The NaBloPo­Mo prompt for today:
How do you feel when you return home at the end of the day?

I’m not sure I should have answered this one, as I doubt that my answer will be in sync with the intent of the ques­tion. I don’t leave home every day to go to work, or leave home every day, peri­od.

How­ev­er, when I do leave home, how I feel when I return depends on many fac­tors. How did I feel before leav­ing? How long was I gone, and how much phys­i­cal, intel­lec­tu­al, and emo­tion­al ener­gy did I have to expend while I was out? Did I have to deal with any­thing unex­pect­ed, good or bad? How many peo­ple was I around? Were they strangers or peo­ple known to me? Did I encounter them all at once, or in small groups of one or two at a time? Was Sam with me as a buffer? fHow’s my blood sug­ar? Am I well hydrat­ed? What was the weath­er like? Did I remem­ber to take my reg­u­lar med­ica­tions? What about tak­ing break­through pain med­ica­tion, anx­i­ety med­ica­tion, or a mus­cle relax­ant before I found myself in a state where they would­n’t work very well? Did I use my scoot­er if there was much walk­ing? How noisy was the envi­ron­ment? Was it drafty, or over­ly hot or cold? Did I have to dri­ve? Was I out to do some­thing I want­ed to do, or was I doing some­thing I had to do?

Fre­quent­ly, I’m so dog-tired that I can bare­ly drag myself in the door. I have actu­al­ly fall­en asleep sit­ting in the car, in the dri­ver’s seat, more than once. (There are plen­ty of rea­sons that I do not dri­ve much any more.) Deal­ing with the secu­ri­ty sys­tem seems an intel­lec­tu­al chal­lenge designed for Ein­stein. I’m eas­i­ly con­fused and my mem­o­ry is beyond poor. Even if I am dehy­drat­ed or I need to eat, I’m too tired to be inter­est­ed in food or even water. If I was out for too long, or if it was a par­tic­u­lar­ly stress­ful peri­od, I get a fever and my body reacts as if I’m in shock. I feel like I’m freez­ing, no mat­ter what the actu­al tem­per­a­ture around me is, and I start shak­ing bad­ly.

So that’s how I feel most days when I return home at the end of the day, if I’ve had to leave home. I think that should go a long way towards explain­ing why I’m such a home­body these days! I am for­tu­nate in that I have Sam, Katie, and oth­ers in my life, so I am able to have a ful­fill­ing life with­out being very adven­tur­ous.

That’s a relief. I was get­ting quite wor­ried. She spent most of the week­end sleep­ing or look­ing like a zom­bie, eat­ing only what Sam could coax into her, and using heat­ing pads. I’m start­ing to think that we should accept the offer to refer her to a pain man­age­ment doc­tor, if only to have some­thing she can take dur­ing a flare.

So I read the lat­est Ani­ta Blake nov­el, Blood Noir. I’m not sure why I con­tin­ue to read these. Hon­est­ly, Hamil­ton is a decent writer. I enjoy her prose. She just needs to go back to plot school! Or maybe work with a co-writer who is strong on plot, but not rela­tion­ships or descrip­tions?

There was no plot at all for the first few hun­dred pages of the book. When some­thing involv­ing a pre­vi­ous “big bad” did hap­pen, it was noth­ing but an incon­ve­nience, and over with­in an hour of Ani­ta find­ing out about it. Whoopee. There was a cri­sis and dan­ger, of course, but I found them anti­cli­mac­tic after the vil­lains Ani­ta has van­quished in the past.

There was, of course, lots of sex. This one could have been called, “Ani­ta gets a fuck bud­dy.”

Oh well. On to Sun­shine by Robin McKin­ley. Some­one rec­om­mend­ed it to me years ago, and I hap­pened to see McKin­ley’s name some­where and remem­bered it. I don’t think that I’ve read any of her nov­els before. Short sto­ries, maybe.

If you have fibromyal­gia, or care about any­one who does, please read and respond.

I post­ed over at Fibrant Liv­ing today, about the dif­fer­ence between fibromyal­gia and depres­sion.

The inter­view we did is up!
Chron­ic Pain and Sex: a Cou­ple’s Gen­tle Bat­tle With Fibromyal­gia

I’m pleased with it. There are very few, most­ly imma­te­r­i­al inac­cu­ra­cies.

I intend­ed to post and maybe even try to get a pod­cast out, but end­ed up using my ener­gy to do an inter­view with a reporter. I don’t know when the piece will come out (it was­n’t for aware­ness day–that was just an amus­ing coin­ci­dence), but I’ll let you know when/if I hear any­thing.

She also inter­viewed Sam, since the top­ic was “fibromyal­gia and inti­ma­cy.” He’s so won­der­ful!

Today’s post is at Fibrant Liv­ing.

I have a Google Alerts search going for “fibromyal­gia,” because if there’s some­thing out there that will make this crap bet­ter, I want to know it yes­ter­day. The alert brings in all sorts of non­sense from quack reme­dies to naysay­ers, in addi­tion to the actu­al con­tent.

Today’s alert takes the cake, though. Some­body wrote to Dan Sav­age’s Sav­age Love col­umn ask­ing, “Can I Sue Some­body for Fist­ing-Induced Fibromyal­gia?“¹

Sav­age’s med­ical expert is out of touch regard­ing the lat­est FMS research, but I have to agree with his reply to the let­ter-writer.

Sam and I tried to game a lit­tle tonight, but he was sleepy and I’m fad­ing, too. I did some writ­ing today, and more web­i­fy­ing, and worked on a cou­ple of school assign­ments. Then I got all-too-obsessed with try­ing to fig­ure out how to make the out­put of a cou­ple of Word­Press plu­g­ins work nice­ly with my tem­plate.

I hope y’all had a love­ly week­end!