The Mandelbear's Musings

Hmm. I seem to have gone a little too long without updating; this will probably be sketchy. Hazard of trying to get more sleep on workdays.

I finally got around to pulling out the audio for "No Greater Love", as Callie sang it for me during my Seattle trip, and have been working on the chords as well. (A9 and Am9 can both be faked with Asus2 if necessary, but sound better if you can get the third in.) And I'm working on the lead sheets. Tempered Glass has a half-hour set a week from Saturday at Orycon.

Sunday morning I noticed that I was feeling particularly good, and went so far as to mention it to Colleen. Probably a combination of being able to breathe all night, and some good news in the morning. I also went for a st/roll with Colleen around the Rose Garden. The good mood had mostly evaporated by the evening; I was foggy with sleep, and worried.

Monday, a conversation reminded me about an earlier exercise where I was asked what makes me happy. I didn't know then, and still mostly don't. It's made more complicated by the fact that one of my other problems is not being very aware of my emotions, so that if something makes me happy I sometimes don't really notice. Broken feedback loop.

Tuesday I voted.

Links include Mind, serotonin, anxiety - a student paper that suggests a link between low serotonin and fibromyalgia and CFS.

A very good day. By the time my walk came around almost all the shoulder pain and tension were gone, and a lot of pressure was off. This was mostly because of hearing $boss explaining to his boss why the demo wasn't going to work. So I'm off the hook. Also, the Dell netbook that I won in the drawing at OpenSourceWorld finally arrived (more on that separately), and the friends who'd been visiting Wednesday and Thursday left in the morning. I wish we'd had a lot more time to talk, but the house was pretty crowded and noisy. We'll try not to do that too much; one can't pay adequate attention to two sets of guests at the same time.

It was hot and noisy on my walk, but I wasn't as out-of-shape as I'd been earlier in the week, and all the tension was gone.

Colleen, Naomi, and I had dinner at Spicy Leaves -- excellent as usual. It counted as our date night, since we'd had too many guests Thursday and I got home so late. Great food, and two of my favorite women in all the world; it was wonderful.

The day ended with singing and snuggle, and sleep courtesy of cyclobenzaprine.

Better late than never; yesterday was kind of rough. Today I am thankful for...

• Colleen, of course, who loves me with enough confidence to get angry with me when she needs to.
• My two lovely daughters, who keep me amused and on my toes.
• Naomi and Callie, for so many things I can't begin to count them.
• rinolj, who continues to come over on Wednesdays and make himself quietly useful in many ways.
• The good people of ConChord, my weekend family, who voted for me for a Kazoo award and gave me a weekend of conversation and music.
• ConChord GOHs Carla Ulbrich and Joe Giacoio for a weekend of good music and a great guitar workshop.
• My colleagues in Japan, one of whom took two hours out of a busy morning yesterday to help me work on a trans-Pacific demo.
• My friends on LJ, for good advice, human contact, and the occasional much-needed sanity check.
• Good Drugs.

This will probably continue to be a regular feature. Today I am thankful for:

• Colleen, and the fact that her health is continuing to improve.
• The wonders of modern medicine. In particular, adalimumab and prednisone.
• And let's not forget our many friends, local and long-distance, and citalopram, both of which are helping both of us stay sane.
• Particular thanks to screaming_angel for upgrading the OS on Colleen's netbook, and Rick for weeding the front yard. Both of these were wishlist items.
• Our family, both by blood and by choice. Especially our kids, chaoswolf and super_star_girl, and our sisters by choice pocketnaomi and Marty. (OK, is my wife's sister by choice my sister-in-law by choice, or is there a better word for it? Inquiring minds.)
• Silliness.
• Singing over the phone.

Got up at 9:30, and went to bed at about 10:30. DO NOT LIKE. Yeah, I know I have to get enough sleep, and I'm making up for at least a week's worth, but this does nothing at all to relieve the sense that I'm not getting anything done.

Cyclobenzaprine has definitely helped unknot my shoulders, though there is now a knot near the base of my spine. I've also spent the last couple of days getting by during the work day with a little shoulder bag with just room for my wallet, my keys, and my 3x5 card notepad. Naturally that does not include things like my coin purse, camera, business cards, car clickers, checkbooks, ... For work, I carry the big bag in my rolly along with the computer. I suspect that a lot of my shoulder problems were caused by a too-heavy backpack and shoulder bag.

I got in a good walk, about 3 miles by Los Gatos Creek. I managed to stay mindful and in touch with my surroundings for about the first 20 minutes; it did seem to make a difference. Unlike the state I get into when I'm reading or hacking, I seem able to snap out of meditation instantly if I'm needed for something.

Got to Fry's and bought a video card for the YD so she can run the latest version of Sims. Half a gig of RAM in that thing -- I remember when that was a hell of a lot of disk.

We seem to be falling into a pattern of waking up around 4am, which is when Colleen usually needs a bathroom break. Sometimes around 2am as well. I'm a lot more comfortable with this now that I know that segmented sleep is normal in many cultures, and know that I can usually get back to sleep if I need it. I posted about this a few weeks ago, and I'm pleased to discover that, as I recalled it back then, a little bit of quiet conversation and snuggle in the dark of the night is a Good Thing.

Went for a walk around 1:30 (after working from home in the morning and checking in rather late at work). Unsuccessful call to cflute. I'm worried about several of my friends; her most of all, I think.

Just because I'm on Good Drugs doesn't mean I don't occasionally get depressed, anxious, or freaked-out, and perhaps more deeply so than ever. It just means I don't usually fall apart completely, and usually bounce back pretty quickly rather than getting into a downward spiral, though I think my baseline has been lower for the last week or so. Colleen and I came very close to a mutual melt-down last night; I handled it by leaving the room for a few minutes so we could both calm down. We'll have to find better ways of doing that acelightning's suggestion of hugging while calming down and sorting it out has a lot to recommend it.

This business of taking care of myself while being a caregiver is hard, and I still don't know how to go about it. It's all very well to say I need time for myself, but it doesn't do much good if I don't know how to make proper use of the time I do have. I've written before about my inability to identify things I can do to make me feel good, as opposed to not feel anything at all. I need to work on that, don't I?

The Wolfling said she was going to get a pickle out of the fridge, so I asked her to get me one too.

She came out with two pickles, one about 3 times the size of the other. She had her thumb firmly on the larger one.

Last seen heading for her room chortling "I broke the Mandelbear!"

Recently I was asked the question, "what do you do that makes you happy?" I found it surprisingly hard to answer at the time. I realized that many of the things I like to do are things that require concentration. They make me focus my attention on the activity, and leave no room for emotions or thoughts about emotions. They're very calming, and often involve a light trance.

Reading is the best example: when I'm reading, the rest of the world goes away. I go away, leaving little besides a calm point of view. Programming and writing are other examples. So are singing and listening to music. So, most of the time, is conversation: I'm focussed either on the person I'm with, which is similar to reading, or on what I'm going to say next, which is more like writing. (This may explain in part why I'm easily derailed when I'm talking or about to talk -- I'm much more distractable when I'm writing than when I'm reading. It's also probably why I get distracted while I'm singing.)

Notice the pattern? These are all verbal. I may get a great sense of satisfaction after I do them, if I do it well, but I don't feel much while I'm in the moment, in the activity.

Over the last week or so I've been realizing that there's another category of things I can do, that do make me happy while I'm doing them. The best example is hugging. Lately I've not only been hugging more people and hugging more tightly, I've been noticing that I'm enjoying it. That's major.

I've also noticed that I enjoy other kinds of contact: cuddling and holding hands. Sex not so much; it seems to involve more concentration and a certain amount of anxiety. The silences in a deep conversation. I'm comfortable with silence, if the other person is.

Walking and driving are oddities: they leave me enough mental space for a conversation. So if I'm walking or driving with someone beside me, I'll be happy when we're together but not talking, and will have a split focus while one of us is talking. I think this is the only kind of multitasking I've ever been capable of. When I'm by myself, I may notice I'm happy, but only if I'm not doing anything verbal like thinking or listening to music. I turn the radio off in the car these days, and don't use an MP3 player.

I discovered last night that noodling on the guitar falls into this category. It does make me happy if I'm not singing or trying to learn the chords of a song, and I can even carry on a conversation to about the same extent that I can in the car.

There are undoubtedly other things in this category: doing the dishes, cooking, woodworking, puttering about the house. I need to find something quiet and portable that I can do in my lap. Doodling works, I remember. Probably so would drawing, if I put in the months of practice it would take to get barely adequate at it.

I was too busy to update yesterday last night, which I suppose is good, all things considered. An hour of dozy snuggle this morning after my alarm went off suggests that I'm likely not to have quite as much time as I'd like today, either. But it was worth it.

I may need seven hours of sleep after all. Do not like.

I also do not like the way my weight has been creeping up over the last week. Grump.

The allergy tests were entirely negative. So what I have is "vasomotor rhinitis", which is another way of saying that they don't know either. But it's mostly caused by irritation, including dust, pollen, and smoke. The tip-off is that antihistamines don't have much of an effect. I got a prescription for ipratropium nasal spray; it's supposed to be very effective on runny nose/postnasal drip. On the other hand, so far the "dry mucus membrane" SSRI side-effect seems to be taking care of it.

Still not all that good at socializing, but at least I spent most of Wednesday evening out in the living room taking occasional part in the conversation, and had a couple of nice one-on-one catch-up chats with Toby and Stacy, neither of whom I've seen for quite a long time.

The books (and preamp) that I ordered last week were waiting for me when I got back to work yesterday. I have some reading to do.