Blame my sleep aid.

Work – I feel like when I put forth my strongest effort at work is when I get beat up the worst. I have yet to learn how not to take things personally.

Life overall – ditto.

I could use a win.

I can see my reflection in the dialysis tv, and I look like I’m fifty.

I haven’t the foggiest notion how I will turn anything around.

Merely surviving is an insufficient goal.

I have been too wrapped up in my own daily attempts to keep hanging by what seems to be a durable-enough thread to be a friend to any of my friends. I feel horrible about that.

I want to sleep nonstop for a week, which would result in either unemployment or unpaid FMLA time.

(Not really live-blogging, since I’m not publishing this until I feel like I’ve accomplished anything…or I’ve given up.)

2:44pm Just trying something different. Every weekend goes pretty much the same. High ambition for housework. Very little accomplished. If I document my activities, perhaps I’ll be motivated to get something done.

3:01pm Well, I’m watching tv, and Aremid is curled up next to me, and Herman and sleeping on the other side…when there’s so much is disarray, it’s very difficult to do work that’s going to result in just a speck of the disarray going away…even though I know that’s the only way to get started…

3:56pm Still nothing…

4:08pm Start with living room. The little demi-table has had the junk removed from it. Small steps…

4:21pm Cleaned up under the ottoman. Dog-hair. Bills and stuff I was supposed to attend to on the internet, before the stuff fell on the floor, and under the ottoman, to be forgotten forever, or, at least, until today. Will attend to a couple of these things now…

4:54pm Stuff cleared off of ottoman.

5:10pm Small amount of stuff cleared off of loveseat. Pledge pet-hair removal roller applied; not sure it does much good.

5:38pm Picked some stuff off of the floor, including Home Depot purchases from about a month ago, home stuff I figured I could use, but, as usually, I basically wind up storing away. I did pull out one of those Mr. Clean “magic erasers”. I gave it a try on some stubborn icky stuff in the bathtub. Didn’t work. I tried.

Living room is passable, at least by my very low standards. Anyone used to true clean would find about 39 things still wrong with the room.

6:17pm Tried to do some small outdoor work, bagging up leaves that I had already raked into rough piles. Unfortunately, the neighbor kids wanted to come over. And they brought their new cap guns. And they harassed my dog. And I can’t watch my dog and these kids and bag leaves simultaneously. I feel like I ought to be a more patient with the kids, so I let them get away with their antics. I feel like the alternative is yelling at them so they’re afraid of “Mr. David” for the rest of their childhoods. So, minor outdoor work done, but now I’m really not feeling like doing anything else. And starting to sneeze because I’m allergic to the outdoors.

6:36pm Cleared out the minor pile-up in the kitchen sink. It had seen much worse. I never did blog about my wonderful kitchen sink, that I bought last year to replace the standard shallow renter’s sink that the previous owner had put in. I had hoped that having a deep sink (8 or 9 inches, compared to 6) would encourage me to cook more, since cleaning up would be easier with more room to maneuver (with my kitchen, overall, being quite a tight space). However, it’s mostly just given me a lot more room for stuff to pile up. (Oh, I had also been excited to get a sprayer. I don’t have a dishwasher, but a sprayer would solve everything). Anyway, so the sink is clear for now. I’m frustrated that I don’t even know how to get these certain smudges out. Do I need stuff specific for stainless steel? I figured 409 would work. It didn’t.

So it’s getting close to 7. I’m going to relax and watch the Oscars in a little more than a hour. I probably won’t do anymore housework tonight.

I barely did anything, really, but it’s probably more than I would have done if I weren’t recording it. So that’s the purpose of this entry. I know it’s not exactly riveting.

I stumbled upon Google’s Public Data area. Pretty neat stuff.

And it’s really neat to see how Durham County compares to the rest of the state in unemployment data, particularly during this recession.

And it’s extra-neat to see how Durham County, after lagging behind Wake in employment figures for most of the past two decades, has been faring just a little bit better during the recession.

I think this graph is a nice illustration of how Durham has been great place to live, particularly in the past decade.

(However, mouseover to Wake County in December 1999…1.3% unemployment…holy crap.)

A couple of weeks ago, I had by bed moved such that it would not face out into the large clinic space, with all of the other beds, and, most importantly, all of the lights. I had my bed rotated 90 degrees such that it lays parallel to the baclwell, and there’s no one parallel to me. The new arrangement, in conjunction with a new medication plan seem to have imporved my ability to get some sleep without high anxiety.

I take one pill when I first arrive to knock my anxiety level back a bit. Then I take a stinky homepathic remedy that a friend recommended, a substance that is supposed to aid in sleep. Then, about 30-50 minutes before I adspire to fall aleep, I take the important med.

The processs, which has not been help up for physician review, seem to achieve my goal of getting to sleep by 11:30, and then allowing me to get 5 1/2 hours of uninterrupted sleep.

The problem is that 5 1/2 hours of slepe comes up short of the 7 or 8 that are recommended normally for sleepers, and particularly for sleepers who take that important med/ The process of getting my stuff together and going outside to the cold, and having to drive then ten minues back home, that process wakes me up. But then I’m sure my body could use another 90-120 minutes of sleep.

Unfortunately, while I tried to get back to sleep between 6 and 6:30, my body gradually falls back into fatigue, which I’m fully immersed in by 7:30 or 8. By that time, it is time to get to work if I want to make it on time. I can play with the snooze a couple of time. but the decision remains the same. Do I force myself out of what seems like a stupor, and get into work at a reasonable time but go about my activities in a daze? Or do I send the email in that says I’m not feeling weel, and that I’ll tryto be in by noon? That takes pressure off, and I can get what I feel is much-needed rest. But I do lose in the work hours calculation, since an eight-hour day is unlikely to follow.

So I think I’ve been able to manage to remain calm during the noise of the first couple hours of dialysis, and then I can fall aslee and get between 5 and 1.2 hours, which is good, but apparently not good enough. My body really feels the next for extra 3-4 hours after I get home. I have, on past occasions, tried to consume some caffeine on the way home, but that hasn’t prevented me from crashing.

I’m not sure of what strategy to take going forward. I could try to take all my sleep aids as soon as I arrive, but then the pressure is on to do nothing but sleep for the eight hours. Between my iPhone and the television, there is plenty to keep me occupied for the first two hours. But maybe I should consider trying to get myself to sleep right away, before the chatter has stopped and the lights have shut off.

I do apparently have one of the best albumin measures that my doctor has ever scene in the his dialysis clinic experience. Mine was last read as 5.2.

According to lifeoptions.com ,

The level of albumin (protein) in the blood is a measure of good nutrition. Research shows that people with kidney disease who become malnourished and do not get enough protein may suffer from many complications. It is especially important for people on low protein diets to have their serum protein levels measured.

Normal serum albumin levels in healthy people are 3.6-5.0 g/dL. The goal for people on dialysis is an albumin level greater than 4.0 g/dL.

So I’m better than healthy. I have outstanding albumin levels! There’s something for the old Match.com profile.

[I see lots of typos...I shall correct them in the morning]

To interrupt the recent gloom and bile…it’s Ouisie!

Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Republican whip, argued that unemployment benefits dissuade people from job-hunting “because people are being paid even though they’re not working.”
Huffington Post / 3.1.2010

This is the Republican Party. This is what most Republicans believe. I disagree. I don’t respectfully disagree. I find the mindset and policies of the GOP to be abhorrent. Thoroughly.

Don’t tell me the parties are the same, controlled by the corporations, etc. The Democratic Party is seriously flawed, but Republicans truly delight in shitting on people who need help.

I’m not sorry for saying this.

I’m off to dialysis now. If I could no longer work because of my kidney failure, Republicans would call me a maggot and a leech for relying on Medicare. F*** them.

Government doesn’t work because Republicans don’t want it to work. They obstruct everything and celebrate when people think Washington is broken. They argue that nothing can be trusted to government, citing how nothing gets done. And then they make sure that nothing gets done. And Americans are dumb enough to fall for it.

Don’t write an ex-girlfriend to see how she’s doing, and explicitly ask about the “great guy” she mentioned last year when you last exchanged emails. Don’t do this when you KNOW that you’re going to be shattered when she tells you that she’s engaged to marry him later this year.

Also, don’t then look up your ex-girlfriend on theknot.com, even if you are going to find her and her fiancé’s entry password-protected so that you can’t actually read the syrupy how-they-met story or how-he-proposed story.

Because you’re still going to learn the fiancé’s name, and you’re going to go search Flickr for their first names together, and since one has a fairly uncommon name, you’re going to actually find pictures of them. And the pictures are going to belong to the Flickr account of a wedding photographer, who takes extremely romantic photos of couples for the purpose of engagement announcements meant to makes families and friends of the couples gush with joy.

Don’t do any of this.

Too late.

The most agonizing aspect of my life is not being on dialysis.
It’s not PKD discomfort.
It’s not an unfulfilling career.
It’s not a hopelessly disheveled home.
It’s not elusive financial security.

The most agonizing aspect of my life is that I am alone, and I recognized many years ago that I was not going to have a successful journey through this life if I remained alone. My most important objective for as long as I can remember was to find a girl to shower with adoration, who would accept my flaws and somehow love me back. I am reducing this goal to a hokey cliché. I think I could’ve said this more elegantly ten or fifteen years ago.

Someone’s going to tell me that I’ll meet someone when “the time is right”. Someone’s going to tell me some drivel about needing to be okay with myself before I can find someone else. Someone’s going to tell me to focus on my health, that I shouldn’t worry so much about other matters.

Life is so damn fleeting, to use another hokey cliché (well, hokey if I don’t throw the “damn” in there). It’s already March. I’ve already been on dialysis for six months. All I have accomplished in the past six months is surviving dialysis. I’ve got to do a lot better than that. I really don’t feel like I’ve done anything productive since my February 2008 kidney stone that led to an annoying preoccupation with health health issues that’s been pretty much non-stop since. But “annoying” is really all that’s it’s been. These health issues should NOT be precluding me from HAVING A LIFE. (caps lock time). I CANNOT AFFORD FOR THESE HEALTH ISSUES TO GET IN THE WAY OF ANYTHING. TIME WILL JUST VANISH BEFORE ME. TIME DOESN’T CARE IF I’LL BE HARD-PRESSED TO ACCOMPLISH GOALS UNTIL I CAN GET MYSELF A NEW KIDNEY.

So the #1 goal is still to meet someone. But I don’t do any activities that allow me to meet anyone new. I am part of the 24/7 party that is Match.com, but I am almost completely passive on it. I’m a wreck whenever I do try to communicate with anyone. I can’t even answer the question. “What do you enjoy doing,” because I don’t have any clue anymore, because I DON’T DO ANYTHING.

The best part of my week is on a Saturday or Sunday morning when I stay in bed, getting far more sleep than I need, because everytime I wake up, I see my CAT curled up next to me, and I feel a complete lack of stress and sense of comfort lying NEXT TO MY CAT. And that keeps me in bed until noon or later. A Google search of “pathetic” ought to come right to this post and to this very paragraph.

I’m off on a bit of tangent now, am I not? I know this whole entry is completely unsuitable for publication, given that I’m horrified to think of what some who read this will make of this. And then I’m reminded of a recent quote I read.

Low self-esteem involves imagining the worst that other people can think about you.
- Roger Ebert

Apparently, chick digs confidence, but it’s easy to see why they don’t dig me, considering I can never, even more a short while, block out any thoughts of what others are thinking of me. Just a for a day, or a week, I’d love to be consumed with the delusion of my own greatness. I’d just like to see what that’s like.

Being “authentic”, which is a nice way that some have referred to my addictive self-deprecation and inability to feign positivity, hasn’t yielded beneficial results.

Comments are really off on this entry. I say I’ll do that sometimes, but I forget. Can’t stop FB comments, I suppose. I don’t have the balls to make this a two-way conversation. This was just my therapy for the evening.

Toastie: I work in IT.

Oh, so you fix people’s computers?

Toastie: No.

My two-year-old HP Pavilion laptop developed a crack in the screen hinge. I lived with it for a couple of months. I could have tried to send it in under the two-year warranty I had. But I didn’t want to go without it for a few weeks. I’d live with it. Well, a couple of days ago, the crack got a lot worse. The screen half broke off from the rest of the laptop.

My solution: duct tape.

My solution: FAIL.

My back-up plan: buy a new laptop.

My back-up plan: fiscally irresponsible.

Plan C: grab the nice 19-inch monitor from the old desktop that I never use.

Plan C: WIN.

See, I don’t know how to fix anything, with the possible exception of broken Remedy workflow, and you have no idea what means, nor should you, since it’s not exactly an in-demand skill.

Roger Ebert takes on that 911-fee I mentioned a few days ago and goes much further, reflecting on the state of the United States that we find ourselves in today. I feel compelled to label Ebert’s journal as a must-read once again.

Roger Ebert: The gathering storm / 2.24.10