Power was out at the house almost two days. I ended up spending another night at work.  I had to go home though and get my medicine. I was finally able to sleep after 42 hours.

Two trees hit the house and more came down. One wiped out my Granny Smith apple. I guess it's okay. I had planned to take it out.

I forgot the pill splitter so I got a double dose. I probably needed it but I have been groggy all day. This morning my pressure was dropping every time i stood up. That took about 3 hours to pass. It made for a long day.

I will just be happy to go lay on my own bed. I'm really hoping i dont have to do this again any more this year.

Third time this year I am having to stay at work due to the weather. This one was unplanned. Not a big deal except I have no medications thus there will be no sleep at all tonight. I can do without a lot of stuff but I cannot sleep without intervention. I'll be pretty in the morning for sure. Thankfully no one I'd like to look good for will be around.

Speaking of looking good I am given to understand that I look good in my orange Aquaman shirt. Who knew? I bought it because I saw Sheldon wear it on BBT and I thought it had an Art Nouveau vibe (it does). Anyway I have added a whole bunch more orange Aquaman shirts to my wish list as a result.

So not a whole lot else to say. My phone is not the best interface for Blogger so by necessity this will be short.

Spring is supposed to be in two weeks. I shall believe when I see.

So it's been a hell of a long time since I've written.  There hasn't been much to report.  Things are still stable, everything has been status quo.  I'm about to put that to a huge test in May as the Sadhusanga festival is coming to NC and I couldn't under any circumstances short of death miss such a thing.  This is going to be a serious test; it is going to be the biggest kirtan festival on the continent (really).  About 1300 people will be there and I plan to be on the kitchen seva team where hopefully it will be a little less mindblowing.  I will actually be heading to Boone from Burnsville, NC, having just spent the greater part of the week at a timeshare that I (quite impulsively) bought in November when we were there.  Anyway, it's going to be a big, big deal, and all I can do is see how I do with it.

In December I noticed that I was gaining quite a bit of weight and so I made the unilateral decision to make a huge decrease in my medication (with a resultant decrease in weight back to baseline).  My doctor was okay with it and so far it seems like it has been okay.  I have had some minor blips on the meter for a day or two, low-amplitude stuff, nothing major and always traceable to some kind of precipitant.  So, for the moment I'm staying with what I'm doing.  We will see how May works out and go from there.

This winter has been awful.  One day it's 70 and literally 24 hours later we're in a winter storm warning with ice and snow.  I'm not sure how anyone can still deny the whole climate change thing; I'm not capable of that amount of cognitive dissonance.  New York has gotten like 60 inches of snow and we've even had several snowfalls and two major events, the last one the day before yesterday.  In the first one we got NINE INCHES of snow and I ended up staying at work for 2.5 days.  This was a bad situation as I didn't have the foresight to pack with consideration for my gut.  You never know how well you eat until you don't.  Almost 3 days of processed, prepackaged garbage sent my system into an armed rebellion and I ended up spending the better part of 12 hours getting the rabble settled.  This second situation only had me at work one night, but I packed fresh vegetables, fruit, rice chex, herbal tea and string cheese, with predictable happy results.  I was glad I only had to stay the one night but it was a good test; I was all-around (mentally, physically) in a better place based on simply the food choices I made.  Of course, being away from home in a noisy place (even with the sound machine, another fantastic choice) I didn't get more than 2-3 hours sleep, but everyone knows I'm good with that.

I am still knitting away like a fiend.  I designed and knit three ganseys for gifts and then decided to move into colorwork.  The first things I tried were Latvian mittens (Lizbeth Upitis's patterns) which are pretty fascinating.  I finished one except for the thumb and got half way through a different one (only making one? when you're learning it's not a bad idea) when I made the huge decision for the first big storm to go ahead and try to do this Sanquhar glove that started the whole thing off.

The pattern I'm working from was printed in Scotland in the 50's and is all written out vs. charted.  Eventually I found I needed to chart it and that made everything much easier.  It actually turns out that this is an easier thing to knit than the Latvian mittens; the patterns are small and symmetrical both vertically and horizontally so they make perfect logical sense.  It's not something you can do half asleep, and there are a couple of mistakes in the pattern, which made me a little crazy, but so far it's working out fine.  I have got the thumb gusset done and those stitches on holders, and I'm working my way up to where the fingers will begin.  Even though the needles are ridiculously small (2mm) and it's 80something stitches to a round it seems like it goes very fast.  For someone inexperienced the hardest part would be keeping the floats in even tension, but everything I've learned in the last year is really paying off.

I am still precepting nursing students.  This year I opted to skip the second-rotation one because I was finding that when I did two back to back I was tired, stressed because their schedule is funny with holidays, and it really wasn't fun.  I'm hoping that I can do the third rotation if there is one.  I just think it goes better this way.  There really isn't much I can teach them to 'do' in our environment, so I focus on critical thinking and things like that, and I do feel like I have something (however small) worthwhile to say, so I hope they keep coming.  I got a couple of books on experiential learning and the Toyota Way (which is something like nursing process in Japanese) to try to help me work out ways to get my point across.  I actually started working on The Book, but that's been spotty since a huge effort at beginning.... so typical.

So I am hoping to sort of get back into a rhythm with the blog.  I've let it sit largely because things are really kind of status quo boring and because Facebook (yeah, I know) has taken up a lot of the slack.  But I do love to write and this is the best place for me to work out more complicated thoughts, so I'm thinking it's time to get back on it.  In practice? We'll see how it works out.

So I went to see the Crusader.. it's been around six weeks since this last medication adjustment and all available input sources uniformly report that I Am Doing Very Well.  I kind of have mixed feelings on it all... yes, work is going well, yes, I feel very stable, yes, I can blow off things that previously would have sent me completely off the chain, yes, everyone in my life is totally happy with how things are going, yes, I am finally at a point where I'm stable enough to try to work on my sadhana (spiritual life).  On the other hand (there is always another hand), life just isn't quite as.. colorful as it used to be.  This is the new paradigm I guess, I have to get used to a New Normal and is it worth it?  I suppose objectively yes, I would be stupid to say otherwise, but I do miss the Technicolor just a little bit.  Maybe after a while I'll become more emotionally attached to being emotionally stable.

That being said, we talked today about The Future.  This is a progressive thing, no doubt, and no matter WHAT we do it's going to get worse, but maybe we can slow it down a little bit.  This is definitely a step in the right direction.  So we came up with A Plan.  I've been averaging 3-4 episodes a year for as long as we've been tracking this stuff.  We've definitely discerned that the traveling thing sets me off, sometimes for several months at a time, and so we talked all around it and about it and decided that traveling by myself to these high-stim environments (like Texas or temples during festivals) is verboten until I've been stable for a year.  In other words, if I can make it through the rest of this year still stable, I'm (possibly) going to try a short experimental trip by myself, maybe for a weekend somewhere.  But no big trippage, no Texas, no Sadhusanga, no major festivalling until we can be sure it's not going to make me crazy for five months afterwards. 

I feel pretty good about this decision.  I feel like it's realistic.  It's going to take some time for me to get some confidence, to sort of learn to trust the stability (after all it's only been six weeks), to get a feel for how I am.  I like the idea of testing the waters with short trips if things go well through the end of the year.  Of course, it goes without saying that if I suddenly veer off into Manic Menagerie all the bets are off and we start again.  But I'm not really sitting here panicking over that.  I feel like this has all got some merit and that it's a smart, reality based way to go.

I feel pretty good.  I feel well.  I AM well.

In an hour or so I'm leaving to go to the Banks.  I'll be taking 64 out to Manteo and staying in Kill Devil Hills.  Usually we go out 158 because that runs actually right through Roxboro but there's some construction going on and that brings you to the North Banks anyway.  The weather is awful and I really don't care.  My plan for Tuesday will be to go down to Ocracoke (my favorite spot in the universe).  This entails a drive, a ferry, and another drive and I'm just hoping it's not pouring down the whole time (though that isn't going to stop me).  I can't tell you how many years it's been since I've been there.  Wednesday I'm not going to go quite so far; it'll be to Hatteras and Buxton (my second favorite spot in the universe). I have a Secret Plan to have us someday live in a little tiny house in Buxton.. maybe even just a travel trailer that I can drag inland when something's about to happen.  It's a nothing place, kind of beat down (the South Banks are not quite as fancyass as the North, and not so much as Ocracoke either) and local, a little bit redneck, a lot of singlewides but a few nice places too.  I don't know, I just like it, I feel comfortable there.  They have a lovely bookshop.  Then on Thursday I'm going to check out early, head out through Manteo and then down to Bayview (I added this huge map so you could check it all out, so figure take 32 south from 64 and head all the way down) where I'll catch the ferry to Aurora and FINALLY get to go to the Museum.  I have wanted to go for YEARS but it's like in one of those entirely inconvenient places that there's no real easy way to get to.  Given that I live in a place exactly like that it's not hard to see why I haven't been able to get the logistics worked out.  Anyway, I'm going to go there and visit, then take the ferry back over and head on home (it's actually easier than going around through Chocowinity and Washington.  And while I do all these other fun things I plan on doing a lot of chanting, a lot of knitting, a lot of walking on the beach (I am bringing a ridiculous amount of clothes) and a lot of adjusting my medication.  So enjoy the map (I love maps) and I'm bringing the computer with me, so I can post updates if anything thrilling happens.