ResQgeek

Saw the GI doctor today. There was no "ah ha" moment or anything but the doc is pretty sure it's an upper (as opposed to lower) GI issue, so we moved my endoscopy up to a week from tomorrow and if that doesn't show anything then I'll take a stomach emptying test. She thinks it might be a condition where my digestion moves too slowly, causing things to more or less back up, causing nausea and reflux. Diabetics can be prone to it, and it's a potential side effect of taking Ozempic (though it's a little weird to suddenly start up after years of taking it). In the meantime, we're shifting around my reflux meds a bit and I should be getting a prescription for an anti-nausea pill. There's also a chance that reflux is behind my recent uptick in sneeze and nose-blowing frequency. (Ah, stomach acid, is there nothing it can't do?)

I'm just so tired of having tummy troubles. It makes me not want to do things. Yesterday I felt so bad I spent almost the entire day on the couch, watching Danny from Game Grumps play old Sierra games like Phantasmagoria and Space Quest. I loved those games as a kid, though I wasn't any good at them. Danny's only five days older than I am so he encountered them at a similar point in his life. Also, he's super chill and I definitely took a couple naps during the play-throughs.

The worst part about the reflux-related nausea is that I don't want to eat anything, but the longer I go with an empty stomach, the worse things get. So I have to force myself to eat something. But if I eat too much (and what counts as "too much" is inconsistent at best), hello nausea! Whee!

But otherwise, things are going okay. I've got a bit of cabin fever, but I don't want to stray too far from a bathroom, and most places that have bathrooms require spending money I really shouldn't be spending until I start getting a paycheck again. So I stay home. And while I continue to wait for Congress to get their collective heads out of their collective butts, I've been drawing some of the weird shit we have around the house, cleaning out the file cabinet, releasing books, preparing for the chorus holiday shows I'm co-chairing, playing WoW here and there, that kind of exciting stuff.

Can't wait to get my guts sorted, guys. Vomiting sucks.

Welp, we're nearly a month into the shutdown and I seem to be settling into a bit of a stay-at-home bonus mom lifestyle. I've been driving the boys to and from school, doing the dishes and laundry, running errands, that kind of thing. I don't do much cooking (that's still mostly Jason's bailiwick), but I do help with food prep when I can. And I've made some progress on tidying up around the place. It's all very housewifey.

And I gotta say, this lifestyle does not agree with me.

I don't know where the time goes. I get up at 5:45 with Jason. I have about an hour between when he leaves for work and when Elliott wants to head to school,* which I usually spend eating breakfast, reading emails, and doing my daily puzzles: Squaredle and Bracket City. (Wyatt walks to school. He has an inexplicable aversion to being driven to places but will happily accept a ride home in the afternoon. It's not clear why this is, even to him.) I get home around 8am unless I take a detour to local Little Free Libraries, which I've done on a couple recent mornings to distribute some of Wanda's books.** During the day I draw my daily Pokemon, do various chores, walk the dog, and lately have been doing a ton of work in my study in an attempt to make it useable. (It's not quite there yet.) Then suddenly my 2:45pm alarm is going off (so I can be sure to be paying attention to my phone when the boys text to be picked up around 3). Chaos envelops the house as two teen boys arrive home, letting off steam in the form of loud voices and commotion and tearing into the fridge to find sustenance before thundering upstairs to their respective bedrooms and video games.

Living with teenage boys feels a little bit like cohabitating with a plague of locusts.

Anyway, Jason gets home around 4, later if he runs errands after work. He knows how much I hate grocery shopping so often he'll take care of that, because he is amazing. That, and the Food Lion right by his work has better prices than the Giant near our house. He makes dinner and we spend the evening together, watching TV or playing WoW or whatnot. And then suddenly it's bedtime.

*You may be wondering why I drive the boys at all, since they managed getting to and from school perfectly well on their own while I was working. The simple truth is that I do not handle whining well. My enabling nature, last showcased by my previous marriage, has once again reared its ugly head. Both boys' electric scooters are busted, we can't afford new ones until I start getting a paycheck again, and Elliott's agonized complaining about how awful it is to ride his bike or walk is just unbearable to me. So basically I offered to give them rides so I wouldn't have to hear about how walking a mile (yes, one single mile) is such a goddamn hardship.

**Wanda was Jason's mom. Jo gave me several bins of Wanda's old books last summer. It was an interesting mix of general fiction (she apparently really loved Fern Michaels), Christian books (Bibles, prayer books, fiction, etc.), lesbian erotica, and cookbooks. So many cookbooks. I counted 56 cookbooks and 1 Christmas cookie magazine. And no, she didn't really like to cook. But I got them all registered and have actually gotten back into the habit of journaling books and making release notes and the whole BookCrossing shebang, after more or less completely giving it up back during covid. It feels good. Familiar.

Anyway, back to my Complain Train of Cringe, already in progress.

The worst part is that I just feel so ungrateful. Yeah, it sucks that I'm stuck without a paycheck because Congress can't agree whether people's healthcare costs should increase by tens of thousands of dollars (not an exaggeration), but we can hold on financially for a while yet, especially since our biggest nonessential expense - eating out - has been drastically reduced. (Our biggest essential expense is the mortgage.) So I should be treating this as an unexpectedly long staycation, and I should be enjoying this gift of time, and I should embrace this [hopefully] once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to pursue hobbies and projects that have lain dormant and neglected.

So what's my problem? Why can't I just fix my mindset and be as productive and creative as I know I can be? It doesn't cost anything to hang out at home and use the supplies I already own. Where is this anxiety coming from?

I wish I knew. But in the meantime, there are dishes to be done.