I took Muad’Dib out for a run. It was still bright and hot, and then my parents weren’t home, so we came back home for the evening.

I continued to clean and tinker, and then Dad asked me to come help unload some groceries pretty late, so I took Muad’Dib out for a quick run straight to their house where they had already unloaded. We came back, I tinkered some more, and then went to bed.

And I didn’t even get to meet Corey!

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Ortega Bros.

It was a little rainy, but really misty this morning, so I had to use my meats to drive to work. The weather wasn’t bad once we got there, but it showered again at least once while we were there. I had my head buried in Intune for most of the day, and was stuck waiting on my test computer for much of that.

Lunch time came around, and Grant had planned to meet me for some Ortega’s, so I walked out with Muad’Dib and waited for him. We rode to the restaurant together and had a good meal and chat. I think we’ll plan on some double date stuff soonish, and I’m hoping Summer can make a good friend of her own out of it since I don’t really know Jana at all.

I had an anxiety attack in the afternoon that left me slightly dazed, and then incredibly sleepy for the rest of the afternoon. It may have just been yesterday dragging me down, but I tried another cup of coffee and didn’t feel super smurfy for it. It felt like maybe it was stress, but I didn’t think I felt like I had any reason to be stressed.

We made it to the end of the day and ran to therapy. Summer finished up at the lube and then we had a decent session. I don’t really think the book is helping as much as if we were just talking through some of the specific pain points we have, but at least it gives us a guided tour, regardless of whether the topics are relevant ot us.

Mom had more bún bò Huế for dinner, so we headed home to change. Summer took a shower while I ran Muad’Dib, and then she and Eaddie met us there for dinner. I tried to help clean up a little, and then we made it home to try and wind down early. I showed Eaddie how to clean the hair out of the vacuum brush, Eli came over late, and they went to watch a movie since Eaddie had been cleaning up her stuff all day.

Water!

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Wringing the Air

I slept in while Summer went to her run, and we had a much better day after that. We got up to eat some leftovers, and then I tried to be productive with some of the stuff all over the house. Summer has been excited about the new Masters of the Universe movie, but I learned that she was completely unaware of the old 1987 movie starring Dolf Lundgren. I found it for free on YouTube, so we watched that in the afternoon. Afterward, Summer wanted to take a nap. Eaddie was around for most of the day, but left later on.

I had set up a tiny dehumidifier last night, but it hardly pulled any water out of the air. Today, I uncovered a larger one I had ordered a while back, so I set it up and found it to work much better. Even with all the rain we’ve had lately, the little one barely had a quarter tank of water after 24 hours.

I took a shower late in the day, and then Dad asked for help unloading some things they had picked up at the store. I took Muad’Dib out for his run, but then saw that my parents were already home, so we circled back and got there as quickly as we could.

By the time we got back to the house, I had worked up my appetite. There wasn’t really anything left in the refrigerator, so I used my 50% discount at Domino’s and took the Onewheel out again so Muad’Dib could get some more steps in. Summer and I ate, and then lounged in front of the TV for the rest of the night. Out of nowhere, I had my first anxiety attack, I believe since I started taking my iron supplements again. It was a really short event, but still left me a little dazed. Eaddie showed up with Eli, and they watched a movie while we went to bed.

Good journey. 👋

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Mortality is Weird

I felt like I hardly slept at all last night. I just laid in bed feeling like I was awake all night, but my watch and phone insisted that I got a good night’s rest. I didn’t feel groggy when I got up, and we made it to work a little early. I brought along a Soylent for breakfast and my leftover Subway sandwich for lunch in an effort to save money and my health. I felt surprisingly good all day, and kept pretty busy.

Things got pretty quiet upstairs with Janice out. I don’t think anybody said anything to me all morning, and the guys left in the afternoon after I had eaten. I did step outside after lunch to give Muad’Dib some air, and decided to install my headliner to block the sun and try to keep my car a bit cooler in the summer.

Joel reminded me that we had our Traverse call in the afternoon, so I made it upstairs just in time for that. Having my phone muted lately has me missing most of my notifications, but I’ve also got notification fatigue from all the noise coming through. I’ll have to work in finding a balance.

Later in the afternoon, Elizabeth called me down for some help, but she was the only other face I saw the rest of the day until we stopped by Superfast to see Summer when we got back to town. She was just finishing up, and then we came home where I ate some leftover spaghetti squash casserole by myself.

I took Muad’Dib for a run to the Neighborhood Market to drop off some recycling, and he did great. It was probably our best run of the year, and I couldn’t say why. It was nice outside, but not as cold it normally has to be for him to get super excited. He even sat outside the store and waited for me while I deposited the recycling. We trimmed a couple blocks off of our usual path to see my parents, and then Eaddie called for advice on washing her floor mats at the carwash. While I was there, Julie called my parents from the beach, so I popped in to say hi before heading home.

When we made it back to the house, Summer and I finished the Kevin Hart roast before she went to bed. I was still feeling pretty good, but when I went to my office to try and recover my lost tab session, I started to really space out. I felt lost and confused, and I felt like I couldn’t remember things. It was like I knew I had a history of anxiety attacks, but I couldn’t remember what they were like. I was really disoriented for a while, and it was pretty scary because I just didn’t understand what was going on.

I took my blood pressure a couple of times, and it was a little bit high at first, but fine the second time. I slowly came out of the fog, but it was super strange. I don’t know if it was some new health concern, or maybe just the anxiety plus a lack of good sleep, but I just felt lost. I could hear Eaddie coming home and I knew where I was, but it was like my memory of everything was cloudy. All total, I think it took about two hours for me to recover from whatever that was, and then I went to sleep.

Let’s try extra hard to wake up this time.

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Unseasonably Stressed

I tried to relax coming in to work, but we had a staff meeting first thing in the morning. That went okay, and then I brought my stuff downstairs to work with Tammy for a bit. I didn’t feel bad up to that point, but then I had an anxiety attack while I was kneeling next to her at her desk. I was able to quickly log it in my spreadsheet, but I asked later and she said she didn’t notice anything strange about my breathing or anything.

I was a little foggy for a bit after that. I wasn’t super hungry at lunch time, so I grabbed the Soylent I didn’t drink in the morning and carried it outside for a walk to see if I could stir up an appetite. We did a short lap before I decided to grab some Subway, and brought it back to the office to eat.

I managed to get the price sheet updated in HubSpot, though it took me a couple tries because it didn’t properly check all of my import rows. Things got quiet in the afternoon and we wrapped up helping downstairs for a bit before heading home.

As we got close to town, I decided to stop by AT&T to give Kevin a gift I had for him. I chatted with him, which jogged my memory about having anxiety issues due to anemia. I decided to start taking iron again before my next checkup at the clinic, to see if that would help. After he left, I talked to Candice for a little bit before heading home. We just barely beat Summer to the house, and I told her that talking about red meat had me craving a steak, but she wasn’t very hungry.

We ended up going to Ridgeewood Brothers so Muad’Dib could sit outside with us. It was a nice evening for it, and I wish I had felt better, but I didn’t feel awful. We ate, and of course Muad’Dib got some “scraps.” Then I took him for a short run when we got back home.

It was a rush to get in bed after that. With any luck, it’s the lack of sleep and iron getting me down, but something’s got to change. I don’t feel right.

Outside, in the distance, a wildcat did growl.