elainegrey

Health: platelets back up on Monday and i think i was feeling better on Sunday. Spent some time looking for details on measurement uncertainties and natural variation in platelet counts.  I suspect if one knew the equipment that was being used there would be reference material, but there's no rule of thumb. Using some possibly unreliable numbers i found, i have established a range of normal for me that includes both my variation of numbers in the normal range and the measurement uncertainty. Ups and downs within that range i should consider as noise, not trend.  I did have a drop the previous week, and i think i did sense that in my body.

Feline health: this weekend was punctuated by Edward being sick with unpleasant fluids in many unexpected places around the house. Christine thinks she saw him hunt and catch something Thursday afternoon; perhaps that was a cause. This afternoon he seems to be getting better.

Luigi is even less mobile than he has been. He is enjoying some time on the deck in the sun (and pollen). We wonder if he is in discomfort or pain and when we should let him go. I think he's still OK, but there is something even more aged about him. He is getting matted but distressing him and triggering his breathing difficulties seems wrong at this point.

--== ∞ ==--

Work:  hyperfocusing on learning the OpenID Federation specification and the draft profile for higher ed, plus playing out the spec in a toy universe i created. I sure hope it can be as useful for others as it was for me because i sunk a great deal into it.

Escape/reading:  i spent the week very focused at work and very much escaping into Elizabeth Moon's Paladin’s Legacy series. One issue was that the books didn't really end, but just were continued in the next volume, so my hyperfocus tendencies really really wanted back in the story because there wasn't a strong done signal.

Even now, with some bits tied off, there clearly are narrative arcs ready to keep going. (Finds blog, finds title of a book sent to the editor, recognizes one thread that seemed ready for a book, drums fingers wondering when it will be published.) I am very tempted to read again: i know i skim parts wanting to get to the next plot bit. Rereading i will likely visualize more. Probably could study the maps better.

I found the theology and religion in the books interesting. SPOILER: part of the story has young people suddenly showing a capability that had been labeled as evil, discovery of writings from the time of one of the more politically established saint/gods showing the saint/god's compassion and that the capability itself was never one that the saint/god condemned. The magery feels very much like a metaphor for how visible trans youth became in the past few decades. I think this was in the... fourth book? Written a decade ago.

--== ∞ ==--

So, i've been ignoring spring, sorta. Did see fireflies the past three nights. (https://www.backyardecology.net/spring-treetop-flasher-our-first-firefly-species-of-the-season/)

Made third batch of seed crackers.

Had lunch with nephew down from NYU, lovely.

Went out on boat with Dad. Dad headed it into a huge flock (raft?) of cormorants. He wasn't wearing his hearing aid and could not hear me asking him, telling him to stop. He clearly wanted to get a video of the birds in flight. He sent some of them up, and i finally yelled stop loud enough to keep him from disturbing all of them. I was steamed. "But other boats speed through them." I growled a standard "just because everyone else" response and asked him if he wanted people driving through his bedroom. When he complained to my sister she informed (reminded?) him of the definition of harassing wildlife.

He posted his video on line -- and then heard me. Sigh.

Best thing Sunday morning: breakfast of fuyu-ish persimmon, yogurt, and pecans. Heaven. Saturday morning was a cubed, slightly stale Portuguese roll, some of the candied pumpkin, eggs beaten with cream, and baked - variation on French toast and a bread pudding (i guess?)

Christine's been watching  Oliver Stone's JFK, and Saturday night it wound up, with a number of long monologues about conspiracies and what America ought to be. That was 1991. Before the Waco & Ruby Ridge, the Oklahoma City bombing, hanging chads in 2000, and everything else. It felt a little surreal to try and wrest my mind back to the age before.

I had finished Adrian Tchaikovsky's 2004 Alien Clay, which has the Mandate as the brutal authoritarian state the main characters were resisting. During the election returns earlier this month i read Lyda Morehouse's 2001 Archangel Protocol, and as Christine watched JFK, i read the sequel Fallen Host.  The AngeLink Universe has a network of religio-authoritarian governance.

Exhale.  The reading and the current politics swirl together in a emotional reaction soup that i am not dealing with. It's a big pile of too much, too unknown, and i can't believe H.R. 9495 passed, please let the nonsense die in reconciliation.

--== ∞ ==--

I am dealing with work and trying to take care of myself. This weekend and today went more or less well. I didn't deal with various regular physical care for myself, but i got some weeding and raking done this weekend and feel very good about it.

Today i did all the during work self care: a morning ten minute walk, standing for 60 minutes, lunchtime coffee, afternoon kukicha (green tea high in L-Theanine). I worked in the yard by twilight and then with a head lamp on. I'm not feeling quite as overwhelmed, although [don't think about it, focus on the feeling of  okayness]. Well. Anyhow. I am feeling OK.

I am dealing with a certain amount of shame at my enthusiastic engagement during a meeting today. (Probably ADHD rejection sensitivity at the root here; the other person with whom i was being enthusiastic and energetic also has ADHD and we ran over every one. Ugh. And i had invited my manager. Die under desk. Ooof.)

But generally, yay, doing good.

Morning writing tag because this was originally Sunday morning's journaling.

So non sto. I already wrote about the weekend, but look, i recap again:

Saturday - So humid. Ended in buckets of rain when we went out to get shrimp po'boys at the trying-hard-to-be-a-destination location in town, then stopped at my nibling's high school art show. (Charges admission, which, i guess, the sports teams do it why not the art show?)

Sunday - brunch at my sister's to visit with my brother's son who had arrived after a long delayed flight and who is staying with my dad while being forced off campus until next term and his summer job start.

Monday was a normalish work day, i worked a little late taking a mandated AI training course, then mowed the orchard plus whatever until the battery died, then weed whacked up at the road a little bit. Can't kill all the invasive (rank 3) daisies but can discourage reproduction. I'm a little sad i was so successful with the Queen Anne's lace (also rank 3). There were no daisies by the roadside when i was growing up, but Queen Anne's lace features in nostalgic memories of summer, including early in my marriage to Christine. I think i must have picked roadside Queen Anne's lace and daylilies driving down the DelMarVA peninsula to be with her for weekends when i was in grad school and she was in Edenton on the radio.  We had received two lovely art glass pitcher/vases as wedding gifts and the cobalt blue one, with daylilies and Queen Anne's lace, sitting on the kitchen table in late afternoon light is a bright glowing memory ....

Tuesday and Wednesday were both full of context switching and long strings of meetings. I got a little experience with AI using the prompt training from Monday. It does seem to help to tell chatgpt that it is an expert with thirty years of experience in [area] who also is an award winning educator, writing clear  articles, and that it should [do thing] for another expert in the area who is familiar with the terminology. Telling it to be an expert and a clear writer seems to improve, but telling it it's also writing for another expert helps bring the content up to a potentially more useful level. I am not spending so much time rolling my eyes saying "i knew that" and "that's what i asked" and feeling like it's merely parroting my prompt.

I see the potential, and -- like getting help from humans  -- it's frequently not useful  or satisfying until you spend time getting familiar with each other. I wonder if agents are as inevitable as remote controls for everything, mobile phones, smart phones. I don't know if the current costs will really be worth it. I think about the switch from typewriters to word processing and the level of fuss that then was possible. One typed some thing out, yeah yeah, get the margins right and the line spacing right.  I don't think bold and italics were possible? And if you needed math or formulae you wrote them in? And then experts in formatting would take over, whether the publisher or the admin who had become a LaTeX expert. But once everyone had a word processor at hand everyone was fiddling with markups and styles. What had been an expert skill was democratized yes, but not everyone was skillful and the time sink for people who were experts in something else.

AI minutes of the Zoom meeting we had yesterday were ... meh with "where did it get that from" and "that was a minor aside" .. and while no one needs to volunteer for  collaborative scribing in Google Docs, everyone reviewing the "minutes" will need to put more work in.

Tuesday night was in the car getting my nephew from my Dad's, meeting up with C at home, going to a restaurant, getting Christine home to care for Edward, taking Z to a drug store for allergy meds because cat hair. (I shared how i found i was allergic to cats in college,  he muttered something that indicates he might be discovering the same thing.) Then to Dad's and back. I don't drive enough and ground gears once shifting. Bleh i need to insist on being the driver more.

Groceries last night then watching the Wednesday sci fi. Currently Halo, which is oddly better than Stargate Universe. We've tried watching that Stargate twice, but i always get very turned off by the not one trusts anyone plot threads.

Friday i go to New Bern with Dad and nephew Z, which should be an all day thing.

Anyhow,....

Morning rising chaos this weekend because of clock change absurdity: overslept on Saturday, starting the day off over an hour late; and stayed in bed reading the NY Times on Sunday (dark, so dark).  Also, i did not sit in front of my bright light yesterday morning, and ended up cocooned in the dim living room all day as rain fell. I know i did thinking things and reading things, but it feels like i let the day evaporate away. Given the mental exhaustion i felt on Friday, i probably needed to be "off."

--== ∞ ==--

The new Corporate-types who are our management now come from Consulting; i am glad my manager was promoted internally. The manager i will work with most closely is not from Consulting but seems a little Corporate. I am so far from Corporate that it would take days to arrive via Concorde. (Do i even share air space with Corporate?) I am also happily isolated from the particularly problematic Exec Director -- problematic because he does not have time for detail and does not seem to listen. Which is triggery for me. Anyhow, the new manager started last week. I'll be interviewing some new hires for the team, we have a crew of contractors to be attached to the team, so much people change ahead.

I was happy  to take time to help a new project get a UX right because we have a number of bad UX flows for the same purpose and this team does not have all the "help" that would mean I would be treading on toes by doing UX. (I am confident because i am proposing a UX based on a couple years long research project a standards body performed. Otherwise, i would really be out of my lane.)  We have a "workshop" tomorrow.

Yikes.

So, Monday through Thursday was an intense work week with mornings full of meetings starting earlier than usual, afternoons slightly less full of meetings but only enough time to write up and follow up on the burning urgent stuff.

My manager and the team's manager pro tem are in Sheffield England now, as well as the product analyst being in the Netherlands. The architect i most need to collaborate with is also in Sheffield. I know that our product analyst S--E-- has had to cope with lots of late night meetings, so starting meetings first thing is a small gesture of accommodation. No one is asking me to attend meetings at 6 am and 5 am (*shudder*) like i did when we lived in California! But it does mean an intensification from the past.

I'm hoping that the intensity is both post-vacation compression of meetings and the orientation of new folks.

Today stretches in front of me with a remarkably empty calendar (the S-- E-- doesn't work on Fridays, the team manager pro tem is off mountain biking today). How much can i expect of myself (my brain) today?

After work this week included planting trees by head lamp, digging up cala lily bulbs before the low of 15°F (-9°C) by head lamp, grocery shopping, and last night's Quaker committee meeting.

I successfully herded the Quaker cats! Yay. Admittedly the number of fresh participants from the community out-numbered the people who have been involved in dysfunctional processes, so that was a big help. We haz a retreat schedule! It took a while for everyone to wrap their head around the fact that the in-person gathering meal times needed some protection PLUS we had to account for the contiguous US time zones.

I did almost blow a gasket when i got off work late to find emails "are we having a meeting" and "i don't have a link" when i sent email
1. a week in advance to the whole organization announcing the meeting time and date with the link and
2. on Tuesday to the meeting participants with the agenda with time and date and link on Tuesday.

I know i need way more proof reading, but come on people.

I am reflecting on how happily people have received my organization. I think i may need to gently communicate that while i can be organized it is a skill, not a gift. I have to work hard to be organized, it takes a great deal of time and energy. I can pull it together for a quarter, but i cannot sustain it.

Do not ask me to be take on more leadership.

Wednesday: Therapy. Assignment is to schedule a pleasurable activity every day, something that can be used as a reward or incentive. Fifteen minutes seemed like the minimum duration. It's a little longer than i really want for a sort of "Spend an hour on the project management work and then you can do X" type reward. I spend so much time in this edge space of doing things that are a pleasure but also good for me, like reading your journals and writing my own. This is my social interactions, i can't not do it. I don't want to say this is contingent on something else. But it's also a pleasure (except for the part where i want to write a comment and don't know what to say, or when feel i need to reply to *your* kind comments and it's hard to think of the words with which to interact).

I explained my breathing misery and my plan to see if i could get into a specialist: it turns out the clinic needs a referral. And then i was explaining how hard it is to see my primary care, but i'd put in a request for a referral. The land line rang from my doctor's office with the option of a 7:45 am appointment on Friday (telepresence was OK!).

Thursday: After work i spent 15 min petting Edward, which he pretty much appreciated. I will admit to looking at my watch. I think i needed more distraction right after work than that, because my mind went to some work questions i needed to tease apart.

I also spent two hours hanging out and talking with the team about what we were committed to doing, various technical design issues, trying to help them organize releases. It was a bit draining to be on. I recognize i say extreme things ("Feel free to tell me i'm stupid") that stem from my discomfort in talking. It's not helpful. I need to find a way to be more grounded as we go forward with me being more active with them day to day.

Friday: Visit went well with primary care, on the same page. He sent me for an x-ray (negative), and will be making a referral. I am fuzzy about how magically the referral will work: i will send questions about next steps Monday evening if no other information appears.

At lunch i found myself in tears over my overwhelmend feelings with respect to facing holiday planning.

Another change at work: i'll be attending standup. It's been so long: i feel some stress about the visibility and the hyperawareness this will trigger for me about my effectiveness. Another place where i will need to be more grounded.

My after work reward/incentive was to read one of our many art books, Clifford Ross: Landscape Seen & Imagined. This was better in that my mind could have other things to hold onto, and i did not look at my watch.

Last night & this morning: read a novel, then stalled. Novels are hard for me to use as an incentive because i don't stop. It the complete binge that happens and then the fact i did not intend to spend all my time reading but needed to do other things that

Just had a trigger to my overwhelmend feelings with respect to not being outside and my stalled sense. Frustrated at the planning fail for my brother's visit. Dad wants us to be together tomorrow, didn't realize my brother will also be here Monday and that i have taken time off work for it. All very nebulous..... and sister L called, we've come up with a visit schedule, and [insert trenchant observation about who does the labor of coordinating schedules here].

Just read an NIH continuing education notice about Albuterol. I have been using the thing all too little. 4-8 puffs every 20 minutes for 4 hours?? Maybe that level of aggressiveness could keep me to getting where i am, which is at dose 2 of prednisone in an hour or so. I saw the telehealth doctor early Sunday morning and was able to have a prescription at the grocery store before their pharmacy opened. Christine says she can tell it made an improvement by yesterday evening.

Anyhow, today has meetings in anticipate will bring me responsibilities and tasks i do not want: one about a spreadsheet (which might be OK? but if we have to make estimates and forecasts this is the creeping impact of my colleague's departure), and one with the ExecDir J where i will have to deal with his lack of focus and his need to shuffle staff to make up for all the departing staff. I need to write notes about what i want out of that meeting. Oy, i have well over a half hour's worth of agenda.

Wahhh. A director i have worked closely with is leaving. I depended on him for certain sanity elements in my work life, and seeing him leave is... scary. There's a cohort of colleagues who came into my life who were part of the transitions that created a good place to work for me. The first one had departed a while ago, my manager has gone to another part of the company, and now this director is departing. I can tell my subconscious has tightly correlated them with better work environment and worries.

So now i get to have a new manager, and the teams i work with closely get to have a new director. My executive director was hired in March. He replaced someone who had come in spring of 2022, who went to work for another oart of the company (same place my manager disappeared to).

Yesterday was a long intense day at work as i took on documenting our huge design effort. I'd wanted to let the team design these things, but maybe it will be best if i just dictate. And there's panic by project management about how long things will take.

Today should be another long day but i have not slept well. I think the CPAP machine ran out of water and the heat simply made the air hotter. Edward snuggled up against me too -- very warm cat -- and then my mind kept focusing on how much my joints ached. My watch now measures my skin temperature when i sleep, and i can see that there was a nine degree difference between deep sleep and when i became so tossy-turny.

I am going to gamble that i don't have COVID and get my jab today. Given yesterday's long day, i won't take it as sick time.

Made an absolute disaster of a loaf of soda bread. Don't ask, not worth recounting the horror, but one part of the failure involved mistakenly adding a cup of melted butter. I ate some and was both attracted and repulsed. I think one of the flours was stale. I dumped the loaf in the compost.

I also made a "Mexican sweet corn cake" which actually called for a cup of melted butter. That seems to have turned out better, but i'm turned off and won't have any. I had a headache before the disaster loaf, so it may not just be the disaster.

The fig tree is producing SO MANY FIGS. Figs were involved with the disaster loaf. I don't know what i am going to do about the figs, particularly the ones so hard to reach. Ants and wasps are going to have fun feasting. Is this bad? I suppose i should get a jar out for fruit vinegar making.

( Read more... )

--== ∞ ==--

Tuesday morning: i feel a little better. I spent time with a colleague at work who was a little triggered about new requirements. I hope she felt i was on her side, but i fear i am ... oh, Gandalf arriving at Rohan, what was he called? Stormcrow and Láthspell -- nothing but complexity and more work and a blizzard of new concepts and ideas.

Monday:

Happy May Day, Happy Beltane, whether it is a spiritual observance or simply a time to note that the day lengths will be changing more slowly now as the planet swings towards solstice. The manic race, in my temperate clime, of critters migrating through and plants completely changing their aspect, is over. Now is a deepening. Change continues, but it's change of more: more intense, more complete. In August, change in quality begins again, as the day lengths change rapidly crossing the equinox and transforming from more one way to more the other.

It's not a precise change of tempo: different plants, different animals have different cycles and rhythms, but the overarching rhythm changes quality now.

Happy things: I made a salad dressed with rose petals, dandelion and clover buds, borage and spiderwort flowers.

I've picked four strawberries from the garden plot. The dual effort of reproduction is fascinating. The plant is offering up the fruit with seeds to be dispersed. And, as i was reminded reading a botany book, these seeds have the genes shuffled. They might fall in a warmer, cooler, wetter, drier, brighter, shadier location than the mother plant. The genetic shuffling and the randomness of dispersal hopefully will produce a winning combination.

But now the plants are girding up for cloning. At least those in the garden are happy enough to stay put, and they are putting their energy into creating runners and throwing out little clones to take near by suitable locations. Because this is suitable for the parent plant, the clones should also find it amenable. No genetic shuffling needed.

Little do they know that i am interested in them as a ground cover, and i plan to dot the clones in the gaps in the native grasses. There are some native wild strawberries in the lawn and by the road. I see the flowers but never the fruit. I assume any berries outside a fence will be for critters. (I know i'm sharing the ones inside the fence, but they aren't eating fast enough to deprive me.)

In surgery thoughts: https://www.utep.edu/herbal-safety/populations/herbs-to-avoid-before-surgery.html

I think we will have a bonfire tonight: i want to burn all the dried flowers that have been decorating rooms. Some of the dried grasses are multiple years old, they're all probably dusty. Clearing out will make room for this year's discoveries.

In bad work news, for myself, i want to record that today i did (said) something very stupid at work - -i was indiscreet. I know the indiscretion was blurting, but it could be interpreted as far more intentional and malicious than it was. I am mortified and understand the roots of the word too well.  My manager has put a note in my record (i guess that's what the email is intended to be). I've sent the same HR person a question as to what is next. I don't know if an explanation or an excuse is appropriate. There's no one directly to send the apology so, that makes it weird.

Anyhow the sensitivity to criticism is also something i feel intensely. I do so much to avoid that... I'm doing pretty good distracting myself from the distress. I hate that this happened days before i am out of office for weeks."

--== ==--

Wednesday: my manager saw how distressed i was and has put me to ease, somewhat comically as he tried to advise me to not let it bother me -- but, well, it should bother me some. I hope to never have to negotiate that level of error again. I have been assured: people make mistakes.

--== ∞ ==--

So, i expect to have surgery on May 4th (8:30 am, apparently) and then my expectations reach the vast land of uncertainty. How soon will i be able to focus mentally? How soon will i have my glasses back on comfortably? I've never had

I don't see myself languishing for lack of amusement, no matter the state of my vision. If i can read, there are all the physical books that are stacked in to be read piles.

Christine, Carrie, and the cats will be company. My sister and dad will check in. Will i want more company? I will let you know if i am up for video or phone visits.

The garden is the place where i am the least effective and where help is the hardest for anyone to provide, and yet also there is no end to what can be done. I am slowly learning different levels of surrender. When i mourn the lost time, i note to myself that this surgery is not that different from taking a business trip this time of year. (Here's hoping the bending over restriction is lifted after the first two weeks)