State of the Cyn

I haven’t real­ly being post­ing per­son­al stuff in the last few weeks. I sup­pose that might be a relief to some, but this IS a per­son­al jour­nal, not just a “look at the neat thing I found” place.

When­ev­er I go real­ly qui­et, there’s prob­a­bly some­thing up. I’m in a bad flare, there’s ten­sion at home, some­thing like that.

I’ve been push­ing myself to try to take over the “home­mak­er” stuff at the Cas­tle, so that curiousmay9 and sam­bear can focus more on things that I just can­not do—particularly the many home repair/improvement projects we’ve got in progress or wait­ing. And, of course, both of them work out­side the house.

Since I just don’t have a “nor­mal” sup­ply of spoons, the ener­gy for doing more home main­te­nance has to come from some­thing else. It’s com­ing from online time and social ener­gy right now. 

It’s embar­rass­ing to admit, but just bat­tling bureau­cra­cies (I do all such things for the house­hold), sched­ul­ing health care appoint­ments and the like, and keep­ing the kitchen and laun­dry under con­trol take me to the very edge of my capa­bil­i­ties right now.

BUT—I’m man­ag­ing to keep them fair­ly live­able, if not to the stan­dards I tru­ly prefer.

I’m also com­plete­ly out of pain meds, which is dras­ti­cal­ly reduc­ing my spoon sup­ply. I start­ed call­ing my doc­tor to arrange a refill at the begin­ning of the week. The phar­ma­cy was call­ing, too. They nev­er did get around to respond­ing at all. I know, I need a new doctor—but I can’t afford to get start­ed with a new rheuma­tol­o­gist right now.

I may only be present at tonight’s filk in spir­it, as I have a migraine that’s caus­ing me to be hyper­sen­si­tive to sounds as well as light. My fam­i­ly, though, is incred­i­bly sup­port­ive. I’m sit­ting here with any­thing I might pos­si­bly need with­in easy reach while they fin­ish prepa­ra­tions for the event. I’m so for­tu­nate to have them!

Every­one in the house­hold has been work­ing on bet­ter defin­ing our roles and respon­si­bil­i­ties. Doing so is a great way to reduce con­flicts and stress. Hav­ing explic­it agree­ments lets every­one involved know what is expect­ed, so there aren’t any land­mines to hit. Set­ting expec­ta­tions is impor­tant in any kind of rela­tion­ship. If Katie knows that she’s going to clean the cat box­es every Mon­day and Thurs­day, she can plan around that task. She also knows that she isn’t going to be asked to do them on Sat­ur­day morn­ing before she goes to the dojo. There aren’t any surprises.

I’ve already got a pret­ty good list of what has to be done inside the house. curiousmay9 says she has some out­side tasks to add. I need to add in some sea­son­al items, like hol­i­day preparations.