Tag: injections

Werewolves of London

Tuesday morning, and we have survived to another day, haven’t we? And of course, my daily posts usually starting with some kind of commentary that boils down to “proof of life” at its most basic level is why people get concerned when I am not here every morning, isn’t it? The more you know…or more like, the more you think about something…which is certainly always the case with me.

Well, I slept really well last night and I feel pretty good thus far this morning. We weren’t terribly busy at the clinic yesterday (today, on the other hand, is a different story), and I ran errands on my way home from work. I’ll probably stop to make groceries on the way home (maybe), and this Friday I am taking the car in for some necessary maintenance (need to replace two tires, the air filter, and some other things need to be done). Tomorrow is pay-the-bills day, and maybe I can get everything done that I need to get done before the weekend so I can just stay home and read/write/clean. Yay! I’d like to get some writing done this week; I woke up to an email from my editor about Hurricane Season Hustle, and we need to schedule a call to discuss what remains to be done. Huzzah!

I also ordered the next dose of my injection medication yesterday from the specialty pharmacy, because I get to dose myself again in November. Look at me, staying on top of things and not blowing them off until the last possible minute. But I can also tell that it’s coming up, because I am having some slight stomach issues–but nothing serious; it’s what reminded me to go ahead and order it. Not to worry, Constant Reader–it’s the same thing I noticed in the last few weeks before I had my first injection last month. I don’t mind having a physical reminder, to be honest. I’ve become so forgetful lately that I worry about forgetting to order it–not as bad as I would have before anxiety medication, I need to point out–but am also hopeful those issues won’t be so bad once I am fully recovered physically from being sick this past spring. Now that I have sort of recovered from the trip, I am starting to feel more lively and alive this week, which is terrific. Alas, I do have to drive to Kentucky for Thanksgiving, which will be a TEST.

I am already dreading that drive, but will be listening to a Donna Andrews audiobook, which is really the best way to travel on long trips in the car. I cannot reiterate too much how delightful it is to listen to books in the car; I wish I had figured that out years earlier. Another one of those better late than never things, isn’t it?

We caught up a bit on Alien: Earth, which is a very interesting addition to the Alien IP. It looks like its going to finally get into what the xenomorphs are, where they came from, and what they want. I don’t remember a lot of the movies other than the first two (classics); I may have even not seen some of them and the prequels never really made a lot of sense to me. But we’re enjoying the show, and October seems like the right month to be watching it.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have yourself a lovely little Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back tomorrow on Pay the Bills Wednesday!

I have such a crush on adorable Freddie Stroma!

Shambala

Tuesday, and we made it through Monday, did we not?

My first injection went very well, I think. It doesn’t hurt at all; the needle is tiny, and the device is pretty easy to assemble and put the medicine into. It’s every eight months, and there’s an app to remind you to reorder and to inject, and it only takes about three and a half minutes to process. I think I can handle it the next time on my own, and it’s not going to be a terrible inconvenience for me, nor was it painful. I wasn’t entirely sure the needle had punctured my skin, to be honest, but I didn’t feel medicine running down my body, either, so it must have worked. The medicine vial was empty, tho, when it beeped. All in all, not bad, and while I am not entirely certain there were no side effects–the arm where I got my flu shot on Friday, for example, was achy and sore, which doesn’t make sense. I did get tired in the afternoon, but…not sure that had anything to do with the shot as I was tired already. I slept really well last night, and had a bit of a sinus attack this morning when I first got up. I feel rested and relaxed, not fatigued or exhausted, but we’ll see how the morning and the rest of the day go. (I also took a Claritin to battle the sinuses, and once that kicked in everything is rather heavenly this morning.)

I stopped and made some groceries on the way home from work last night, and baked potatoes once I was safely home and everything was put away. Sparky cuddled in my lap as I had on the news while reading (or trying to read) my manuscript, and after dinner we enjoyed an episode of Wednesday before I went to bed. It was a nice, calm, relaxing evening at home, and I think that may have helped with my sleep. I also got my COVID vaccine prescription called in to Walgreens (CVS doesn’t have any in stock) because fucking Louisiana and our POS shit governor and legislature passed laws requiring a prescription for it. A prescription from a doctor for a vaccine for a communicable disease.

I am so glad I don’t have kids.

I have to say that Claritin has made a world of difference. I actually feel good; not tired or fatigued in any way, and the telltale leg tiredness is also a thing of the past. So, it was all sinus-related this morning. The shot didn’t have any side effects that I can tell, so we’ll see how that COVID shot on Friday will go. Sometimes they make me ill or tired or both, but having had COVID–yeah, don’t want that coming back anytime soon into my system…and of course my immune system is also compromised now. SO, anti-vaxxers? Go fuck yourselves, and fuck Florida, too. Why would anyone bring their kids on vacation there now?

I do hope this good feeling lasts for a while, you know? I have so much to do–nothing new there, right?–and today I am going to make a list. I need to take the reins of my life by the hand again, and steer it forward properly. I hope this good feeling isn’t just a temporary thing…and on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a great day, Constant Reader, and I will be back again in the morning.

Come Monday

Monday morning and I am not really awake yet. My legs still feel stiff and fatigued, and my brain is a bit cloudy, but I am back to the office today and thus need to wake myself up before it’s time to get in the car and go, you know? My coffee tastes great and it’s going down easily. Today is also the day the nurse comes by to teach me how to give myself an injection, and use the device I have to attach to myself for five minutes while it pumps the medication into me. Exciting times, am I right? I also am going to have to get up and go have blood drawn on Friday again, too. How many times have I had to have my skin pierced this year? Quite a fucking few. But at least I’ll have something to talk about tomorrow morning, won’t I? Heavy heaving sigh.

Monday mornings are always a struggle, you know, but this one is worse than my usual Monday. I am still fatigued–the legs are aching–and my mind is clearing, but there’s still some vestiges of Morpheus lagging inside my head. It’s going to be a struggle today, methinks, and I have to make some groceries on the way home, too. Sigh. I don’t think I’ll have any trouble sleeping this evening, and will probably be snoring in my chair by nine.

We did catch up on some of our shows last night after the US Open and the truly sad Saints game, watching another episode of Foundation, one of Peacemaker, and started the second half of Wednesday before calling it an evening so I could get ready for work and go to bed at an earlier time than I would have preferred. I also read more deeply into the manuscript, and I also need to start doing the tarot reading that tells the story in chapter headings.

I also had a lovely exchange on social media yesterday about some of the Broadway legends who’ve come to the Tennessee Williams Festival. I always forget that being Mrs. Festival has always enabled me to meet acting legends like Marian Seldes, Frances Sternhagen, and Zoe Caldwell, who were all absolutely lovely and fun to be around. I had a lovely conversation at dinner with Frances that I will always cherish as a memory, and of course, Marian was incredibly kind and generous, and Zoe was an absolute hoot. Sometime I’ll need to sit down and go through the old programs and remind myself of all the famous people I’ve met. (John Waters remains my favorite.)

I also became aware of an interesting story regarding the LSU Marching Band…a retired gentleman named Kent Broussard has joined the band! He’s sixty-six years old, and he had a dream that he wanted to play tuba in the marching band for LSU. So he bought a tuba a few years ago, took lessons, and enrolled in classes so he could audition for the band. He made it! Saturday was his first performance at a home game. Isn’t that cool?

I love being reminded that you’re never too old to pursue your dreams, don’t you?

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, and I’ll be back with a full report on the injection tomorrow!

You Can’t Hold On Too Long

Saturday and I don’t have to go into the office! Man, I was tired last night when I got home from the office. I came straight home, too. The day at the office wasn’t bad, and I fell asleep pretty early in my easy chair after watching the season premier of Peacemaker. I also did some laundry (I wound up washing the bedding once I got home), and I still have some things to do today. I have to run errands (not many, and not too terrible), I have some cleaning and so forth to do around here today, and want to do some reading and some writing as well. I guess it all depends on how much energy I wind up having today. This past week was ever so much better than Last Infusion Week, but I was still tired by the time I got home from the office. Recovery is taking forever, isn’t it?

And it’s not like I’m the most patient person alive.

I did sleep late in spite of Sparky’s biting and clawing attempts to get me up earlier. It felt good, although I do still feel a bit tired. The coffee tastes delicious this morning, and I feel a little low blood sugar this morning, which means I should eat. I’ve not been eating as much in the mornings as I had been these past two weeks. My weight is still climbing–slowly, around a pound per week–but I’m not going to worry about my weight until after Labor Day and my first self-injection. The next few weeks are going to be busy ones–LSU’s first game of the season is next weekend, and then it’s Labor Day and right after that, Bouchercon. I don’t have a lot of plans made for the week of Bouchercon, and I might just leave the weekend as it is already and not make any more plans…I can use that time to write and clean and read and get my act together going into football season. Sigh. I’m trying to not get overwhelmed with so much to do, but…nothing to do but apply nose to grindstone and focus on one task at a time. I’ve got to be better about my to-do list.

I think this morning I’ll go ahead and read for an hour before getting cleaned up and running my errands. I’m not progressing as quickly as I would like with my three current reads, and so need to desperately pick up the pace on my reading. I will never get through the TBR pile at the rate I’m going, and the way I keep adding books to the stack…my TBR pile is like the Hydra. I read and donate a book and add two more. This is not a winning strategy, methinks. But I think my focus is coming back–it’s rusty and needs to be nurtured and encouraged–and that will help with everything.

I’m also still reveling in the death of James Dobson the hateful homophobic misogynist racist advocate of child abuse in the “name of God.” Lord, how I hated that piece of shit and his so-called “ministry”–how much damage did that prick do in the name of money and power? I was thinking about writing a newsletter about Dobson and his hate–I’ll never forget that time I heard him calling me a pervert and pedophile during the Virginia thing on his radio show…but I’ve been toying with doing a lengthy, multi-part one about Christianity and my tangled, complicated relationship with the faith I was groomed into. I’ve also been reading old entries back from the original days of my blog (2005!!!) to get a sense of Katrina to write about again (I’ve started writing it, and hope to have it finished for posting on the anniversary next Friday) and it really is amazing to see how much not only my writing voice has changed but me personally; that’s what I want the Katrina entry to be about, how both the city and I have changed since Katrina because of Katrina. (Which is also my way back into writing Hurricane Season Hustle).

Last night I got my birthday meal of shrimp lo mein at last, and it was quite marvelous as it always is–you can never go wrong with shrimp, noodles, and a sauce, I find. I’m not sure about what meals to make this weekend, but probably will barbecue burgers either today or tomorrow (most likely tomorrow, since I won’t be leaving the house; today I feel is going to be an easy day for food).

And on that note, I am going to take my coffee and go read for a bit before showering. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later; one can never be certain how I am going to do things on an easy unplanned day. If not, tomorrow morning for sure.

More Than This

Wednesday morning and the midpoint of the week. Huzzah! Yes, I am back to wishing my life away, as my mother used to call it. But I can abide, you know? I wasn’t rested properly yesterday, I don’t think, or else it was the off-and-on rain/thunderstorms we had yesterday. That wet cold air inside the office just makes me want to curl up somewhere and go to sleep under my pile of blankets, which makes the workday a bit of a slog. Ah, well. It’s supposed to continue like this until the weekend or so, when it’ll just be hot and sunny and humid and miserable. Yay! And Monday is my next infusion (second of three). Soon I’ll be giving myself shots. Can’t wait…although everyone tells me it’s easy; it’s a pre-loaded pen-like device I just need to stick myself with. And it’s not like my job hasn’t gotten me used to sticking myself and other people over the years. Sigh. It’s hard for me, sometimes, to wrap my mind around the whole this is the rest of your life thing. But it could be worse–it can always be worse–so I will accept this and not let it bug me. I’m sure I’ll eventually get so used to it I won’t even give it a second thought. It’s always the first time, you know? Just like I was nervous about the infusion (when they tell you all the things to look out for during, it can be a bit scary: “if you can’t breathe or have shortness of breath”, you know, things like that) until I did it for the first time.

Definitely will be bringing my book with me on Monday.

I guess Ann Coulter got tired of not being a part of the ICE raids and so decided to glorify genocide on social media, suggesting that the European genocide of indigenous Americans didn’t go far enough? She wound up deleting the post, which is more shocking than the post, to be honest; she’s always been one of those “freedom of speech means I can say the most disgusting things without apology” advocates. Ann Coulter has always been hot sewage, and back in the day she used to compete with Rush Limbaugh to see who could say the most revolting, inhuman kind of shit. Back in the 1990s, as I saw my parents and family getting sucked in more and more by Fox News1, I used to actually read books by right-wingers, including Ann Coulter. (My primary takeaway was they needed to hire better ghostwriters.) Don’t ever forget that Coulter also wrote the introduction to Phyllis Schlafly’s autobiography, and Schlafly was a monster. Like attracts like, I suppose. But since she turned on Trump for not being racist enough in his first term (she probably orgasms with every news report about ICE and Alligator Auschwitz), she’s not as popular on the right as she used to be; how very dare she be critical of MAGA’s God Emperor? I mean, she can’t even get booked on her ex-lover Bill Maher’s show anymore. But she deleted the post. What the fuck, Fraulein Coulter? Outrage used to be what got you out of bed in the morning and paid your bills. I certainly don’t believe she grew a conscience in her sixties.

After the stolen election of 2000, I no longer needed to read right-winger’s books because I didn’t really know what I was gaining by reading them anymore–I used to think it was better to know what they were thinking and saying, but this century, they’ve pretty much started saying the private stuff out loud. It’s impossible to go on-line or watch any news or anything without knowing what the Right’s position on anything and everything is–but you can be sure it’s rooted in racism, misogyny, and homophobia…same as it ever was, same as it ever will be.

Plus, sharing what I learned from reading those books and proximity to right wing voters? I was never believed by anyone on the left, so I just wound up being Cassandra on the walls of Troy…and truly understood her madness. It’s horrible not being believed…but everything I warned about is coming true.

Sigh.

It rained off and on all day yesterday–we even got a flash flood advisory in the afternoon–and I wasn’t really fully and completely mentally functional yesterday. My brain was loopy and my body was fatigued; I felt all day like I could go back to bed without a problem. When I got home from work I did some chores (didn’t finish them, though–there’s a load of laundry that needs to be fluffed and folded, and I need to finish the dishes to load in the dishwasher), and then worked on editing for a while. It didn’t go well, but I made progress, and I do feel more awake and rested so far this morning, so maybe tonight will go super-well. Stranger things have occurred, after all. We also watched the second to last episode of We Were Liars after Paul got home (later than usual), and then I went to bed earlier than usual. I think I need to get back into the going to bed at nine thing again. I also didn’t read anything last night because by the time I sat in my chair my brain was misfiring again. Heavy sigh. Maybe tonight? I think I just need to get back into the writing habit again; everything is still rusty and the gears don’t shift accordingly. so I need to retrain my brain and my body and my creativity into productivity again.

I can do it, I know I can.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Hump Day, Constant Reader, and I will be back again tomorrow morning.

I really appreciate the fact that the majority of pro wrestlers today focus more on their fitness–and have much better bodies than the ones in my youth did. I can easily see this dude dancing shirtless at Oz during Southern Decadence.
  1. In fairness, they were always right-wing; Rush and Fox just confirmed what they thought. ↩︎