Whisper

Finally painted. Hoping just one more round to call it done.

No painting again this Saturday 😢 canceled next two weeks for funerals. Happy to report that I've kept the living room up, and got some more tidying up done yesterday. Doing fine with dumping the sweet tea and going with regular iced. Trending the right direction on lowering soda, but did have some a couple days. Brain rebelled against the dinner plan last week. Had a bunch of extra afernoon stuff and just couldn't on the raw veggies. Have fresh stuff for this week, and found some frozen meat stuff that I can quickly make a single portion of, as the lunch meat approach lost its luster fast. Haven't been doing the protein shake for breakfast, but going to try again this week. Got to play violin at church this morning, which was really nice.

I'm so proud of myself. One of the Bell Chior members decided to host a dinner party for the the Chior and their spouses, and not only did I go, I actually talked with people.

Hate trying to post on mobile sometimes, but don't know an easier way to add pictures. Phone ate the post I had written, don't feel like writing it again, but will say I'm happy with the progress I made today.

Sharing my shame as a motivation to finally fix it.

Oh look, I vanished for a week again! I didn't mean to. I thought about writing. I even started to. This post was started over 24 hours ago. Just can't seem to keep writing. Missed church on Sunday. It was a rare week where I wasn't scheduled to do anything (normally I'm a tech or a musician) so wasn't a huge deal. M and I had plans to have breakfast after church with some friends we haven't seen in a long while, but was having trouble getting her up. Decided to miss church so that I could still get her if she woke up. It worked out in the end. Catching up was good, but stuff like that is exhausting to me. I took Monday and Tuesday off work. Scheduled in advance and I have plenty of PTO saved up. Just needed some room to breath. Got a little bit of cleaning done, but mostly just relaxed. Wednesday and Thursday were crazy at work, trying to catch up on stuff missed by being off two days. Friday was calmer, fewer shops running, so more able to chip away at the backlog without being called away every few minutes. Normally I would go to painting today, but it is cooler today than it has been in a while. I've got a cross breeze bringing fresh air into my apartment, and I'm feeling motivated to make some big progress in cleaning / sorting. I want to eliminate the living room choke point today.

I love this so much and think of it every time I type "a lot"! I'm always really tired. I never really felt like the testosterone was helping, but didn't realize the way it was hurting until I was off it for a while and went back on.

When you highlight a section and hit the "quote section" button, it drops down to the draft field. Write what you want, maybe give a line break or two, then scroll back up, highlight the next bit and repeat. 😉 I think it works roughly the same on mobile, just a bit more clunky.

Worked on waterfall painting.

I've been fairly solid in my head about what I want to do with this challenge for a couple weeks now, and have even been composing the outline post in my head, but for some reason it gets really hard when fingers are on keyboard. Testosterone and Estrogen I need to talk to my doctor about this and see what she says, but I currently feel disinclined to resuming testosterone. I've been on the stuff for years and never really felt like it was doing anything other than normalising the lab numbers. I didn't feel any better taking it than not. Insurance decided not to cover it, so I didn't have it and while not on it, I noticed the my sleep seemed to be getting better. Once insurance approved it again, I tried taking it for a few days, and just couldn't still myself to sleep. It used to happen a lot, it was happening a lot less when I wasn't on the testosterone. Took it for 3 days, each night was bad, stopped again and it has been better. A1C and HDL I wasn't on any blood sugar medications when the test was ran. I had been previously, but was having a reaction and had stopped taking it for over a month. I've since started taking a new med with no ill effects thus far. I really feel like my body is telling me that I need to make serious and sustained changes, or things are just going to keep getting worse. I'm trying to look at things realistically; there aren't that many spoons, more spoons are not forthcoming, CHANGING ALL THE THINGS!!!!!!!! isn't going to work, it's just going to rebound. So, making a mental graph, what are the things I need to do, and what are the least effort ways to do them? 1. I need to lower my sugar intake for my A1C. 2. I need to up my fiber intake for my A1C and HDL. 3. I need to up my healthy fat intake for my HDL. The lowest of low hanging fruit, and where I got the name for this challenge: sweet tea. I drink more sweet tea at home than all other drinks combined. Cutting it out will cut out a lot of sugar. So, I'm switching to iced tea with a little bit of sweet n low. Maybe not the healthiest thing, but a whole lot better and something I think I can maintain. Next change, I know I'm not going to cook, not on any real consistent basis, so instead, dinners will be mostly raw veggies with hummus, some cheese, lunch meat and triscuits. Breakfast, trying to switch from having Belvita "breakfast biscuits" to a protein shake with a tablespoon of olive oil and two of chia seeds. Playing around with it, but trying to find something that is fairly good tasting, but has protein, good fat and fiber. I've been working on this for a couple weeks now. I think it is going ok. Getting more consistent, finding what works and adjusting as needed while staying engaged here is the challenge. Not sure how to make any of that measurable and not word salad right now, but there it is.

Welcome Danoria! How goes the treadmill?

Yesterday turned into the M emergency show. Got a text from her at 11 that everything was falling apart. UTI still raging (after weeks and several rounds of antibiotics),thinking a toe she dropped a can on was infected, 3 day evection notice because she apparently lost her rent money order... "ugly crying and stuck". Forwarded message to her brothers. Tried getting her to contact some people that could take her to ER, realized that wasn't going to happen, so contacted them myself. Found her a ride, had them there at 3, took them another hour to get her out the door. She was at ER till 11, IV antibiotics and other fun stuff. I just... This isn't my responsibility, but she won't reach out to anyone else. We talked on Sunday about her needing to get seen Monday and who to talk to, and she just doesn't. Lots of stress eating and soda drinking yesterday.

...but now you are bitter, bitter as gall My goal last challenge was to stay engaged through the challenge, and I did an ok job at it. Struggled to keep up, but didn't totally vanish. This time, I'm I need to try and push a bit more. Work remains a huge stressor for me. 50 hours / week is the base level, often going even higher, and I'm stuck in a bit of limbo doing a bunch of work as a Lead / Supervisor without the formal position, while also trying to get the company to address the fact that they really aren't paying people enough in the current market. We've been losing people at work. I don't want to leave but at the same time, I don't know that I can justify staying to myself. I've got a friend, M, that I am something of a caregiver for. I've cut back on how much I'm doing for her because I just couldn't maintain it, but we're still in a situation where I feel like I have to worry about her or she's not going to be able to care for herself. A couple weeks ago I got blood work done and I've been looking at the results as they come in. As always, my bad cholesterol is on the high end of fine, but my good cholesterol is too low. My testosterone levels are extremely low, my estrogen levels are high. I should just grow out my hair and start wearing earrings. Oh, wait. My A1C is now 6.4; diabetes starts at 6.5 I would really like to not be diabetic, but at well over 350 lbs, what do I expect? Been trying to get this up for two days. Hitting post so I can work on it other places. I have a point, I just can't seem to get to it.

Percy is beautiful. Black cat's are so hard to capture.

Having similar thoughts right now.

I mean, you wanted entertainment and you got a call from the court jester... Your DM clearly expects you to play the rules lawyer when you cast Wish. In the immortal words of Sir Terry "If it were funny, clowns wouldn't be doing it"

Is this any way to talk to your manager?!? I really do like Jim. Could never have done this with the previous manager. But alas, I just don't see the company letting him do what he needs to right the ship. A night tech quit at the end of last week. Took a job paying $10/hour more. But sure, the wages are fine, even though we can't even get people to apply for the open day tech position. There's only 4 techs / shift. With a vacancy on both we're down to 75%, ignoring the widely held view that we were short handed before all this. Get just one person out sick or on vacation? The burnout is killing those we have left. Steve only made it an hour today before going home, he'll be out tomorrow too. Wednesday on, I've got a different guy on vacation. If Steve isn't better by then?

Hi Rookie! Once again, I've given up on the idea of catching up on posts, and instead am catching up on pictures. The horse painting is amazing. I have no idea how you make the hair look so natural. I'm always stunned by your art. I love the green dress! and the napkin to fix the neckline looks like it was meant to be.

Reminding myself of what my challenge is: Fill pill containers every Sunday. Done. Didn't actually take my pills yesterday, because I didn't eat at work and I take them with food, but doing good with them overall. Fill water bottle every morning. I filled my water bottle this morning. Haven't had any water in a few days, so just filling it counts as a victory. Drinking from it too, so that's nice. On any day off, walk around the block at least once. Took a lap around the block on Saturday morning, but no walking Sunday. Read someone else's post daily. Struggling with this, mostly because I feel so far behind. Trying to do more skimming to catch up some. Post something weekly. Doing ok at this.

I'm still alive. Another really busy week, albeit slightly shortened by the holiday Monday. HR and my manager are slightly displeased with how widely I aired the "dirty laundry ", but they can't actually argue with any of my points and frankly I don't think it is a me problem, I think it is a wider issue and SOMEONE needed to say something. They might not like it, but in a real way, it was a last ditch effort to save my job before I just walk away like so many other people are doing. HR manager says she'll push harder on getting the wage numbers and wants to do a weekly "touch base" meeting with me. Told my manager that with the small raise he was able to get me, I wasn't going to completely cut off the extra stuff I'm doing, but we need to do more to keep my load balanced, and that with no agreement (or even any answer) on my proposal from his manager, I didn't feel I could in fairness to myself NOT be looking for another job while the company decides if they're ever going to stop dicking me around. 10 hours holiday, plus 40 hours worked this week. My last paycheck had 118 hours on it. My next one will "only" have about 95 hours. Last night, my cousin sent me a picture she took of a waterfall from inside a cave. As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to get a canvas to paint it on. I know it looks like a tree right now, but I need something dark to put the white over. Once it is dry enough not to blend (oils, so next week) I'll add more white and it'll look better.

HR manager scheduled a meeting with me at 2:30; wonder what that could possibly be about 🤔

Made more words Saturday, but left out a line. Trying to decide if if is ok or needs to be redone. Worked a little on the snow tree painting, still messing with houses behind the tree, so no tree on the painting yet.

Managed to get Friday off, so enjoying a long weekend. Rested yesterday. Painting today, church tomorrow. And Monday? I'm going to celebrate Independence Day by polishing my resume and getting it posted on job sites.

No official response. Sent the email wide. Had a few people in person say roughly "good email, I'm happy you said something " In news that slightly steals my thunder, but totally reinforces my point, the warehouse day shift supervisor announced this morning that today would be his last day. And because when they replaced my retired manager, they put the new guy over both Maintenance and Warehouse... well, Jim's had a rough day. I've been feeling kind of giddy all afternoon.