Moving The Blog

So due to my desperate desire to sync all of my Google bits, I've moved my blog. The new site is:

 http://annaslifeorsomethinglikeit.blogspot.com/

It's kept all my posts and comments, but, sadly, I'm losing all my stats. Sad face.

So please change the URL in all your bookmarks and RSS feeds and such, and keep following, because I love you all dearly!

Text Time 24

N.: Went to Dr. They took 5 vials of blood. Bloody vampires...
Me: Ha! At least they weren't zombies. Five vials of brains would leave you a bit stupid...
N.: Maybe that would be ok. I wouldn't know about the impending zombie apocalypse because I would be light on brains.
Me: Hmmm...good point.

Em: A woman called in furious that we had a presale on Sunday because it might encourage people to break the sabbath. Then she demanded we let her have all the presale discounts on Saturday.

Me: I'm a little worried that my friend will have to bring her babies with her to my house...
B.:Ugh, I hope not.
Me: Yeah. We have guns EVERYWHERE.
B.: I think shooting her babies might be a little extreme...
Me: Noooo, I meant that babies get into things. Bad things. And my house isn't childproof.
B.: LMAO, I know, I was hoping to make you laugh!

Jorg: "Wait, was Hitler still alive during WWI?"-some guy in my history class.
Me: You're JOKING.
Jorg: Nope.
Me: I'm so glad you're brilliant!

Me: Scott is eating chicken! Solid chicken!
Mim: Yay! Is it dead?

Three Weeks?!

So you know how the other day I pinpointed what was causing my depression?

Mim pinpointed something else. I was venting to her the other day because she's one of the few people who completely understands what I'm going through, not only because she's going through it herself, but also because she watched me grow up and knows what I'm capable of (or what I used to be capable of...).

She said "Haven't you been on your period for like three weeks?"

Oh. Duh.

(I know that's not normal. I'm looking into it.)

The Tale Of the Tonsillectomy

Did I tell you Scott got his tonsils out? Nope, I don't think I did.

It was last month on the 15th, two days before his birthday, poor thing.

Scott had been snoring, and since sleep apnea runs in his family we were concerned. He went to see an ENT and he wanted to take his tonsils out before doing a sleep study to see if that would take care of the problem.

I took the day off of work so I could drive him to and from the surgery and take care of him, and since I wasn't able to get any more days off work, Jorg came up for a few days to help me take care of him while I went to earn the money that would pay the giant hospital bills. Hooray.

Anyway, he's healing pretty well. The first ten days or so were really rough for him. Apparently the surgery is MUCH worse for adults than for children. I wasn't prepared for how bad it would actually be, though... There was the pain, of course, but he had such bad nausea that he couldn't keep anything down, even water, for a few days, and he wasn't healing well because of it. We had to go in to the doctor again early to get some anti-nausea meds, and once we did that, he started healing a lot better, since he could drink more water (or, more accurately, eat more ice chips) and actually get some soup and mashed potatoes down.

He took eight days off work (paid, thank goodness), and he had left a to-do list for his coworkers to cover for him while he was gone, and when he got back none of it had been done. None. So when he got back he had to work from about 7 a.m. to 1 or 2 in the morning for a few days to get caught up. He was exhausted, and still healing, and I'm a little miffed at his boss for not having people actually cover for him while he was gone so he didn't have to put in 18-hour days the week he got back.

Anyway, he's doing a lot better now, and since the pain in his throat has mostly subsided, he can now focus on the pain in his back. Hooray.

Don't Wanna

You know, I totally thought I had a great poker face at work, like when I was feeling down, I thought  people wouldn't be able to tell. Apparently, I can hide the crazy, but not the depression. I've had three people in three different departments ask me if I was okay this morning. And to all of them I actually said "No." I can't believe I did that. I think this means I feel totally comfortable with the three coworkers who asked, and feel like I can confide in them that no, things are not quite okay, and here's why. I didn't go into the whole meds-make-my-brain-fuzzy thing, but I did talk a bit about job dissatisfaction, stress, not sleeping well, and general depression. And you know what? They didn't judge me for being a crazy person (not that I expected them to). Nobody really does, that I know of.

Anyway, I've been thinking all day about how I don't really want to go to knit night tonight, but I don't want to ditch my friends, and I really need to get out of the house, and on and on. I'm stressing out majorly today (more so in the morning than now) because of work, even though it's not an unusually busy day or anything. I think the depression is just lowering my tolerance for stress, and that in turn is causing some anxiety over things that, on any other day, wouldn't even cross my mind. I mean, I ran out of disposable pipets and freaked out. Then I used something else and everything turned out just fine. No big deal, right? Apparently, it was.

But as I said the other day: I'm more or less forcing myself to go to things and blog (look, it's working!) and get up and go to work every morning, so I'll go to knit night tonight. I just might not like it.

Walking On Air

Well, we got our new carpet installed...a while ago.

Have you ever carpeted three rooms, four closets, and two flights of stairs? You have to move EVERYTHING. We had stuff shoved in every little nook and cranny in the house. My bathroom served as book storage:

Makes me look way smarter than I actually am.

Anyway, here's the old carpet. We ripped it up ourselves to save a few dollars.

Here's the end result on the stairs:

We got the super fluffy kind, with the super smooshy pad underneath, and it's like walking around on clouds.

I Pinpointed It

I've been thinking a bit lately about what has me depressed. It all started at work a few weeks ago...

A new guy started. New Guy is perfectly nice, and this has almost nothing to do with him. HPLC Chemist also has a teeny role in this, but of course it's not at all his fault, either.

So HPLC Chemist is still in school and is always asking me chemistry questions, and I don't know the answers because I've been out of school for five years and because these damn drugs...well, I'll get to that in a moment. Either way, he asks me a question and I have to say "I'm sorry, I don't remember..." and then I feel like a total dumbass.

New Guy is not fresh out of college, but more so than I am, so he remembers things and picks up everything super fast. This is a good thing, for sure. It's also a good thing that HPLC Chemist is always trying to learn more about not just his classes, but his job and the chemistry it entails. These really are good things.

So I feel like an idiot. That's what has me depressed lately. I pinpointed it. Here's the thing: I know I'm smart. I know that. I have a degree in chemistry, for hell's sake.

Have you seen the movie "A Beautiful Mind"? Now, I am in NO WAY comparing myself to John Nash, because holy hell would that be the height of hubris, but in the movie, at one point, he started to take antipsychotic medication and found that he could no longer think clearly, especially on matters mathematical. This is how I feel. I feel dulled. I feel cloudy. I try to do math in my head that used to be so incredibly easy for me and I have to stop and write it down, because I can't hold the numbers in my mind.

I used to be smart. In college, I was in no way a Sheldon Cooper (I didn't go to college when I was 12), but I was at least a Leonard Hofsteder, however you spell his name. I got my degree with minimal effort because things just made sense to me. The math just made sense. Chemical processes made sense. It all just clicked. I loved it all so much. And now it's just lost. All the things I knew, everything I memorized and learned and studied so hard, it's all gone. I don't remember things anymore. And if I try to re-learn something, it doesn't stick.

I feel so stupid. I hate it.

And it doesn't help that I was walking New Guy through how to do my job for when I'm not there (he's going to learn everyone's stuff so he can sub when we're sick or vacationing), and I realized that with few exceptions, I do the same damn thing over and over every single day. I try to tell myself that I work for yarn, and to get myself out of the house every day, and to be social, and I work for the weekend, but I can't help but feel like I've wasted my hard-earned degree with a position as nothing more than a glorified lab tech. Now don't get me wrong; it's a good job. I get paid more than I need, I have great benefits, and for the most part I like my coworkers. But there's no challenge. And I'm not sure I could handle a job that was a challenge, since my mind has turned to muck.

Damn drugs.

But I can never go off of them and hope to have even a shred of a decent life, not to mention a decent relationship with Scott.

This Fridge Is Totally Worth It

So I just kinda realized that I finished my kitchen...like finished finished...and didn't say anything. See? Depression.

So here's the truck pulling up for delivery:

Shiny new fridge:

Shiny new stove:

We already had the dishwasher, countertops, cabinets, etc.:

We got our new fridge and microwave installed (ignore the mess, please):

And the new stove:

THEY ALL MATCH. Everything is so beautiful. I'm really excited about this (well, as excited as you're going to get when you're depressed). I feel like we've accomplished something BIG.

Funny thing about the fridge: we measured it long before we bought it so we would be sure it would fit when we designed the cabinets and had the countertops installed. When they were installed, it looked like it was all installed properly, because the fridge we used to have was a smidge smaller than this new one, so of course it fit just fine.

Well, we went to put the new one in and it didn't fit. Like, at all. Cue panic. It turns out the countertop people installed it very slightly wrong...just wrong enough to make us freak out, apparently. What it took to get it to fit was everyone donning respirators or masks and Scott using his Skil saw to shave down the countertop,

then once he had gotten it shaved down as much as he could without damaging the cabinet, he sanded it, and then he spent probably 20 minutes shoving the damn thing in place. Let me tell you...if this thing ever needs servicing it better not need to come out because that thing is in there. It's funny now but at the time we just about had matching heart attacks.

I Then ATE A Sno-Cone

Another recent spinning adventure was with my Sno-Cone batt from my knitting group friend. I told myself I wasn't going to buy more fiber except the fiber club, but I saw this and Had. To. Have. It. I mean, THE RAINBOW COLORS.

Here it is on the bobbin:

I tried to get more color control on this batt than others I've spun before. I spun it so whatever I make from it will have four repeats of a blue-green-yellow-orange-pink-purple stripe pattern.

Overall I'm happy with how it turned out. I chain-plied it to keep the color control, and I think it turned out a good weight, and it's pretty consistent, too.

I don't know how long it's going to take me to remember to take before pictures as well as after...

I borrowed the picture from her Etsy shop so you could see how scrumptious it looked, sitting there in front of me, calling my name...it's the big picture in the center.

Mittens?

I have more than one friend in my knitting group that dyes fiber, either for fun or for a living. I get my monthly club fiber from one of them, and the other brings in braids she's done every once in a while.

Here's one I bought from her:

This one was large enough that I needed two bobbins (which isn't that much, in the spinning world, but it's a lot for a newbie like me).

It ended up in two skeins, and this picture is too dark, but you can see how much I have. It's not the softest wool, so I don't know what I'll do with it. Mittens, perhaps?

My wheel spinning is slowly but surely getting more consistent. I'm sure if I practiced more I'd be better at it by now...