Pressure: The Prequel

 We are going to Hamilton tomorrow and moving Eve home on Wednesday, for today's entry in the Time's Lost All Meaning Files. She will be sad to leave her friends there, which is a good thing, and happy to get home and reconnect with her home friends, which is also good. She is working on her last exam which is a paper right now and, predictably, I am getting a steady stream of aggrieved texts about how hard and stupid it is. It is an Argumentation course, and she's read me some of the prompts, and they do sound odd and convoluted and difficult to parse. I am very much on the side of it doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be done.

I slept badly and hardly at all last night, so I felt weird and out of phase at work. I'm a little weary of working in a library with no students. Even the relatively high number of challenging students at my other school are preferable to wandering around like a ghost doing library stuff that feels pointless (it's not really).

So, an amusing anecdote about the night before my 24-hour blood pressure monitor that illustrates why I might have needed a 24-hour blood pressure monitor.

Anyone who has read this blog for a while knows that Eve and I have gone to Bluesfest in July for quite a few years now (here's my post about the first time I took her. I thought there would be more but apparently I don't really blog in the summer.) It's been amazing. My friend Zarah (HI ZARAH) often comes with a kid or two, and we go to see bands on purpose (absolutely transporting experiences watching Bryan Adams, Pink, Blue Rodeo, Melissa Etheridge, The Lumineers, Marianas Trench) and by accident (discovered new favourites Foy Vance, Moscow Apartment, other stuff I can't remember), and basically discovered that even if the music isn't your favourite, listening to live music outside in the summertime is one of the very best things in life.

So after the first year we would always get a link to a pre-sale and buy our tickets super early for the best possible price. Naturally, in 2020 this didn't work out so well. We had the choice to let the tickets ride for the next year or get a refund. We let them ride. The next year still no dice. We still let them ride. It would be great! At some point we'd feel like we were getting to go to Bluesfest for free!

It likely comes as no great surprise that I am not the best record-keeper and that I often have to scramble a bit to find receipts or locate confirmation numbers. I finally made an email folder called 'receipts' and I try to remember to put every email confirming tickets or gifts or whatever in the folder right away so I can find it if something doesn't arrive in the mail or whatever. Often this results in me searching my regular inbox and swearing when I can't find the email, then remembering it's because I put it in the 'proper' place. 

With Bluesfest you buy the tickets and then the wristbands or pass cards show up in the mail a few weeks before the festival. I've never had to actually find my confirmation email. In my head, I was the tiniest bit nervous about letting this all go for two years and having it all work out when Bluesfest went ahead again, but, well, denial is a comforting, welcoming place, and I dwell there overmuch.

So Zarah texted and asked if she should come this year, and I said yes, and she bought her pass, so now I really had to stir myself to locating some kind of reassurance that Eve and I also had tickets.

I've become increasingly certain over the past few years that I have undiagnosed ADD - more on that later, maybe. But a thing I do is forget to do everything I'm supposed to during the day and then lie awake all night thinking of things I was supposed to do, and vowing to do them the next day and then...well, you get the idea.

So the night before my cardiology appointment, I was reading in bed on my ipad and at 1 a.m. I decided to have a look at my emails and see if I could find the Bluesfest one. Because I am very intelligent and this was a very sensible thing to do at that time. 

I found nothing on the first pass. I tried something else, and came up with an email whose subject line was "Your Bluesfest 2020 Refund".

Uh, what now? 

Of course, on my ipad I only had the subject line, and the body of the email had 'not been downloaded from the server'. Super convenient and helpful.

So I got up and came downstairs to my laptop. A thing that you have to know about my email is that lately it has been glitchy and annoying, in that my email address and password autofills but it still often says 'you have entered invalid credentials' and won't let me in. The first time I did a bunch of what Matt (rightly) calls 'panic clicking' and buggered everything up even worse, then figured out it was a problem on their end. Now it's just a thing that happens annoyingly often, and I do something else for a bit and then try again. Which is fine, except when you just want to find a fucking email and go to bed because it's 1:30 a.m. and you have to see a health professional ABOUT YOUR BLOOD PRESSURE the next day.

Another super fun thing, in addition to the email fuckery, is that my laptop started having issues connecting/staying connected to the internet a few days before this. So before the will it/won't it with the email I have to play will it/won't it with the computer itself. It may have been Bell Canada tearing up the neighbourhood installing fibre, which they've been doing the past couple weeks, because that part seems to have resolved. 

So here I am, tired, panicky, about to have an aneurysm, refreshing basically everything for fifteen long minutes until I can retrieve the email and see that it was only a refund for the bamboo wristband for like nine dollars. And then find the proper email saying I have a full festival pass for an adult and not one but two U19 passes for Eve and someone else. I had checked to see if I could still buy tickets if I had to (under the banner of 'throwing money at the problem') and I could have, but it would have been a full hundred dollars more just for my pass, so it was really nice that I didn't have to.

So now all was right with the world except that I am a crazy person and I need so many different kinds of help I don't even know where to start (well, with blood pressure meds maybe. And making some better life choices.)

Pressure: The Sequel

 I'm kind of stuck at home having my arm squished every half hour, so might as well try to make up somewhat for my recent blog neglect.

So yesterday I was whining about having to do the 24-hour bp marathon today. I had done a little reading and gotten myself into a fine state (yes, I'm aware of the irony). From what I found, I wasn't supposed to drive, but no one had told me this when booking the appointment. Matt was due to leave for the airport right around the time of my appointment (Air Canada still has mask and vaccine mandates - I'm not thrilled with him traveling, but it's better than it could be), so he wasn't able to drive me. I decided I was just going to drive myself and if we had to reschedule that was on them.

I also read that I wouldn't be able to take the monitor off at all for 24 hours, and I wouldn't be able to bathe or shower. I know this is a first-world thing, but I have major sensory issues, and I have a cool shower a minimum of twice a day and ALWAYS before bed, and I haven't not showered for twenty-four hours since I was in labour with Eve nineteen-plus years ago. Oh wait, we did go camping last summer and the showers weren't open, but I basically sponge-bathed comprehensively in the dark in the campsite before going to bed. So in addition to wearing an uncomfortable cuff that strangled my arm every thirty minutes, I wouldn't be able to shower before bed, AND then I would be trying to sleep with my CPAP on AND the aforementioned uncomfortable cuff.

I was FB chatting with a group of friends, and they were all being encouraging, with 'you got this!', 'you can do anything for 24 hours!' 'it's all good!' I appreciated this, but what I really wanted was someone to just say "that sounds miserable". So I FaceTimed Eve, and she, gratifyingly, looked horrified at the description and said "oh my god, just let the blood pressure take you".

So I drove to the place - getting there didn't threaten my blood pressure, it wasn't far or a complicated drive. When I pulled in by the building, I saw this goose just absolutely fucking chilling in the middle of an industrial park, and it somehow made me feel like I was probably going to be okay. 

I then realized I was actually at the wrong building, but I had left plenty of time, so it didn't harsh my newly goose-calmed vibe.

The clinic was swanky and clean and not crowded, and the receptionist was nice and had a messy bun, and listening to her call people and try to confirm their appointments while they misunderstood everything from the date to the time to whether it was a phone appointment or who was actually calling them, and she repeated everything patiently while periodically closing her eyes and having to deep breathe was hugely relatable. I have overwhelming anxiety related to anything medical, so I thought I would be hyperventilating or trying not to throw up by now, but I was good. I was sitting beside a large pillar, and at one point a woman waiting for her husband in a perpendicular row of seats kind of shifted to look around the pillar. I turned my head and she moved her head back behind the pillar, then back to look at me in an accidental peekaboo move and we laughed.

felt cute, might monitor my bp for 24 hours later

THEN I finally got called in and Melissa, my new best friend, fielded my immediate panicky questions and GUESS WHAT, I actually CAN take the monitor off to shower THANK FUCKING GOD. Also, the monitor part has a strap - I had been trying to imagine moving around while carrying the monitor part - I actually wore the vest in the pic thinking maybe I could put it in the pocket. Then I felt dumb for not realizing that duh, of course it would have a strap. Then I felt mad at myself for feeling dumb because there's no reason I should know how this works, I've never done it before. 

We did a manual bp reading in the office. It was a little high, but nothing like it's been in my doctor's office. It takes a reading every half hour in the day and every hour at night. I don't know what 'at night' means in terms of the clock, and I forgot to ask. It makes a little 'beep' before it measures, which right now is a little past the hour and half hour. Sometimes I anticipate it and sometimes it takes me by surprise.

My sense is that I'm going to end up exactly where we were a few months before the super-high reading that prompted this. My blood pressure is a little high, but it's in the range where medication won't obviously have a benefit. That's okay, I think - I mean, obviously it would be nice if wasn't high at all, and I will try medication if my doctor wants me to, but it's nice that in the normal course of things I'm not anywhere close to a dangerously high rating. I'm already doing a lot of the recommended things for lowering blood pressure - I don't think I will resort to eating a whole avocado a day, which was one recommendation I came across. It's also a 'classic complex genetic trait' and my dad has high blood pressure, so.... I still sound like I'm trying to justify it, don't I? I will stop. 

Anyway, it's not as horrible as I dreaded, although I'm only on hour four. Only twenty to go!

Oh hey, I'm wearing the jeans you guys liked in the picture. I found the whole thing a little funny, because I had sort of forgotten what I was wearing and if I thought about it at all I would probably feel a little sheepish about being fifty-one and wearing ripped jeans that I bought already ripped. I have quite a few weird sensory issues, so I have this ridiculous thing with jeans where if I wear them, they have to be loose enough to pull up without undoing and doing up any zippers or buttons. Of course, then I have to hope that they're not so loose that they fall down (which actually happened with one pair once, in a hotel hallway in Elmira when my arms were full and I couldn't grab them - fortunately the hallways was empty).

Anyway, these ones are the perfect size for pulling on easily and not falling down, as long as I wash them regularly. They're as comfortable as sweats, which is why I was wearing them for our five-hour drive home that day in Elmira, and why I wore them this morning when I was worried about having to undress around a non-removable monitor (my other concern - was I supposed to just sleep in my clothes? No. No I was not). Also, I do think they're cute, so thank-you ever so much to everyone who said so. 

Pressure

Welp, I just sat here staring at the blank screen for an hour, periodically clicking away to scroll Twitter and be mad at idiots against masking or idiots denying that racism exists or idiots freaking out over transgender teenagers (there was that one really funny video of an angry turtle, at least). I'm not going to bed without blogging, so ugly and disjointed it will be. 

I am struggling badly. I had a bit of a depression reprieve at the end of March. I hoped I was out of the woods. I have an appointment on Wednesday for a 24-hour blood pressure monitor and a repeat ultrasound on the complex cyst in my breast on Friday, so maybe I'm just anxious. My blood pressure tends to be high in the doctor's office and normal at home, and my dad has white coat syndrome (where your blood pressure is high because you're at the doctor's office having your blood pressure measured - sort of like a Heisenberg particle/wave deal) so we've been assuming it was that, but my doctor said we should do this just to be safe. I feel like I'm going to a deposition where I'm going to be found guilty of committing some kind of crime even though having high blood pressure isn't a crime, or a sign of immorality, and having to take blood pressure medication would actually be a good thing if I do, in fact, have high blood pressure, right?

WOW I just typed high blood pressure so many times. And we haven't even gotten to my boob! I just can't wait to go out at seven a.m. not wearing deodorant to have my boob enthusiastically smushed.

I've been a bit obsessed with Australian mysteries and tv shows lately. I have the impression that they weren't available here as widely until the past few years, but I could be wrong. There's a subscription service called Acorn that I spring for a month of every now and then that has a bunch of shows. I've read through most of Jane Harper and Candice Fox. Right now I'm reading Scrublands by Chris Hammer. I am liking the sense of place and the mystery is compelling, but it's a male protagonist and there's a love interest (naturally) and I just don't know if I can do men writing this kind of thing anymore. He's forty. The woman in question is 29, which is fine, except he keeps talking about how "young and vulnerable" she looks, and how he actually would have guessed she was 21, which, QUIET PART OUT LOUD DUDE? And is he attracted to anything besides her looks, because yeah, we get it, she's beautiful, oh, is she beautiful? once more on how beautiful she is. Especially when she's biting her lip, which she does a lot, that's what women do, right? When they're not hooking their hair behind their ears?

Eve and a friend came to show me this funny meme about Debby Ryan a few years ago, where she's sort of biting her lip and looking up through her eyelashes while tucking her hair behind her ear. We love Debby Ryan, they weren't being mean, but it is a funny meme. I explained to them that the problem is that this is how female romantic interests are often described - tucking hair behind ear, biting lip, looking up through their eyelashes. I guess maybe that kind of thing sounds fetching? But it looks like this:

Eve is home in a week and a half. I can't believe her first year is nearly over (not to mention, uh, Angus's WHOLE ENTIRE COLLEGE DEGREE). Angus will be home at the beginning of June after we go down for his graduation, and he's been accepted to a master's program in health sciences and human performance at Ithaca College, a little closer to home than where he is now. It sounds like a great program for him, and I'm happy of course, although I was kind of hoping he'd be back in Canada next year. On that topic, when we were down in Elmira on our road trip a couple of weeks ago I got a kind of comeuppance from the universe on the way I tend to be wary of Americans who aren't people I know. I know, of course, that many Americans are wonderful people, and I have no defense at all for this... defensiveness, but there it is. So we were leaving the hotel room to drive home, and I was wearing a mask, which many people in the hotel had not been. I wheeled my suitcase into the hallway and saw a couple getting on the elevator a good distance down the hall, and they weren't wearing masks. In the back of my mind I was kind of glad we were too far to run for the elevator so I wouldn't have to deal with their reaction to wearing a mask. We started down the hall, and the man stuck his head out and yelled "y'all coming down? We'll hold it for you." And then they asked why we were there and could not have been lovelier.

So yeah. I'm an asshole. With high blood pressure (or not). And complicated boobs. Maybe I am a complicated boob. 

Shame my kids don't live at home so I didn't buy any fucking Easter chocolate.

Road Trip

We headed over the border on the week-end to watch Angus's team play baseball. Matt went a couple of weeks ago, but this was the first time in two years for me. There are only a few games left, and it's all extremely bittersweet, but I'm trying to focus on the positive.

We left Saturday morning to catch the games starting at one. The border was a bit of a shitshow, being the first week-end you could cross into the U.S. and not need a Covid test to come back home. Angus was starting, so due to the slow border crossing we missed some of his pitching - I was following along on the stats app as we drove into the county and up the winding road to the little community college diamond they're playing at since they're between home fields right now. We could see he was doing well - I mean, I could see he was doing well once Matt explained to me what all the little dots and circles on the app meant. 

A bit after we got there, our coach put a new pitcher in. The wheels came off a bit and the other team scored five runs in one inning. A couple of years ago this would have been all she wrote, but they have a new coach this year and it's done their defensive game a world of good. They're also hitting better than they have in the past, and they came back to win the game by one, which was amazing to see.

I was prepared with many layers of warm clothing because Matt had frozen has ass off the week before and they actually had to pause one of the games for a snow squall - there was an inside-the-park home run because the white ball was indistinguishable from the white snow and the white sky. It was cold, but the sun was out and for the first game I actually had to take my sweatshirt off because I was too warm. The day before I had said to my parents that this would probably be like the game two years ago in Canton just over the border, where we froze all day but ended up with sunburned faces, and I should wear sunscreen.

I did not wear sunscreen. My face is sunburned.

The second game was proceeding evenly, with each team scoring a run or two in each inning. The fourth inning seemed to go on forever. The other team pulled ahead, then it was tied 6-6. It was getting cold and our butts were tired of the metal stands. It gets to the point where you know it's wrong to just want someone - anyone! - to end the game. I went to grab something from the car in the 11th and heard some yelling. I looked at the scoreboard on my way back to our seats and started laughing.

Are you freaking kidding me?

At one point I texted to our group What'sApp with our friends back home: "The score is now 22-22. We have circled our cars around the field so they can play by our headlights. Someone has started a fire in a trash can. This is our new home". They called it at 12 innings - they were supposed to resume on Monday because conference games can't end in a tie, but I think Matt said they decided to just leave it. 

We got takeout and hung out in the hotel room with Angus watching college basketball because he had a cold (not Covid according to PCR test) and I didn't really want to sit in a crowded restaurant. 

The Sunday games near Syracuse were cancelled for crummy weather, so we drove to the campus we hadn't seen since dropping him off in second year and walked around and he showed us where he eats and goes to class. 

We drove for a bit and decided to stop for lunch in Cortland. I punched 'restaurants' into the gps and we picked the first interesting name - Hairy Tony's. I was expecting a quirky hole-in-the-wall but it was more of a gastropub deal - staff was very friendly and the food was really good. I had a balsamic chicken wrap and the side was a fruit and yogurt parfait, which seemed a little odd but turned out to be exactly what I wanted.

It felt pretty strange crossing the border, and staying in a hotel, and seeing a bunch of people, and it was a lot of driving in two days, but it was completely worth it to sit in the son watching baseball, and get to hug and thank the people who basically adopted Angus for week-ends and Easter and Thanksgiving dinner. Plus we don't seem to have imported any American Covid, so that's a plus.

After we got home Angus sent me this:

This was our next exchange:

That's my boy.