Any minute now

Gracious but I'm tired.  Not Lyme tired.  Just tired tired.  It's the end of the week, and I finished up by wrangling a dog and a cat at the vet's office.  And I have stuff I need to do to get ready for the weekend.  Writing stuff, organizing stuff, yadda yadda.  I really want to go to bed though.

Can you believe the look that cat gave me?  She wanted me dead from sarcasm.  (And that was BEFORE she saw any veterinary professionals.)  Beauty, as usual, was everybody's favorite.  There's something about her that makes every vet tech, client, and patient of the canine persuasion come over to say hi.

I wish I could show you a better picture of this puppy with one blue eye and one brown eye.  Puppy could not get enough of Beauty.

So we did that and then I came home and fed everybody and surfed Amazon for free books to put on my new Kindle!  So exciting.  Extra exciting that my library does online lending so I can just go to a website to find books to read and they download themselves automatically.

I got ye olde cheapy model with the ads on it

I love the part where you charge it once a month or so.  I've been reading on my iPhone happily enough, but I use up 5-10% of its battery charge if I use it to read before bed.  It's the backlighting that does it.  Plus, with the Kindle I won't be tempted to check my email before going to sleep.

And, here's what my brain feels like right now:

Kept in the dark and fed on manure (or a rotting log in this case)

Okay any minute now I'm going to leap up and do all the stuff I need to do.  Any minute.  Right now.  As soon as I rest a little bit more.

I'm happy to report that I have now had two days in a row with no fever when I checked in the morning.  Which is awesome.  Every other time I've had Lyme disease, that fever hung in there for weeks and months.  I'm definitely getting the feeling that I'm gonna whup it this time.  As opposed to the reverse, which is what usually happens.  I just need to stay out of the sun for another three weeks.  No problem.  I mean, it's not like this is the nicest time of the year to be outside here or anything.  Or like I have a backpacking trip planned.  Or like there's a horse who'd like me to come see him before it turns dark until March.

Anyway, I'm off to do the stuff I have to do.

Any minute now.

LymeAid and other beverages

Sigh.  Still tired.  And I turned out to have gotten a sunburn yesterday after all.  Just the back of my neck was burned.  Today I covered up everything but my face, which was shaded by my hat and also the edges of my windbreaker hood whenever I wasn't under trees.  You'll note that I was wearing an oversize black windbreaker while it was nearly 80 degrees out.  And I think I might have still burned a little of my chin and nose.

It's starting to look like I'm not going to be able to go backpacking in two weeks.  I'm super pissed.  DeLee and I haven't gotten out on a trip since May, as far as I can remember.   If I feel well enough it's going to kill me to stay indoors because of my stupid photosensitivity.   I'm hoping for either A) torrential rain, or B) a severe cold snap.  I wouldn't burn in the rain, and I could bundle up in a cold snap.  Although I'm not sure DeLee would like to hike in the rain.

I'm awaiting Amazon's press release (or whatever they call it these days) tomorrow so I can figure out if I'm buying the current version of the Kindle or whatever it is they're announcing.  However I visited the library tonight to pick up more books.  I'm tired of rereading old copies of Backpacker to help me get to sleep at night.

Speaking of which, I tried melatonin last night and I slept like a veritable baby.  On a bed of feathers.  And not those pokey feathers either, the nice soft ones.  I had JD pick some up at the store for me and I'm doing it again tonight.  It turns out you *can* buy sleep that good.

I found out this morning that there's a fellow in California who is making Lyme supplements containing all the herbs and stuff one would normally take (cat's claw, resveratrol, andrographis, et al) in one capsule.  He calls it Lyme-Aid which makes me chuckle because it sounds like a summery beverage.  Yuks aside I'm planning to get some because I wouldn't mind taking fewer pills every morning.

Zzzzzz

Good golly I'm tired.  Stupid Lyme disease.  I talked to my manager and my boss about shifting my work hours to accommodate more sleeping.  I hope to enact my "Sleep ten hours on work nights" plan this evening.

I gooped myself up with sunscreen and went for a walk today to see if it would help with my fatigue.  It didn't help but it didn't hurt either.  I don't think I got a sunburn, either, which is nice.  I'll have to check later to make sure I really didn't.

I try not to pay too much attention to government shenanigans.  Living near DC, it's in one's face all the time, and it is way too easy to get het up about it.  I vote, and I sign the occasional petition, but my feeling is that we pay a few congress critters to take care of the lawmaking and that's their job.  So I shouldn't have to monitor it daily.  Therefore I didn't realize until this morning that we are approaching a government shutdown AGAIN because congress can't get it together.  Little c congress.  They don't even deserve a big c anymore.

I am so fed up with the government.  They've all forgotten what their jobs are, if you ask me.  They're supposed to make laws, or hinder the making of laws (which works to reduce the number of stupid laws made in the heat of the moment.)  And they have to pass budgets.  Most of the rest is fluff.  Announcements?  Proclamations?  National somebody or other months? Signed "good on ya" awards?  TOTALLY UNNECESSARY.  Budgets?  Necessary.  And the congressmen of this country have been cranking out budgets for a really long time despite not always agreeing on what our priorities were.

I'm not saying it's simple.  Or straightforward.  I'm just saying that their collective job is to get this done and they're not doing it, and it's pissing me off.

Photosensitive Superpower, Activate!

As I was getting undressed last night I glanced in the mirror and realized that I could see bra lines on my skin.  Which meant that I had burned/tanned through my shirt.  That only could have happened on Thursday, the only day I was out in even a little bit of sunlight.  So I guess I'm a bit more photosensitive than I thought.  The weird part is my face didn't burn.  I do use a moisturizer with sunscreen in it after my shower, so perhaps that protected me.  If so, it's more effective than I expected.

However, the fact that I'm cooking through my clothes after one week of doxycycline means that I do have to be just as careful this time as all the other times I've taken it.  Our very rainy week had given me false hope.  So although I now feel good enough to ride, I pretty much can't any time it's nice enough to do so.  If the temperature were to drop significantly I could bundle up and ride.  But without the ability to layer, I'm going to have to restrict riding to late evening.  Grr.  I'm happy that I have energy, and also frustrated in my ability to use said energy.  (My continuing low grade fever tells me that the energy is likely to come and go anyway.)

The same goes for hiking.  I have a few ideas for local hikes, but unless we get a good rainy day I don't think I'll be able to try them.   Today turned out to be cloudy but otherwise nice.  This is frustrating for two reasons : I can't spend much time outdoors, and I HAD planned a get together for today but cancelled it because the weather was supposed to be awful.  I'm at loose ends now.  For another month or thereabouts.

Our local library has started doing electronic lending, and this finally made a Kindle look worthwhile to me.  Just as I was about to order one, JD sent me a link and told me I should wait a few more days:

http://www.engadget.com/2011/09/23/amazon-press-invite-teases-long-awaited-tablet/

Argh!  So I guess I'll wait a few more days.

Let's see, what else.. Oh!  Tara sent me a link the other day to a pretty good hat.

http://www.dharmatrading.com/html/eng/1696-AA.shtml?lnav=clothing.html

She liked that it could be decorated. I liked that it only weighed 2.5 oz and could be easily packed up into a flat disk.  I don't know that I'll decorate it, as I haven't thought of anything I'd want to do to it that wouldn't get beat up easily and/or stain my skin and gear.  It's fairly enormous, which is nice.  Being made of thin cotton it's not super UV-proof but in combination with some sunscreen I hope it will do a decent job.

Hat in its little carrier

Hat sproinged out into all of its enormous glory

It has chin ties, which are absolutely necessary with something so likely to catch the wind.  I look forward to trying it out.  Given that it only cost five bucks, I'm not too worried about damaging the thing, either.

Bouncing on to the next topic, when the nurse called yesterday we talked about diet a little.  And I've been thinking about it.  She suggested making two small changes and leaving it at that for a while.  That seems as reasonable as anything else.  I know one change I want to make is eating more vegetables.  I like, and eat, vegetables now of course.  But I think it would be good to eat more.  (I already eat a lot of fruit.)  So I've been brainstorming ways to make that happen.  Most veggies don't come in convenient single serving sizes the way that fruits do.  I'm thinking that I could prepare veggies for myself once a week and stick them in the refrigerator.  Here's what I have so far:

rinse and pack:

bags of carrots

bag of celery sticks plus peanut butter or cheese

lightly cooked veggies separated into single servings 

OR bags of frozen veggies separated into single servings

Like I said, I'm working on it.

I enacted my vegetable resolution, if that's what it is, right away:

Lunch included more brussels sprouts than sandwich