Spirals and Sequences and Studies Oh My

This morning I talked myself in a full circle from Worst Day Ever to Everything Is Fine Actually. None of this is new - even new to me. I'm kind of back to Everything In My Life is a Vicious Circle. Every January (since we moved here) I have a vicious headache/migraine for weeks at a time and every year I think This Year Is Different, this can't possibly be normal, and occasionally I have appointments with sinus specialists and I get head CTs and about halfway through February the weather shifts and my head goes more-or-less back to normal (sort-of bitter snort of laughter). My depression and anxiety gets so bad I feel crushing dread at the thought of having to leave the house for literally any reason. 

I managed to apply for a job a couple of weeks ago, figuring that with the speed things move at the school board I might be interviewed some time in February and start in maybe March. As luck would have it, they wanted someone to start, like, immediately. The plus side was I didn't have to go through one of those excruciatingly awkward school board interviews (they give you questions and then leave you alone to make notes and then ask you for your answers while writing down your answers which someone told me is actually designed to be unbalancing which what? why? and I hate them even when I am wholly confident I am right for the job). The other side was I had a brand new job IN JANUARY. Which is all good, it feels like a really fun school and the other library tech could not be nicer and cooler, and I get to wheel around a cart full of books like an old-timey prison librarian and the kids are all so excited about the books and it's great and it will be fun and not-at-all dread-inducing once I get a couple weeks further into the winter.

And then Eve's suitemate got Covid. They had gone back to in-person classes, we knew this could happen. But my sister's family was planning to come for Christmas until Omicron torpedoed that days to go, so the plan was for them to pick up Eve on the Friday night of her February break and come for the Family Day week-end, and we're supposed to celebrate my sister's 51st birthday and Eve's 19th and Matt's 50th, and if that also gets torpedoed with days to go.... (I do have a sort of hierarchy of who I feel worst for in the whole Covid situation, and it goes 1. people who died 2. people who loved people who died 3. people who lost their jobs and were badly financially affected 4. health care workers anyway you get the idea, so I KNOW we're not gold medallers in the Covid Crap Olympics. It's just the waiting is killing me and it's January I mean February.)

We were able to have our annual February Dinner Party (Guys Cook) with our group of friends. It was lovely after I got over my panic attack at having to go because I hadn't left the house for anything other than work and walking the dog in weeks and I hadn't seen our friends that we usually see AT LEAST once a week also for weeks. 

So then I FaceTimed with Eve today and she was a little down because of the aforementioned Covidness, and also some girls had had a screaming match because someone was accusing someone else's boyfriend of not isolating adequately and it was really upsetting to Eve because we don't yell in our family (honestly, that's what she said) and her friends from high school don't yell at each other, and then she said she understood why one girl went off because she was the first to get it and had to go isolate and her feelings were valid even if screaming wasn't, and everyone else is just on edge because they're scared and feeling vulnerable. And then I suggested if she doesn't end up working as a professor or microbiologist maybe she should look into being a therapist and she said "hmm, yeah, I guess the reason my friends don't yell at each other is because when someone gets frustrated they just say 'Eve, tell her what I mean!'" Is it sad that my nineteen-year-old is more emotionally mature than I am?

Then I helped her work on a paper for argumentation about whether there is objectively good music and I was little nervous that I had nothing for one point and I threw a Hail Mary that involved the Fibonacci sequence and she really liked it but then we also needed something to refute it and we got a little nervous that it was too good to refute, but somehow we managed it. 

Yesterday I had to go for a nerve conduction study because I've been having issues with my hands for years and I told my doctor before Christmas and she gave me a referral. Once again, I thought we'd be looking at months out but instead I got an appointment immediately, WHY IS EVERYBODY SO AVAILABLE IN JANUARY AND FEBRUARY SUDDENLY. I know it's not a big deal, but I get SO anxious about medical appointments at the best of times, which this is markedly not. I don't even know why. I guess I think I'm going to get lost or not explain myself clearly or the doctor will think I'm stupid or tell me I don't have any real problems and I shouldn't have come. So naturally the doctor was a five-foot-nothing funny goofy adorable little woman who could not have been sweeter, asked what I did and then wanted to talk about books and is literally trying to write a children's book about her Weimaraner titled Ellie Smelly Belly. AND she confirmed that I have REALLY BAD CARPAL TUNNEL and should probably have surgery! Oh shit, wait....

Tomorrow I'm taking my dad and myself for bloodwork because I don't know, I want this week to suck as bad as humanly possible? Okay that's enough, I feel better getting this all out, I will stop before I talk myself around to feeling worse again. I leave you with a picture of my friend Dave's heartbreakingly perfect Scotch egg from the dinner party.