zombie brain fog

@11ish p.m.  Saturday

I think I've mentioned a number of times I often forget what day or week (sometimes month) it is, and in the past during my worst brain fog years I've gotten lost in stores or driving around town and at one point felt I was making dangerous enough decisions in traffic to warrant legally becoming a non-driver. But a lot of that has gotten a bit better last couple of years, and it doesn't happen as much.

Well, it's happening again. A couple of months ago I couldn't remember which Walmart I was in between 3 towns and God knows how many Walmarts, took me nearly five minutes to reconstruct where I'd been just before and what I was doing that day (and what day it actually was). A couple of times lately I've out of the blue not remembered at all what building I'm standing in or how to get to a building I've been to several times.

I'm writing this down so I'll remember to tell the next medical professional or two over the next month that this is happening again. Brain scans have always turned out fine, and since this is familiar, I'm not really worried. I've been glitching like this since my daughter was about 8 years old, and that was way before the big brain crash and stuff. I'll never forget casually asking her one day if she knew what side of the road I was supposed to be driving on and then asking her if I was doing it right.

I think my pain level has been so high again lately that some of my light strings are flickering, like old Christmas tree lights when one bulb goes out and makes the connection bad for a whole length of string. Remember the old days, checking all the bulbs?

I haven't really said that much. Yes, I keep mentioning arms and hands. I'm still doing stuff, still getting my chores around the house done, still driving and getting groceries, still writing and playing minecraft and stuff. I'm sort of even doing more for longer, yay! It's nice being more capable. But I guess it's pretty overwhelming. I think what struck me was getting lost in my own house this last week. It's not the same as walking from one room to another and not remembering what you were just thinking (which is a legitimate and very common phenomenon that has to do with moving through doorways psychologically). I mean actually not remembering which direction to go to walk out of my house or something. It's one thing to get the wrong drawer when I want a fork, or open the fridge when I'm really wanting to open my oven, but getting lost navigating over a very short and extremely familiar space to a door I can't remember is another.

All my sensations get mixed up when I'm like this, too. I can't tell if I'm really hungry or not (saying this very seriously because I suddenly can't remember sometimes if I just ate a meal, and I have to watch my blood sugar) (I used to do this when I was working in the old days, too, try to punch back out for lunch 30 minutes after I'd punched back in from lunch), or getting whether I'm feeling hot and cold switched. I noticed this winter I kept feeling really hot until I put a sweater on, or really chilled until I took the sweater off. I've never done that one before. This is life with a glitchy nervous system. Doesn't even matter what it is. I'm positive for so many things that contribute to it- lyme, epstein-barr, bartonella, the car wreck, bell's (they're leaning more toward viral cause now), CMV, fibro... yes, we're all tired of hearing about it. But you know how like people wonder what they're old age is going to be like? That's what I'm saying NO to with everything in my power.

I think it's just that underneath everything, my arms and hands hurt so continuously and so much that I think I just turn my brain off so I don't have to feel it. It's like shutting down unnecessary programs to shunt off incoming overload so I can stay focused on what I need to do in the moment.

Need to try going back to bed now. I was so exhausted earlier that I conked and took a 4 hour nap, which is a dumb thing to do on the eve of setting the clocks forward.

~this morning~

-_-

And even with all that, we slept in. We never sleep in like this. I think it's the zombie fog. (And you can see Scott is kid proofing the deck so Bunny won't go plummeting to her grisly death.)

Even after all that junk I wrote last night up there, my brain is still zooming around way more than it used to. I like it.

Between the zombie fog and @bonenado computering, there's no way I can pull a youtube. See ya.

lurker wizard gangs

You guys have no idea how badly I miss #latenightmovie on weekends when I just can't stay up or can't sit through it. My gang is my rock. I'm actually using that full sized screen snip as a wallpaper right now.

My dryer did the d90 thing yesterday (fire hazard warning) just before #latenightmovie, so steamy hot clothes just sitting in a pile during the hottest humidest month of the year, I'm afraid to even open it this morning. The lint screen was fine, so @bonenado's gonna hafta pull stuff apart and make sure the ducts are clear, and if they are, then maybe it's the wiring or a thermostat if we can't get it to reset. I was just saying this week that tarp on the roof during torrential rain was better than a fire. He called me a prophet when I showed him my post from July 3rd talking about the roof would be sliding right off. (That makes 4 prophets and 3 wizards now, I think. If people keep calling me names I'll hafta zap 'em and say "Fly, you fools!")

Wizards IRL- click to find ur own muse

Anyway, I actually know someone in real life whose house burned down because of a dryer fire, so yeah, thank you beepy digital readout stopping my clothes from drying. Y'all go thank a few dryer techs for saving some lives out there. I don't think they get near the praise they deserve. Back to the roof. The only reason we discovered the roofing nails were missing was because Scott saw the whole roof on that side lift up a little during a straight line wind, which was weird, so he went up there to check it out. Anyway, can't complain, good summer for odd mild disasters here and there forcing us to tighten up the bolts and get stuff in order before we slide hectically into holidays again.

Oh, yeah, we got a bid approval yesterday for a whole new roof. Apparently there's enough hail damage to warrant total replacement. That's right, my first thought was omg no internet *faint*, but Scott's going to see if our people will move the antenna out to a pole or something. We'll get it figured out.

Got a lot more spaceship work done yesterday, too. Bunny's mama came out and workworkworked for several hours going through and organizing a couple truckloads of stuff in a storage room upstairs, kinda hoping we can eventually move all the video library and other stuffs up there, and make a Bunny toy/sleepover room in the bedroom across the landing. The more we can move things up, the more room I'll have to GET TO WORK. Kinda key right now that she's just old enough to start handling the stairs now, so the timing is perfect.

I've never felt this good about August before, for a variety of reasons, not the least being heat and ragweed, but one of the behind the scenes stuff I didn't mention in yesterday's survey post was a very relieving phone call that I'm so glad I wrote down because my memory catacombs are still piles of mess I'm trying to straighten out.

You guys know I love my lurkers. I've said a few times I'm not the stalkery sort, but I am capable of being an extreme underground lurker myself, although I don't spend a lot of time on it. About once every 6 months I check up on people here or there, usually extended family across the states, sometimes a person or two from my past, making sure things are ok. I've quietly watched a few people move around and go through life's ups and downs. Over the years, as our pasts fade and our paths bring us new surprises, I hope my electrons hooking up to theirs electronically feels like little quantum hugs letting them know none of us are ever really alone. Time and distance have no meaning. We go through our motions, but deep on the inside we glow, and I like to feel you guys glowing. Spooky action at a distance, as it were. 

I've lately watched one I dearly love get through a degree program and move on to more, bigger, and I can't say how proud I am watching her triumph so gloriously over devastating depression. I know from hard experience that sometimes survival is all about going where others can't follow and owning that mountain.

it's always something

We'll be getting caught in the rain tonight with our roof down.

Was beautiful and sunny yesterday after work, hardly a breeze, catching up on The Last Ship during supper, sudden BIG noise, last time I heard that was a microburst one winter. Out of the blue, there it went, part of the roofing sliding right off without any provocation whatsoever.

We've had this roof fixed several times through twenty years of severe weather. The only parts that have stayed intact are the parts Scott has done himself.

Serious distraction time. Hang on, lemme just grab the warning....

Hmm, no warning about the nudity. Or the language. Oh, well, carry on.

Well, they got being caught in the rain without protection right... Ok, and the crying right. I cried a couple of times since April. Actually, I was looking for an SNL vid of Gilda Radner saying "It's always something" and youtube suggested this one to me (yes, naked Benedict). I know you don't believe me. Here's Gilda. Love her. This is why I don't sweat it. I've watched people I love go through so much worse.


@bonenado says if we get insurance for a whole new roof (unlikely) we'll hafta take down the internet antenna (omg, praying we don't do the whole roof) and he's too hacked off to feel sorry for me at all, so I may be camping out around Springfield if that happens. That's right, I let him do all the worrying about more water coming in through the attic and ruining the drywall in the kitchen. I'm not the one who just had to build this spectacularly complicated roof. Everyone who's ever been up there for satellite or internet or just plain reroofing remembers our roof. We're the people with that roof.

From my pinterest- "Scott has absolutely no fear, no little red flags frantically waving in his brain screaming, "Hey, we're gonna die!" This goes up 4 stories to the roof. I had to go in, my nerves were shot watching him." And this was when he was younger and more limber.

Got some fancy tarp up, now we look like a secret military compound. Ok, I'm lying. This just in, and it was starting to sprinkle while I was out there, so it's all in the nick of time. We even had some tar in the basement. Love how my phone lightened up the sky, you can't see the ominous cloud cover.

I love this parody. If it's hard to understand (she's French), here are the words. She's awesome, does lots of other vids of all kinds, has two youtube channels.