Time Passes Unhappily

 It's been ten days. I have cried on each day, at least once and sometimes multiple times. I am having a lot of trouble eating. I find fruit and vegetables okay, but sometimes I can't even look at other foods. I eat as much as I can before I am repulsed (I feel nauseated), and that's just as much as I can do. This morning I ordered two smoothies for delivery, in the hope that I'll be able to ingest some calories and protein that way because I could barely eat my banana and drink a cup of tea for breakfast.

I also am not sleeping. Some nights I sleep for a few hours, then wake up and cry until morning. The better nights I wake up for an hour or two and then fall asleep again. Cypar and I usually talk for part or all of that wakefulness because it's better (I think) to talk about my feelings with him than to just drown in them alone. Last night was particularly difficult. I felt physically crushed under the weight of everything. It was terrifying. 

This is making work difficult. Last week, I tried to keep my morning routine as much as possible. I went to the office and did as much as I felt able to do, which some days was just answering email and then staring at the wall. I try to eat lunch there, and come home in the early afternoon. I think it helps to go somewhere neutral and be forced to interact normally with other people, but I just can't do a lot of that.

I have noticed that my eyes seem to be behaving a little better, which is weird. Maybe I'm imagining this, but earlier this spring I started noticing a lot of ghosts. I would be looking at something, maybe knitting in my lap, and I would suddenly see something move in my peripheral - like a flap of cloth, or an object shifting - but when I turned to focus on that, there was never anything there. It hasn't happened for a few days now when it used to be frequent. I wonder if I was picking up stress from another person and that was leaking out? That sounds so stupid and new-agey, but I don't have anything else.

I have two books I am reading to learn more about the problems. Tomorrow I see my therapist for the second time. I will try to make a list of questions for her so that I might get some relief, some way to feel better (at least functional) in the short term while I devote energy to the bigger, long-term problems. I try to remember I'm not the first person in this situation, and other people have managed to get through it. 

A Terrible Day

 I hate to call it "the worst day of my life" because that sounds like a dare the Universe would not be able to resist, but it was pretty awful. I'm not going to be able to say exactly what happened here. On Wednesday, June 16, I learned something very upsetting that has had a continuing effect on me ever since. Sleep has been poor or nonexistent. Food tastes like ashes and makes me nauseous, yet my stomach hurts like it's empty. There has been much crying.

I am taking care of myself as well as I can. I drove to Indianapolis last Friday to spend most of the weekend with my good friend there. I played with her dogs and was pleasantly distracted by her family members. She listened to my problem and sympathized extremely well, so that by Saturday night/Sunday morning I was able to eat a bit and I felt strong enough to come back home and start working on things. 

Monday (yesterday) I saw a therapist. She let me talk for most of an hour about whatever nonsense came out of my mouth. I think she will be helpful going forward. I don't know what comes next. Right now I'm still just trying to figure out how I feel about everything (besides "bad") and what I want to do.

Newly Finished Objects

 

I finished some things! This hat is a pattern by Franklin Habit, one of his historical adaptations. It has been in my queue for eight years and I finally got around to it. You knit a small rectangle for the top and then pick up stitches around that and knit down to the neck, which is just 2x2 ribbing. Last, you pick up around the face opening and do more 2x2 ribbing there. I only worked on it on weekends, and mostly only during my little knitting group, but it was pretty quick to make. I used leftover yarn: the brown is the remains of a blanket I made for my sister and the green is from a baby blanket. 

Next is the fifth pair of mittens. I think I've explained this previously, but the short version is I had a great idea in November to make six pairs of mittens for the staff in one of the non-academic departments on campus. I found a pattern for fingerless mitts that I liked, and I bought yarn (too much, as it turns out). I was able to modify the pattern to make a closed finger top instead of ending with ribbing. The first three pairs were fast, but I got bored with the fourth pair and it lingered for several months this spring. Now I only have one more pair left, but I'm starting to question the impulse. Is it okay for me to give staff gifts? And, in November they were all women, but now there's been a hire and it's a man. These mittens definitely won't fit a larger hand. Do I send him a scarf instead? Or try to make bigger mittens?

Meanwhile, summer progresses comfortably. It was suddenly very hot and humid last week and the science building went all weird. On Monday it was too warm in my office and there was some humidity in the labs. Tuesday we started measuring the humidity in the labs and it got up to 85% by Friday. I complained about it to the Physical Plant almost every day, but never got any answer so I don't know if they did anything. Thankfully this weekend the outside weather went back to a more normal (for us) temperature and humidity, and the labs are back at 50% humidity now. 

I continue to scan old articles into my reference manager. I'm also trying to catch up on the journals I'm supposed to be reading but haven't. I spent one whole day last week doing remote advising of incoming first-year students, and I have another of those tomorrow. The department newsletter was printed, and I stuffed envelopes and sent them off to be mailed yesterday. I also repaired one of the HPLC instruments that has had a broken degasser for years (maybe 5?). It's been on my list every summer but we never seem to have the money to replace it, but this year I just decided to spend the remainder of the department budget to get it done. So that made me feel pretty happy. I like when I'm able to make stuff work.

Last weekend I had friends over to the house. Friday afternoon is the usual beer on the lawn day, but Cypar had to work and one of our usual guests is visiting relatives out of state, so I invited a colleague and her wife instead. The three of us sat outside under my umbrella for about three hours, talking and drinking beer. It was very enjoyable. On Sunday I had the knitting group over (it's me and two colleagues I taught to knit a couple of summers ago) and we also used the outdoor furniture. Cypar says he's very proud of me for doing social things with my friends. I need to remember more often that I have my own friends (even if they are all coworkers) and do stuff with them.

Four Nice Weeks

 The summer break has been very nice, so far. I did not have much drama related to spring classes/grades. The weather has been mostly pleasant. I have a new routine that I am enjoying very much. Most weekdays, I am waking up about the same time as always, then having the usual walk in the park after breakfast, and then I go to campus and do something useful in my office or in the lab before coming home at a reasonable time for supper. I have about two hours for knitting while watching TV and then we read a few pages of a book before sleeping. We're reading Mysteries of Terra Firma currently. I am enjoying the history of geology, and the question of how old the earth is (and how we know that) is really interesting.

I finished the socks (photo above). I immediately started a bunch of new things: a lace shawl (which I've already frogged and started over), a hat (with leftover stash), and another pair of mittens. It felt really good to start new and have different yarn to look at, different problems to solve! I'm now about halfway through the shawl. It is not a difficult pattern - I needed to photocopy and enlarge the charts, but I can do several rows in an hour.

We've been out disc golfing a few more times. Visited two parks in the city I had never been to (despite living here for over 15 years). We usually golf with the same core group of friends, but Cypar and I went ourselves on Memorial Day because it felt wasteful not to do some kind of outdoor activity together on that holiday. I think I'm getting slightly better throwing the discs, but I still don't get a lot of distance on the drives. We practiced putting for a while after playing nine holes on Memorial Day; if I was a serious player, I'd probably practice more. I really just want to play as an excuse to be outside and moving.