Last Day to Be 51

So tomorrow is my birthday and I get to spend it working from home. A nice arrangement. Yesterday went well. We had a meeting at work that took up much of the morning; I am getting the hang of blogging for the press, and last night was good and relaxing.

I’ve sent my fiction project to the last publishing house for this year–the remaining five all open up at various times next year so I can breathe easy about that for a while. Now it is time to wait and see what develops. I probably won’t hear anything from anyone for several months, but that is not stopping me from checking my Submittable queue :(. Just to see who is already reading it (or not). But I will drive myself crazy if I keep that up :). I plan to start back on my memoir project in October so that will keep me busy.

Well, I need to run start my day. Hopefully it will be good; I think it will, and that’s half the battle :). Hope everyone else has a boost for midweek. Godspeed.

Unsure

What I’ll be working on today. Probably depends on what I find in my email when I get to work. So we will see.

I am having trouble getting going this morning. But it won’t take long to get ready to go once I start. I won’t have to stop off to pick up food for the day since we got another shipment of our diet foods yesterday. We will see how things go today. All I know is I feel hungry already 😦

i got such an encouraging note from my professor buddy Mike in Wisconsin about finishing my fiction project. I’ve always liked the Tom Clancy quote about how writing a “stack of finished pages” is about like circling the world on a ship was for the old exploring sailors. It’s nice to have someone excited for you about something as nebulous as starting to shop a book around. Not much encouragement in that process usually. But I have some really supportive friends so that’s good.

I suppose that’s all for this morning. I need to run get ready for work. I hope everyone’s week starts off well. Godspeed.

Monday Morning

So I went to my GI doctor for follow-up on my colonoscopy and liver scan and got a sermon about losing weight. So I’m going back on the diet for serious starting on my birthday this week. My mother-in-law and Bob want to take me out to eat so I’ll have to be careful–but I think I can do it. Getting a discussion of what’s actually going on in my body from the doctor made it a lot more real and serious–plus realizing I don’t have to lose as much as I thought to have a normal BMI. If I lose 90 pounds, I’m at the top range of normal. If I go lower to weigh 125, I’ll be dead-center normal. So it’s not as unreachable at it felt at first. So we will see.

I also got a urine test to see what this low back pain might be, if it’s a kidney infection or what. So that’s in the mix as well. If that comes back normal, I’ll call my doctor and see what he suggests doing to figure out what the pain is, whether it’s musculoskeletal or what.

My mom called this morning and said they weren’t coming after all; she said she didn’t sleep at all last night and didn’t think it would be a good idea to come in that shape, so they are staying in today. We will see how she recovers. I’ll call again this afternoon and see how she is doing.

I will be working on a story for VeryWell Mind today and see how that goes. I think it’s going to be interesting. I’m rating an online counseling service so we will see what happens. I hope it goes well and I don’t have more cancellations. Otherwise it’s going to be a short review. 🙂 But that will keep me busy this afternoon.

So I have a bit of a hectic day ahead. I go in to work tomorrow so that will be good. I suppose it’s time for me to start taking the stairs to try to burn more calories than I take in. I don’t see that happening much now so it will be a big change and maybe something I can do so i don’t have to try to work out quite so much as I might need to otherwise. It will be a start, at least.

I suppose that’s all for today. God bless all of you who keep reading. I appreciate you all so much. Godspeed.

I Stayed Awake!

I stayed awake for the whole Sunday School lesson and the whole church service, too–that felt miraculous compared to how sleepy I was feeling. But it was a very inspiring sermon and gave me a lot of encouragement and hope for the future. So I stayed awake to glean all I could out of it. Such a blessing.

Well, we lost like big dogs last night–State held it together until the third quarter and muffed a punt and it was all downhill from there. But there was hope, which something we so rarely feel with our Bulldogs. So that was good.

We’re going out for National Cheeseburger Day and getting burgers for lunch. SO that will be good. We’ll probably be leaving in another fifteen minutes. Today has been good so far. Hopefully I can get done all I need to get done and enjoy it as well.

My parents are coming tomorrow to see me for my birthday, so we will see how that goes. I’m hoping they’ll get here in time for a late lunch because I have an appointment in the morning so we will see how that goes. I stay so busy with appointments in my off days.

Well, that’s all I can think of for this morning. Godspeed.

Sleepy Saturday

We slept in today and are just now really getting going. Our youngest didn’t have a game last night so that was really relaxing for her and us–she watched “Heathers; The Musical” on Roku and we had a leisurely dinner, etc. It was a nice change of pace.

And today is going to be leisurely, too–State has a ballgame tonight at LSU and we will watch but no traveling today or tomorrow so that will be restful, too. We do plan to go to church unless something goes wrong with Bob’s allergies at some point.

I am feeling good. I had a good session with Tillie, and we talked a few things out. Things are going so well right now and I am grateful for that. The holidays are soon going to kick in, and that’s going to be stressful for everybody with my father-in-law gone–he loved Christmas and all the carrying on that went with it.

I don’t know much else to say. I hope everyone is doing well that is reading. Thanks for your attention and care. Have a good weekend. Godspeed.

Therapy Day

I go see Tillie today and am not sure what I’ll talk about. I may ask her about my concerns weaning off of this medicine that Dr. Bishop gave me for the sleep apnea. I will see what she has to say.

Bob left early and I stayed in bed until my mother called to talk about coming to visit next week. I guess they want to come down for my birthday. I told her I was only off on Mondays and Fridays and that I had an appointment early Monday morning. But we will see how it goes.

I got a lot done yesterday at work–made some authors feel good by sending them positive reviews of their work that had been sent to us for filing. One note I got right before I signed off was particularly sweet so that made me feel good in that I seemed to have made her day by sending her such a positive review. So that was good to know.

SO I guess I need to sign out and see what I can get done before I have to leave. Hope everyone has a good weekend. Godspeed.

Ruminating

I find myself thinking about a lost friendship this morning. A girl that worked with me during my early freelancing years suddenly broke off contact with me several years ago, and I’ve never understood why. I could speculate, but I’m truly confused about it so I won’t. The last exchange we had was online a few years after she cut off contact where she chewed me out for something I said trying to answer a question she asked to the general public (Facebook) about politics. (We had friended each other on Facebook before the break). So I don’t know why she came up in my memory today, but I miss her.

I got a lot done yesterday and hopefully can today, too. I’m working my way through a bunch of tasks that need catching up back from when my supervisor was in charge of doing it–so it’s backed up for a while. Maybe I can make some good headway today. I got a lot done in the basement yesterday, to the point that my supervisor said I needn’t make going down there a priority anymore, so that was good.

I guess I may as well get going this morning. I got another screen for my home use for the Press, so I am going to try to hook that up this morning and see whether it helps me as much as I think it will. Looking forward to the weekend and resting up. I see Tillie tomorrow so that is good. And my birthday is next week! That makes me happy.

Godspeed to all.

Musings

Don’t know much to say this morning. It looks like a regular day here working from home–I have a meeting at ten but otherwise the day looks like I could be pretty productive, which is good. The unpacking from the book festival seems to be turning into a long term project in that I’m only working on it in the afternoons when I’m in the office and I am a little over halfway through. I keep thinking there HAS to be a more efficient way of pricing the books for these festivals than garage sale style stickers that have to be peeled off by hand at the speed of a human fingernail. But I’m not smart enough to come up with it, it seems.

I feel really good this morning. I see Tillie again soon so that will be helpful. I am kind of starting to brace myself for the holidays already; Bob is already making noises about not looking forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas without his dad. Not sure what is going to happen at that point. No one seems in the mood to discuss it, and I don’t feel strong enough to take it head on. So we will see.

I guess that’s it for today; hope everyone’s day goes well as we downslope into the weekend. Godspeed.

Back to the Office

Jackson finally got water pressure back to operate bathrooms, etc, so we went back into the office today. It’s still not safe to drink so the boil-water notice is continuing. But our office has plenty of bottled water for drinking while at work so it wasn’t too bad. I spent some time in the basement re-shelving books from the Mississippi Book Festival, so that was good time spent.

I also got put on blog duty for the Mississippi Books Page, which my office puts together every week for the major state newspaper to run! I did a practice run last week with my supervisor walking through how they do their blog, which has different features than any of mine. So that was a cool thing to start doing! I felt really good about being able to do that this morning.

I am feeling well today. This medication combination should hold me until I see my psychiatrist–then I will probably start stepping down from the regular dose of the sleep apnea med to a half dose until I see my sleep apnea doctor again and have another sleep test. I am going to take advantage of what I am able to accomplish in that time while I am feeling good, without overdoing or overcommitting. So we will see what happens.

I suppose that’s all for today. We will see how it goes. Have a good day, everybody.

Labor Day

So what am I going to do on Labor Day? Work, of course. (Laid-back, fun, take-breaks-every-hour work, but work just the same.)

We went out to eat yesterday and Bob came down with a terrible nausea and stomachache that lasted all afternoon, so we didn’t do much of anything yesterday at all. But it was fine–I wrote and listened to music all afternoon. I’m up early this morning so will start back in.

Waiting on my youngest and my mother-in-law to come home either this morning or this afternoon. My middle one got home yesterday and had a good trip back, so that was great. She met up with some friends that were still in Starkville yesterday and had a good time with them, she said.

I finally got around to looking up the new medication my doctor gave me for my sleepiness–it’s only rated for sleep apnea and narcolepsy because it’s so powerful. I have to be careful coming off of it because you can have withdrawls. Lovely. I’m going to talk to my doctor about stepping down from it once I get my CPAP or BiPAP or whatever sleep machine they settle on. But that’s not going to be until October, so I guess I will keep using this new med until then.

SO that is all the wisdom for today. Hope everyone has a good day and a good start to the workweek tomorrow. Godspeed.