Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! This week has been a little calmer than last week was, which has been nice. I am finding that I’m losing track of what day it is despite having a pretty full schedule every day, so that’s a little weird…I’m blaming the heat and humidity.
I’ve had my PAP machine for almost two months now, and I’m starting to really notice some tangible differences in my life because of it:
Before starting on the PAP machine, it was normal for me to get up (or at least wake up) at least half a dozen times in a night, if not more. Lately, I haven’t been getting up at all during the night.
Before, I regularly felt the desire to tap out and go to bed before 9pm. Now, I can stay up until 10 or 11pm and be okay the next day.
Before, I was regularly in bed for 10 or 11 hours a night, even though I was only sleeping a fraction of that time. Now, I’m usually in bed 8 or 9 hours, which might not seem like a huge difference, but feels really significant to me.
Before, I had to be really careful about how much I scheduled on weeknights if I wanted to make it through the work week. Now, I’m able to play D&D on Tuesday nights, go to bed around midnight, and function just fine at work the next day.
The list could go on and on, but those are the big things I’m noticing so far. Sleep is magical and I can’t believe I let myself go so long without it.
Anyway, on that happy note, I will leave you with your weekly dose of Nova:
Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! It’s been an interesting week.
Last Friday, one of our favorite Chicago friends came into town and we went to the My Brother, My Brother, and Me live show in Minneapolis. The show was hilarious, and it was so delightful to have her here for a couple of days, even though I was still quite under the weather and we had to keep things pretty low-key. Nova absolutely fell in love with her, and was very disappointed when she left.
Unfortunately, pretty much right after our friend left, my husband came down hard with the cold I was recovering from. It’s been a rough week from that perspective, but thankfully we’re both on the mend now.
In continued adventures with my PAP machine, things were going pretty well while I was sick, actually, because I was propping myself up at night and not moving around much. Unfortunately, the last few nights have been harder – the mask keeps leaking air up over the bridge of my nose and waking me up with the whooshing noise. I am going to call today to see if I can get a different mask configuration to try. Overall I’m still really hopeful that this will bring some major changes to my quality of sleep, and I’m grateful it’s gone as smoothly as it has so far.
We also bought a new mattress that we got to sleep on for the first time last night! It’s a Big Fig, and it’s a MAJOR upgrade from the cheap foam IKEA mattress we’ve been sleeping on for the last 12 years. We woke up with some aches in different places because we’re not used to so much support, but it’s really comfy and I’m very excited about it. Nova is enjoying the fact that the old mattress is hanging out on our living room floor for now.
I’m in between semesters for the next couple of weeks, and it feels good to be through the first semester of seminary, but also weird to not be in classes/doing homework. I keep feeling like I’m forgetting something. Over the summer I’m taking one asynchronous class at United (History of Modern Theologies), and one intensive class for the month of June at St. Kate’s that’s specific to my concentration (Sacred Activism). I’m really excited about the St. Kate’s class, even though I recognize June is going to be…a lot. All my books are ordered and at least half of them have arrived, so I’m feeling good about that.
In two weeks I’m going to New York for work for a big company get-together. I’m extremely nervous about traveling now that mask mandates are lifting, but it is what it is. I’m excited to get to meet colleagues in person for the first time – the global team is coming in, so I’ll get to meet coworkers from London and Singapore in addition to my NYC and Chicago colleagues. I’m already kind of exhausted by the thought of socializing that much, but I’m sure it’ll be fine.
Nova went to the groomer on Saturday and they got so much fur off of her that I actually had to resize her collar. She’s looking very sleek and we have slightly fewer tumbleweeds floating around our apartment. I will leave you with a few pictures of her, as always.
Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday. I’m a little out of it this morning – I took a sick day yesterday, so I’ve spent the morning catching up on emails and Slack messages. I’m quite sleepy. I got an update from the sleep center on Friday that we’re not doing the in-center sleep study (insurance won’t approve it right now), but I am getting a CPAP…eventually. Evidently there’s a worldwide shortage of CPAP machines right now due to some massive recall. So that’s annoying.
Probably as a side effect of being overtired and also because I’ve just had a lot of work to do between work and school lately, I have felt really irritable this week. It’s not my favorite thing. I feel like I’m unpleasant to be around. I’m doing my best to compensate where I can and to be honest about my feelings where I need to be, but yeah. It’s not the most fun I’ve ever had.
Nova went to the groomer on Saturday and is once again a TikTok star. They do a great job of capturing her personality. I don’t have much else to say this week, so I’ll leave you with a few pictures of Nova when she was particularly shiny and still wearing her bandana from the groomer (before she tried to eat it off of her neck and I had to confiscate it haha):
Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! It’s been a week. I had a lovely rest of my time off last week; even though I have some regrets about not working ahead on school work, I think I made the right choice to take the time to really relax.
As I mentioned last week that I was doing a home sleep study Thursday night. I got the results back, and as it turns out…I’m really bad at breathing when I sleep. I have severe sleep apnea, which is why I’m tired all the time.
The good news is this is totally treatable, and once I’m set up with a CPAP machine and get used to wearing that when I sleep, the chances that I’ll actually sleep well are vastly increased. The idea of getting an actually restful night’s sleep is mind-blowing to me and I’m very excited to find out what that feels like.
The bad news is I have to wait for my insurance to approve the in-person sleep study they need to do in order to set up the CPAP correctly for me, and that can apparently take a month. And now that I know definitively just how awful my sleep has been, it’s like I can’t pretend that it’s okay anymore, and I feel extra tired.
I’m really grateful that my husband pushed me to get this checked out and that I got the ball rolling now. I’m also really frustrated with American healthcare right now.
Next week for school I have two papers and a presentation due, in addition to the usual readings and reflections, and I’m a little overwhelmed about that. I did get one of the papers started last night, and that helped the anxiety somewhat, but I didn’t exercise the greatest judgment when scheduling my weekend in light of all of this homework. We’ll see how it goes.
Anyway, that’s my week. I’ll leave you, as always, with a few silly Nova photos from this week:
I am manic, and have been for a couple of weeks now. The first week or so was fun – I got excited about a lot of things and felt connected in ways I hadn’t in a while. The second week was not so fun. I was super anxious, and struggled to keep panic attacks at bay.
This week has also been less fun. The worst of the anxiety has waned, although it’s still buzzing beneath the surface. The bigger problem this week has been around sleep.
There have been a lot of late nights this week, for a variety of reasons. They’ve left me completely exhausted. However, when I’m finally able to lay down to sleep, my brain decides to kick it into high gear. It just. Won’t. Stop.
Rarely is it buzzing about anything of consequence. It just starts shouting about whatever random shit pops up as I’m attempting to drift off. I try to focus on breathing, but so far that hasn’t been especially successful. Even when I do sleep, I have really weird, vivid dreams that don’t leave me feeling rested; as soon as I wake up, my brain is back to running in circles.
As a result, it’s now Thursday and I feel like I’m just barely holding it together. I know this is a temporary state, and I’m talking with my therapist and doctor to see if there’s anything further I can be doing. But right now in the thick of it, I am not having a great time.
Accidental Fudge 