Category: Daily Life

It was a gift from one of the massage therapists who helps keep my lower back from becoming more of a problem than it already is. I hadn’t seen her over the holidays, so she presented me with a late Yule present in early January: a bottle of homemade fire cider.

The label revealed an ingredients list of apple cider vinegar, onion, garlic, peppers, turmeric, ginger, lemon, elderberries and honey, and she told me she steeped each batch for weeks. The idea is to take a tablespoon anytime you’re feeling under the weather. 

I told her I was looking forward to trying it. She cautioned that it tasted terrible, which made sense considering what’s in it.

So, I woke up coughing one day. I had coughed on and off through the night and I had the feeling something was settling in to wreak havoc on my week. It seemed like the perfect time to try the fire cider, so I got up and measured out a tablespoon, then downed it like a shot.

It tasted fucking awful. I mean, a blast of vinegary garlic and onion just assaulted my tastebuds and then hung around even after I tried to rinse it away with some water.

But damned if it didn’t work. My cough basically said, “No thank you,” and exited, pursued by a fire-cider-flavored bear.

I was extremely impressed considering that my body likes to seize every respiratory illness that comes along and hang onto it as long as possible. I can’t remember any other occasion when I’ve been able to stop an impending sickness in its tracks like that.

The next time I felt a little under the weather, I went straight for the fire cider and once again traded one minute of disgust for a renewed grasp on health.

I don’t know the science that would back up the effect that that I’ve observed and maybe it’s just the placebo effect, but I’m not quibbling. The internet is filled with different recipes, so maybe I’ll make some of my own if I ever get through the first bottle. But I hope it lasts a long time because…blech.

I never wanted to be one of those older people who talks non-stop about their health, but that was before my various aches and pains began to demand an outsized amount of my attention. In the past, I used to put things off until I had more time. These days, I put things off until I feel well enough to do them.

Of course, it’s never just one problem at a time. Right now I am trying to recover from a root canal that took two, two-hour sessions. My tooth hasn’t been this pain-free in years, but my jaw is on strike. I can’t open my mouth wider than a slice of thin-crust pizza, so every other food has to be worked into the gap like a package through a mail slot. I’ll be going back to the dentist next week to find out if there’s anything to be done other than remain patient. (No pun intended.)

Then there’s my back. I come from a long line of people with “bad backs,” and I wish I hadn’t had to find out what that actually entails. For a number of years, my lower back has gotten cranky and stabby from such challenging activities as playing a board game or doing my job. You can imagine the fallout from yard work.

This week I finally got an x-ray and even I could see that things sure would be better if I had a visible disc below my bottom vertebra. But at least I know what the problem is now, so I can discontinue the stretches and exercises that definitely will not help and concentrate on the ones that will. I’m already seizing the opportunity to take more walks with the dog because that’s good for us both.

For whatever reason, I’ve been pretty energetic lately and I would very much like to run with that feeling, especially with so much holiday prep on my agenda. It would be nice to be able to focus on wrapping gifts and making delicious treats instead of practicing ways to reach items on the floor without bending forward. 

The good news is that there are medical professionals engaged on all fronts, so I feel like I have a fighting chance of minimizing my symptoms and keeping them that way for a while. Wish me luck.

Guess who's still sick? It's me! And the spouse. Just phasing into a new stage of illness in the third week, still testing positive, and now dealing with sinus congestion and more coughing.

So, I'm obviously not hosting Thanksgiving dinner after all. Yet I have the food, so I'll have to at least cook the turkey so I can put the majority of it in the freezer for later. I'm actually leaning toward cooking the dinner on Wednesday because it sounds good and most of the meal is fairly easy to prepare.

I'll obviously make smaller portions of the side dishes – especially the dressing, which will now be a box of Stove Top. I might skip the dinner rolls because we will have plenty of carbs without them.

Mostly, I'm just looking forward to the leftovers.

In the meantime, I'm back to working from my bed with my trusty Snuggle Dog™. I'm taking off Thursday and Friday, but considering that I've basically spent the last 14 days in bed, I doubt that a four-day weekend is going to make that much difference in my recovery. At this point, I just have to be patient, I guess.

When I last posted, I had talked myself into believing that I was dealing with some fall allergies or perhaps a mild cold. So logic. Many delusion. 

That night – the night before I was supposed to work the election – I barely slept at all because I felt like absolute ass. Horrible headache, sore throat, cough, the whole works. I took another COVID test, went back to bed while I waited for my phone to announce that 15 minutes were up, and there they were: two lines.

I'd made it almost three years without succumbing to the 'rona, but I'd finally flown too close to the sun during some activity or other.

First, I had to call and leave a message for the election board that I wouldn't be able to work after all. I was supposed to be the assistant supervising judge for my polling location, but fortunately they had a spare ready to send in. If I'd tested negative, I might have been stupid enough to mask up and try to tough it out, but the test result saved me from myself. It would have been the most ill-advised decision I'd ever made if I'd really tried to go through with being on my feet all day.

I had already taken the day off from my job for the election, so at least I didn't have to worry about that. The day was largely a blur because I felt awful. But after a ton of run-around trying to get a Paxlovid prescription, my doctor called one in and a friend not only picked it up for me, but also brought me cookies, lemon drops, NyQuil, aspirin and Gatorade, all of which I am still enjoying at the end of the week. Getchu some friends like that.

The next day I felt considerably better. The headache has never returned, although I'm obviously still sick. I turned my bed into a complete squirrel's nest of cables with my work laptop and headset and my personal laptop and headset. Complete with snuggly dog, of course.

I ended up working a full day on Wednesday from my bed office and most of the day on Thursday before I got really tired and needed to stop.

Today I had some new symptoms that might be medication side-effects, and since I didn't have any meetings on the calendar it seemed like the ideal time to take a three-day weekend.

All this week I've mostly been consuming toast, oatmeal, soup and Sprite, all of which I got early on via an Instacart order. Yesterday I ordered a hearty and delicious comfort food lunch, but it may have overwhelmed my delicate system. I do truly appreciate all the offers from various friends to bring me stuff, though.

I sent the spouse to the library last night because my hold on N.K. Jemisin's "The World We Make" had come in and I was very invested to see how the story ended after having read the first book early this year while I was on vacation in Costa Rica. It can go back to the library tonight and I'll be moving on to my pile of other books between naps.

What have I learned from all this?

1. Keep wearing your masks! I'd recently upgraded to some nice 3M Aura N95s but guess what? They can't help you if you aren't wearing them.
2. Get Paxlovid if you can. It made an immediate, noticeable difference in how I felt. Yes, it makes your mouth taste horrible, but as long as you keep eating and drinking neutral things, you can make it dissipate. I know there's a risk of COVID bounceback after the treatment course ends, but apparently that's a risk with or without the medication.
3. Rest, rest, rest. Centralizing my existence on my bed was a great choice, not only to stay away from the uninfected member of the household, but also to force myself to take it easy. If I lived alone, I'm pretty sure I would have been overdoing things by now.

Finally, it's been terribly sad to have a first-row seat to the rapid breakdown of Twitter this week. If you're still there (I am, mostly to keep my account mine), turn on two-factor authentication, delete your DMs, don't provide any financial information, and consider restricting your account to your current followers. 

That's enough for now. I think I feel another nap coming on. See you here whenever you stop by!

Ah, it's that wonderful time of the year when you get to play: Cold or Allergies? Except now it's: Cold, Allergies or COVID?

Last night I was leaning toward the virus theory because I was so tired, but of course I was tired! On Saturday I'd driven around all day leading a Caffeine Crawl and drinking entirely too much caffeine and sugar. Then I had to deal with the clocks being set back an hour. The wicked combination of my usual insomnia and the dog's breakfast time magically shifting to 5:00 a.m. meant I was behind on sleep and battling my own circadian rhythms. 

Yet somehow I woke up on Sunday inspired to actually complete my weekend to-do list, so I cleaned out my refrigerator, deep-cleaned the kitchen trash and recycling cans, and moved everything on the countertops to clean behind and underneath it all. Then I sat through more than two hours of election training, so I definitely came by my tiredness honestly. Ignoring the time change as I generally do at first, I turned in around 8:00 p.m. after loading up on remedies for post-nasal drip.

Today I took my umpteenth negative COVID test since 2020 and then had the wherewithal to cook myself a full breakfast, so I'm now betting on allergies unless something changes. 

Tomorrow I have 13+ hours of election work ahead of me, so I need all the energy I can get. Here's hoping a few more cups of cinnamon tea will put everything right.

A few months ago, I was baking a quiche when the stove started beeping far too early and I looked over to see smoke coming out of the oven vents. The appliance had malfunctioned and within about 20 minutes, turned my lovely homemade quiche into a Pyrex pie plate full of near charcoal.

In its misguided, overheated fury, the oven couldn't be turned off with the usual button. I had to descend to the basement and flip its breaker, which meant it sat inert in its spot for more than two weeks while I waited for the new control panel it needed. Until then, I'd never realized how much I depended on it as a clock.

Repair day finally arrived and a technician put in a new primary control panel, which included the clock face and oven control buttons. That's the most expensive single part that my type of stove has, so if anything else ever breaks, it will be economically worthwhile to keep doing repairs.

Today, my stove is the same as it ever was, except that it's completely different. The LEDs are slightly brighter and greener now. When the timer goes off, the three tones sound for a noticeably longer time than they did before. I'd grown accustomed to baking things an extra five or ten minutes to make sure they were done in the middle, but now most baked goods are ready at the shorter end of the suggested baking range. The stove's brain and heart have been replaced and I never realized how intimately I'd gotten to know them over the approximately 20 years I'd had it until everything changed. 

I think a similar thing happens to people. Over a decade, two decades, three decades, everyone's brain and heart undergo changes. It's seldom all at once, except perhaps in instances like an ayahuasca experience, but the things that drive us and make us ourselves don't stay static. In relation to other people, that forces reckonings from time to time. Are those brighter, greener lights tolerable? Have our values and motivations changed so much that it's time to upend our lives completely?

Many times, we can get used to changes and figure out how to adjust slightly and continue moving down the same path. At other times, it makes more sense to veer in a new direction. And sometimes it boils down to what you can afford.

Anyway, I'm back to making quiches again.

I kicked off 2020 with a very ambitious yet manageable plan for making my house more livable. And it worked! For the first few months I followed my spreadsheet and did a lot of bite-sized projects and a few big ones.

After I started working from home in March, I got away from the weekly cadence, but I still managed to eke out projects here and there. All told, I completed 25 of my planned projects and skipped 27. I also ended up doing certain things I wouldn't have thought of at the first of the year, like making my patio and deck more inviting. Priorities change, so rolling with new ones just makes sense.

Last year was rough, and just getting my work done for my job and feeding us every day used up a lot of my mental energy. If there's one thing I've learned in life, it's the importance of resting when you need it. I feel pretty triumphant about accomplishing everything I did get done.

So, back on the horse, right?

In anticipation of another year of spending most of my time at home, I made another spreadsheet for 2021 so I can pick up where I left off. Actually, I'm basically just starting over, with a few tweaks. 

A lot of last year's progress will serve to make this year's tasks easier, and there's still no hurry to get to the tasks I missed the first time around. A few items were going to need to be done every year anyway (pantry rearrangement, anyone?) and I added some new ones to reflect changes in the way we're living in the house.

What I learned was that small goals and incremental changes really work for me. Let's see if I can beat my record from this year and make my living space that much nicer.